Spinoza on Hope

Spinoza did not define "Hope" but if he had it would have gone something like this:

Hope is a mixed emotion of joy and sorrow associated with the idea of some future thing that we imagine as the cause of the emotion.

We are joyful when the idea of the future thing is more powerful in our minds, sorrowful when we are assaulted by fear that the future will not contain the thing hoped for. Hope differs from expectation in the degree of certainty we feel toward the future thing, expectation being the more certain. The object of an expectation can be either joyful or sorrowful, depending on the nature of the thing expected. The object of hope, on the other hand is always associated with joy.

With these definitions in mind we can see that hope would not be hope without the presence of a creative mind to imagine some future world in which may exist the object hoped for. A scientist, for example, might notice an anomaly in the current views held in some particular area of concern and, after some thought, conceive of a hypothetical solution to the problem. He would then set about experimentally to prove or disprove his theory, hoping to prove it but fearful that he might not.

On the other hand, a highly credulous person might be given a treasure map that he trusts completely to be valid. If he were a man of the "busy" sort he might hope to someday find the time and resources to search for the treasure. But he might nonetheless expect that if he had the resources the treasure would certainly be found. Such a person might spend his entire life wishing and dreaming, deriving a measure of joy out of the certainty that the treasure is where the map says it is.

We lead rational lives when we are able to transcend our hopes, questioning, first, whether their objects actually exist, and second, acting on the basis of the answers we obtain. The treasure seeker might, for instance, ask, "Why do I trust this map?" and being rational, may finally see that his trust is a product of the joy he feels in the expectation that the map is valid and that the treasure actually exists. He might then put the map away as an interesting artifact of human credulity. He would have learned something of value. But if he concludes that the map is indeed valid and that his reasons for believing so are beyond question, then he might safely and rationally center his life on the hope that he might someday be empowered to undertake the exploration. The emotions of his hopes would fluctuate as his efforts tended toward or away from his goal.

The ethical man hopes to lead the life he has imagined as the life a good man should lead. He may even have a rationally derived view of how such a man would behave when faced with temptations that might deflect him from his ideal. But even if the man has never swayed from "goodness," the joy he would derive from leading such a virtuous life would nevertheless always be tempered by the sorrowful thought that someday he might be unable to do the right thiing, even knowing it. He would hope to never fail but would never be free of doubt.

So, if we are human, as opposed to robotic creatures, we hope for something. We may even hope that someday the words of men like Jesus of Nazareth might be taken seriously, and that the superstitions that have grown up around him would be dispelled. We might then expect our lives to be filled more with treasure than with dubious maps.