Kant’s Rationalist Account of Hope

1 Introduction

Think about something you are hoping for. Maybe you are hoping that you get a job promotion, or that reading this paper will be worth your time. Yet upon first blush, few would claim that hope is a central interest of reason, on a par with knowledge or morality. But Kant suggests exactly this:

All interest of my reason (the speculative as well as the practical) is united in the following three questions:

1. What can I know?

2. What should I do?

3. What may I hope? (Was darf ich hoffen?) (A805/B833).

It may be even more surprising to hear that hope is a rational attitude at all, as Kant goes on to suggest (A805–806/B833–834). After all, reason plays (at most) a subordinate role in what might be called the minimal account of hope. Prominent in mid-twentieth century Anglophone philosophy, this account says that an agent hopes that p iff she both (i) desires that p (the desire condition) and (ii) believes that p is possible (the possibility condition). To hope you will get that job promotion, on this view, you must simply desire it and believe it possible.^[1]

My central thesis has two parts. First, for Kant, hope is a rational attitude: rational conditions – conditions stemming from the activity of reason – are constitutive of what it is to hope. Without these rational conditions, hope could not be differentiated from other desiderative attitudes, such as mere wishing or fantasizing. Although these rational conditions entail the desire condition and the possibility condition, they are not reducible to the latter. Second, the rational conditions on hope involve causal inferences made by the hoping agent. To hope that p, an agent must make certain inferences about the cause of her desire that p and the cause of her belief that p is possible. Since rational inferences from causes are required to hope at all, Kant can be said to advance a rationalist account of hope. This account breathes life into the ubiquitous (but undertheorized) idea of having cause for hope.^[2]

Prior investigations of Kant’s account of hope have generally focused on the conditions under which hope is justified – especially for substantive practical ends (the existence of God, human progress, etc.).^[3] Few have reconstructed Kant’s account of what it is to hope, the primary topic of our investigation. Of those who have, Zuckert (2018) argues that hope is a feeling for Kant. Although reason may justify our hopes, she claims, rational conditions are not constitutive of hope: “Reason, then, is to establish which objects are proper or permissible for that preexisting attitude [of hope] – the ‘what’ that is its focus, and the ‘may’ that governs or restricts it – not to produce it.” (244). Yet if my central thesis is correct, reason does not merely justify our hopes for Kant; to hope at all (“to produce it”) requires the satisfaction of rational conditions. Other animals can desire, but only rational beings can hope. Although other recent reconstructions place rational conditions on hope (e. g., Blöser 2019 and various works by Andrew Chignell), I will suggest that these reconstructions do not fully capture them (specifically, in terms of rational inferences from causes).^[4]

One might begin by asking how Kant’s notion of hope relate to our ordinary notion of hope (i. e., the notion of hope that we apply in ordinary life and that is expressed by the English word ‘hope’). On one view, Kant’s notion of hope is simply identical to our ordinary notion of hope. Call this the identity view. On a second view, Kant’s notion of hope is but one species of our ordinary notion of hope. Call this the species view. Unfortunately, it is far from clear which of these views is correct – not least because Kant never explicitly presents a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions on hope.^[5] Competing considerations seem to pull in opposite directions. On the one hand, Kant primarily focuses on hopes involving substantive practical ends. He hardly seems concerned with mundane hopes (such as enjoying nice weather tomorrow). This consideration might lend itself to a species view on which Kant is really concerned with a notion of (what might be called) practical or agential hope.^[6] On the other hand, Kant does not generally distinguish species of hope, much less explicitly indicate concern with a single species of hope. And as we will see, he does not use the rational conditions on hope to distinguish a particular species of hope from hope simpliciter, but rather from other desiderative attitudes (such as mere wishing). These considerations might lend themselves to the identity view.

I will refrain from attempting to settle this difficult issue here. My modus operandi for reconstructing Kant’s conditions on hope is accordingly not to compare his remarks on hope with intuitions concerning our ordinary notion of hope. Rather, I aim to situate these conditions within Kant’s systematic investigation of our faculty of reason. When the first Critique asks “What may I hope?,” hope is framed as expressing an interest of reason. Our guiding question, then, is which conditions on hope make it (rather than some other desiderative attitude) apt to express interests of reason.

