Hopeful pessimism / Mara van der Lugt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lugt, Mara van der, 1986- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pessimism.

Hope.

Physical Description:

xxii, 255 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The climate debate is rife with calls for optimism. While temperatures rise and disasters intensify, we are asked to maintain optimism and hope, as if the real threat is pessimism and despair. In this erudite and engaging book, Mara van der Lugt argues that this is a mistake: crude optimism can no longer be a virtue in a breaking world, and may well prove to be our besetting vice. In an age of climate change and ecological devastation, the virtue we need is hopeful pessimism. Drawing on thinkers that range from J.R.R.Tolkien and Mary Shelley to Albert Camus and Jonathan Lear, van der Lugt invites us to rethink what we thought we knew about optimism and pessimism, hope and despair, activism and grief. She shows that pessimism is closely linked to a tradition of moral and political activism, and offers a different way to think about pessimism: not as synonymous with despair but as compatible with hope. Gently yet fiercely, van der Lugt argues that what we need to avoid is not pessimism but fatalism or self-serving resignation. Pessimism does not imply the loss of courage or the lack of a desire to strive for a better world; on the contrary, these are the very gifts that pessimism can bestow. What Hopeful Pessimism asks instead is that we strive for change without certainties, without expecting anything from our efforts other than the knowledge that we have done what we are called upon to do as moral agents in a time of change."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Optimism, pessimism, fatalism

Pessimism and activism

Losing the future

The ambiguity of hope

Radical hope revisited

Blue hope

Our lady of tears : on grief

Our lady of sighs : on despair

Our lady of darkness.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-241) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Lugt, Mara van der, 1986- Hopeful pessimism.

ISBN:

9780691265605

0691265607

OCLC:

1427335829