Hope: an Experiment in Loving the Future

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TAUGHT BY JST. What is hope? How and when does it become manifest and what difference does it make? Why do we hear more and more expressions of hopelessness amid our public discourse? How can we learn to nurture hope -- what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur famously dubbed a "passion for the possible" -- within our everyday lives and for the purposes of fashioning a better, more humane future? These are the sorts of questions that animate this course, which is experimental in at least a few senses. First, we draw upon philosophy, theology, biography, sociology and so forth to determine if we can come to a deeper understanding of what hope can be and how it can inflect (even constitute) our lives. Second, tilting in the direction of hope -- making an effort to hone it, taking time to think about it, etc. -- is itself experimental, testing whether it it indeed the sort of variable upon which the prospects of a future propitious of human flourishing truly depend. And, third, since this is the first time teaching this class, it's hard to know how deeply it might resonate with students' lives, scholarship and ministries. However, my work on this topic thus far gives me reason to be enormously hopeful. [lecture / seminar style; short papers.] [15 max enrollment]