To show that hope has rational conditions (per the first part of my central thesis), I will first argue that hope manifests reason’s overarching interest in comprehension (a technical notion that is clarified below) by involving a rational inference from an ought to an is. The rational conditions constitutive of this inference are thereby constitutive of hope (per the first part of my central thesis). I will then argue that these rational conditions involve the agent’s attribution of three distinctive causes of her desire that p and her belief that p is possible: a final, internal, and external cause. An agent’s having cause for hope thereby helps to differentiate hope from other desiderative attitudes (per the second part of my central thesis).

In section 2, I sketch reason’s overarching interest in comprehension and how hope manifests it. In section 3, I elucidate how happiness provides the ought of hope; to hope that p, an agent must desire that p for the sake of happiness (the final cause condition). In section 4, I argue that an agent must believe that p is possible partly in virtue of her own power to help realize p (the internal cause condition). In section 5, I argue that an agent must further believe that p is possible partly in virtue of an external cause that would supplement her own efforts (the external cause condition). In section 6, I conclude.

2 From Ought to Is: Comprehension and Hope

An interest, for Kant, is a principle that directs the activity of a faculty of the mind: “To every faculty of the mind one can attribute an interest, that is a principle that contains the condition under which alone its exercise is promoted” (AK 5:120). A distinguishing activity of the faculty of reason, Kant holds, is making inferences (A330/B386).^[7] But reason is not satisfied with making just any inferences (say, applying the successor function ad nauseum). Reason’s inferential activity is directed according to reason’s overarching interest in (what Kant calls) comprehension (Begreifen): “Concepts of reason serve for comprehension, just as concepts of the understanding serve for understanding (of perceptions).” (A311/B367). To comprehend something involves inferring not merely that it holds, but why it holds – and thus inferring it from its ground or cause. To say that comprehension is an overarching interest of reason is minimally to say that reason systematically demands explanation: it constantly asks Why and demands its complete Because (A584/B612).^[8]

On the one hand, theoretical reason aims to comprehend how reality is from its grounds: “for the complete comprehensibility (Begreiflichkeit) of what is given in appearance we need its ground but not its consequences.” (A411/B438).^[9] This aim manifests itself, for instance, in theoretical reason’s activity of inferring the present state of the world from its causal grounds via physical laws. The first Critique accordingly evaluates theoretical reason’s capacity for comprehension – particularly of the ultimate grounds pursued by speculative reason in traditional metaphysics (God, monads, and the like) (A411/B438). On the other hand, practical reason aims in deliberation to comprehend what an agent ought to do. This aim manifests itself, for instance, in practical reason’s activity of inferring obligations from their grounds.^[10] For Kant, these grounds famously involve rational moral principles (expressed in the various formulations of the categorical imperative). The Groundwork and the second Critique accordingly investigate practical reason’s capacity for grasping such principles (AK 4:446–447 and AK 5:4–5).

Thus, reason’s overarching interest in comprehension manifests itself in theoretical knowledge and practical deliberation (broadly construed) insofar as these activities involve reason’s inferential activity of inferring from grounds.^[11] Although this is not to deny that reason has other interests, comprehension is particularly important because it unites these activities in reason – such that Kant can claim that “all interest of my reason (the speculative as well as the practical) is united” in questions that include “what can I know?” and “what should I do?” (A804–805/B832–833). But what about the third question: “what may I hope?” It stands to reason that hope is united with the former two questions because hope – no less than theoretical knowledge or practical deliberation – is somehow apt to manifest reason’s overarching interest in comprehension. But how? A natural suggestion is that, since reason’s overarching interest in comprehension manifests itself in theoretical knowledge and practical deliberation insofar as these activities involve reason’s inferential activity of inferring from grounds, the same goes for hope.

And that is what Kant goes on to suggest. To hope involves inferring how reality would be from how it ought to be:

The third question, namely, ‘If I do what I should, what may I then hope?’ is simultaneously practical and theoretical, so that the practical leads like a clue to a reply to the theoretical question and, in its highest form, the speculative question. For all hope concerns happiness, and with respect to the practical and the moral law it is the very same as what knowledge and the natural law is with regard to theoretical cognition of things. The former finally comes down to the inference that something is (which determines the ultimate final end) because something ought to happen; the latter, that something is (which acts as the supreme cause) because something does happen. (A805–806/B833–834, emphasis added).

In hope, the is expresses how reality would be under normative conditions of how reality ought to be. To hope requires inferring that is from this ought. These normative conditions thereby provide a cause or ground for envisioning how reality would be if it conformed to them.

