A cosmopolitan hermit: modernity and tradition in the philosophy of Josef Pieper

6. The Future of Pieper’s Hope and History

141 6 The Future of Pieper’s Hope and History Joseph J. Godfrey In 1967, Joseph Pieper published the German edition of Hope and History; its first English translation came out two years later.1 Now, more than forty years later, how well does Pieper’s thought about hope and history hold up? Is it still a helpful treatise? In this essay I propose to take the measure of Pieper’s treatise in light of some later studies on hope and on history. Pieper wrote in response to the prospect of nuclear annihilation, in response to the publication of Ernst Bloch’s 1959 The Principle of Hope, and in response to the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin that appeared in the 1960s. He turned to Catholic theological understandings of biblical apocalyptic literature to identify and underline some weaknesses in the thought of Bloch and Teilhard de Chardin. I will match my essay’s structure to that of Pieper’s argument. He surveyed then-contemporary thinkers, criticized them using some relio 1. See Josef Pieper, Hope and History: Five Salzburg Lectures (1969). In this essay I will quote the translation by David Kipp (1994). 142 Joseph J. Godfrey gious sources, and offered reasons why drawing on these religious sources for his philosophical treatise is legitimate and important. I will review Pieper’s argument in Hope and History,2 offer some comments of my own on this work, compare his with recent treatments of hope and history both in works of Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright, and in religious sources, namely, in a 1987 essay by the theologian Johann Baptist Metz, and in the 1997 Catechism of the Catholic Church; I will then conclude with some assessment of the lasting importance of Pieper’s approach to hope and history. My main themes will be: noting the basis for the stance that religious analyses are superior to secular analyses; noting that transformation is more central than concepts of time; and noting that there should be connections among pedestrian hopes, large hopes, and eternal hopes. I develop my themes through reflection on the relationship between meaning and direction, and through reflection on the types of models for understanding hope’s fulfillment, including the relationships between historical and transhistorical or eternal conditions. Two questions serve as preludes, and they are related. The first is the viewpoint question, imaged by the ant and the eagle. The ant works and lives close to the ground; it cannot see far ahead. The eagle has the higher viewpoint: it can see what the ant cannot, including the terrain lying well ahead of the ant. For us mortals, antlike , the questions are these: Can I know what lies ahead? If an eagle offers me a report, what account should I take of the report? What if there are several eagles and the reports differ? The second question is: Why pay attention to any report about the future? If a scholar of history reports a trend, why should I pay attention? Why should I want to know which way some matters are developing, be it the promise of the Internet or the threat of glo2 . For an understanding of history and hoping which draws on the full range of Pieper’s work, I defer to Bernard N. Schumacher, A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the Contemporary Debate on Hope. The Future of Hope and History 143 bal climate change? Why should I want to understand what is happening in circles larger than my own, in national politics, or in the world economy? As we will see Pieper express it, we should apply more energy to “the everyday accomplishment, in each given situation, of what is wise, good, and just.” But what is good, just, and wise in each situation? And what are the connections between what is just and wise in each situation and the larger consequences of such choices? The consequences of my choices may range from garden to globe, from the local few to myriads and millennia. Should not a responsible person have some knowledge of the way things are going and therefore of the way he could contribute to or inhibit their movement? So when I hope, should I not take into account what is now possible and what is worth hoping for? Should not my hope take account of history? And how may I learn from and discern among various voices proposing differing...