Abstract
AbstractHope found in the rational, empirical, epistemological optimism of Enlightenment-based modernism attempted to detach itself from its religious, Christian roots. This chapter will focus on post-Kantian and postmodern sensibilities that reject the modernist “myth of neutrality” and return to the theological roots of hope, even when for some, particular theological or Christian beliefs are renounced. To consider this, the chapter will highlight themes of hope found in precursors to postmodern thought: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Marcel. Next, it will turn to the postmodern Derridean hope of John D. Caputo and offer a glimpse of the pragmatic hope of Richard Rorty. This will be followed by a consideration of James K.A. Smith’s critique of Caputo and Rorty, and his proposal for a phenomenological, determined hope.
Highlights
The hopes of progress stemming from the optimism and confidence of the Enlightenment, whether industrial, economic, political, or otherwise, were dashed in the wake of the World War One, World War Two, Auschwitz, the failure of industrialism to sustain third world countries, and the environmental crisis
Some may reject Christian hope because it is hope expressed within a particular narrative framework
Because Christian hope is particular and broadly determinate does not itself disqualify it from being a viable rendering of postmodern hope
Summary
The utopian hope of modernism is, Bauckham and Hart submit, a “secularized version of the traditional Christian understanding of providence” combined with “a human assumption of the responsibility for creating the future which had previously been in God’s hands.”. As I will suggest, postmodern perspectives on hope are implicitly theological inasmuch as they are responses, reactions, and proposals to the eschatologically built hope of modernism (as previously noted above in Bauckham and Hart) With these factors in mind, I turn to Kierkegaard.
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