How we hope : a moral psychology /

Inspired by her work with terminally ill cancer patients, Martin (Univ. of Pennsylvania) provides a valuable analysis of hope that makes excellent use of the tools of analytic philosophy, recent work in neuropsychology, and the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Gabriel Marcel. What does "hope against hope" mean? Is it irrational to maintain hope when a situation is clearly hopeless? What exactly provides sustaining power in the face of terrible odds? What element unifies the diverse feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and motives that compose effective hoping? What are the differences among despair, which may lead to self-destruction; acceptance based on stoic detachment; and a third, more subtle attitude of hope against all odds? As the author indicates, hope calls for a creative process of moral imagination wherein one moves forward to a new sense of what might count as flourishing. Many kinds of hope in the goodness of the world, and hope's unimagined possibilities, can counter despair or stoic detachment. Hope against hope is a form of secular faith that essentially is sustaining, quite apart from rational calculation about the probability of defeat. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above. S. A. Mason Concordia University