The Courage to Hope
I cut my philosophical teeth on Bertrand Russell. I used to really admire him. I still share many of his commitments on peace etc. And I still find him sober when it comes to questioning claims and ascertaining the facts of the matter, rather than allowing ourselves to get carried away with our beliefs and wishes. That said, his view in a Free Man’s Worship on embracing an ‘unyielding despair’ in face of a meaningless universe that is indifferent to our concerns and cries just strikes me as, frankly, pointless. Russell calls this despair a ‘firm foundation.’ It is no foundation at all, merely resignation to the sheer futility of it all. He writes that “all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins” are, if not quite beyond dispute, “yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”
So much the worse for philosophy, then! Human civilisation is built and survives and thrives in confidence, not ‘despair.’ The problem with Russell’s ‘unyielding despair’ is that it is too exacting, too onerous a burden, too psychologically strenuous. It is neurotic. All this keeping on in full knowledge of the pointlessness of it all. At some point, the weight becomes too heavy to carry and the most heroically unyielding start to yield until they quickly collapse.
I much prefer Jonathan Sacks’ rewrite of Russell’s peroration to make it a praise of faith:
That man, despite being the product of seemingly blind causes, is not blind; that being in the image of God he is more than an accidental collocation of atoms; that being free, he can rise above his fears, and, with the help of God, create oases of justice and compassion in the wilderness of space and time; that though his life is short he can achieve immortality by his fire and heroism, his intensity of thought and feeling; that humanity too, though it may one day cease to be, can create before night falls a noonday brightness of the human spirit, trusting that, though none of our kind will be here to remember, yet in the mind of God, none of our achievements is forgotten - all these things, if not beyond dispute, have proven themselves time and again in history. We are made great by our faith, small by our lack of it. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding hope, can the soul's salvation be safely built.
Sacks comments:
‘I never understood why it should be considered more coura¬geous to despair than to hope. Freud said that religious faith was the comforting illusion that there is a father figure. A religious believer might say that atheism is the comforting illusion that there is no father figure, so that we can do what we like and can get away with: an adolescent's dream. Why should one be consid¬ered escapist and not the other? Why should God's call to respon¬sibility be considered an easy option? Why should the belief, held by some on the basis of scientific determinism, that we have no free will and therefore no moral responsibility, not be considered the greatest escapism of them all?’
Russell’s ‘unyielding despair’ just strikes me as tired, and cowardly rather than noble. It all depends on your expectations and how high or low they may be. You can set the mark low in an attempt to avoid disappointment, but dissatisfaction will be fell given the sacrifice of possibility that comes that way.
If life is indeed meaningless, then nothing is more meaningless than the philosophy and science that says it is so. It is hard to fault Russell’s view philosophically and scientifically. The evidence does indeed seem to be that we are nothing more than shaved chimpanzees clinging on to a barren rock that came from nowhere and is going nowhere in time and space. I just have a feeling that that view constitutes an incredibly infirm foundation for civilisation, as in no foundation at all. Before truth comes truth-seeking, and the reason to pursue and value truth. Sticking to the facts of the matter alone doesn’t give the motivations and values required, something more is needed, something from the realm of value, meaning, and significance outside of reason, fact, and logic.
In short, I never remotely accepted the view that it is more courageous to despair than to hope. I say it is the very opposite. Cowards and pessmists set the mark low, lower expectations, abandon hope, and enter the abode of the damned. One of the reasons why I love Dante is that, even in exile, having lost everything he had, his identity, his reputation, his home, he knew despair to be a cheat, the cowards part. The Inferno is full of people who foreclosed on life and its possibilities for joy and fulfilment. I switch on social media, keep abreast with the news, and find ample reason to despair. Reason tells us daily that we are beaten, that our situation is hopeless, and reassures us with the view that life is pointless anyway. It’s a tired view. Defeatism and cynicism is the status quo’s best friend. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov says that, more than anything else, it is the death of children that makes him want to give back his ticket to the universe. Yet he refuses to give that ticket back, he keeps on hoping and loving and fighting for a better world for all, contrary evidence be damned.
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