The Value and Risks of Hope

Abstract This chapter considers the value and risks of hope. It defends the priority of first-personal assessments of the value of hope, suggesting that it is often hopeful people themselves who are best positioned to understand the value of their hopes. But since hope can lead us astray, an evaluative framework for hope is needed. While most philosophers who theorize hope’s value tend to focus on assessments of epistemic and prudential rationality, this chapter argues that hope can also be evaluated as fitting and morally appropriate. Recognizing the full range of evaluative dimensions of hope is important for answering the all-things-considered practical question of whether and for what one should hope. This chapter defends Victoria McGeer’s framework for what it means to hope well to capture how the evaluative measures for hope work in practice, while orienting the rationality-of-hope question as a social and political question about the value of hope in community with others.