If hope involves an inference from an ought to an is (as Kant suggests here), hope must combine the activities of theoretical and practical reason. Specifically, since practical reason is tasked with comprehending how reality ought to be, it is tasked with reaching the ought of hope. And since theoretical reason is tasked with comprehending how reality is, it is tasked with taking this ought and comprehending how reality would be through it (“so that the practical leads like a clue to a reply to the theoretical question”). So construed, the roles of both theoretical and practical reason in hope are not merely judicial, but legislative or constitutive – they are needed not merely to evaluate our hopes as justified or unjustified, but to hope at all. In just this sense, Kant offers a rationalist characterization of hope; hope manifests reason’s interest in comprehension because hope involves inferring something from its ground, viz. an is from its ground in an ought.

Of course, one might question whether this rationalist characterization of hope provides the only way for hope to manifest reason’s overarching interest in comprehension. Along these lines, Zuckert (2018, 250) suggests instead that comprehension enters hope merely at the level of justification. Hopes themselves are simply ‘given’ (as feelings, desires, etc.) prior to any activity of reason at all. Reason can subsequently comprehend whether a particular hope is justified or not by tracing it back to its grounds. She might insist that hope (so construed) manifests reason’s interest in comprehension insofar as reason plays this judicial (but not constitutive) role in hope.

I have no knockdown argument against this anti-rationalist characterization of hope. But, in the first place, it does not seem to capture the unity that Kant envisions between hope and the other activities of reason in manifesting reason’s overarching interest in comprehension. Specifically, it does not capture Kant’s thought above that just as knowing and practically deliberating manifest reason’s overarching interest in comprehension insofar as these activities involve reason’s inferential activity, hoping likewise manifests this interest insofar as it involves reason’s inferential activity.^[12] Second, and more decisively, we will see in ensuing sections that satisfying certain rational conditions is necessary to distinguish hope from nearby desiderative attitudes (such as mere wishing). In the absence of their satisfaction, Kant attributes other desiderative attitudes to agents – but never hope.

The first remaining question concerns the nature of the ought; when an agent hopes that p, in what sense must she affirm that it ought be that p? The second concerns the nature of the inference itself; under what conditions can an is be inferred from an ought? In the ensuing sections, I will argue that one rational condition addresses the former question, and two rational conditions address the latter question. These three rational conditions each appeal to a different kind of cause for hope. In just this sense, an agent’s desiderative attitude towards p amounts to a hope only if and because she has a cause for hope.

3 Final Cause for Hope

Kant distinguishes three different kinds of oughts that stem from practical reason: skill, morality, and happiness. Whereas the ought of skill is tied to the hypothetical necessity of the means, the ought of happiness is tied to happiness’s status as a necessary end of all (human) rational beings, who (by their very nature) aim to be happy: “One’s own happiness is the subjective final end of rational beings belonging to the world.” (AK 6:7).^[13] The ought of happiness (or ‘prudence’) is accordingly attached to the conditions on realizing this necessary end. Finally, the ought of morality is tied to the necessity of categorical moral principles. As Kant clarifies:

There are thus three kinds of imperative, of skill, prudence and morality. For every imperative expresses an ought, and thus an objective necessity, and this a necessity of free and good choice, for that pertains to the imperative mood, and necessitates objectively. […] Prudence is readiness in the use of means to the universal end of man, namely happiness, and thus here the end is already determined, which is not the case with skill. […] The imperatives of prudence do not enjoin under a problematic condition, but under an assertoric universally necessary one, found in all men. (AK 27:245–246).^[14]

Since these are the three kinds of oughts that stem from practical reason, at least one of these oughts must provide the ought constitutive of hope. But which one(s)? The answer would help to provide the aim or final cause of hope.

At least in the first instance, Kant connects the ought of hope to happiness: “For all hope concerns happiness” (A805/B833).^[15] I propose that this connection comes down to two further claims: one about how happiness relates to desire, and a second about how desire relates to hope. First, Kant frequently suggests that all happiness involves desire satisfaction. That is, p contributes to an agent’s happiness only if the realization of p would satisfy one of her desires. As he clarifies immediately after claiming that all hope concerns happiness: “Happiness is the satisfaction of all of our inclinations (extensive, with regard to their manifoldness, as well as intensive, with regard to degree, and also protensive, with regard to duration)” (A806/B834). This passage (and others) suggests that the thinnest notion of happiness simply involves the satisfaction of an agent’s desires as such. Since the satisfaction of any desire contributes to happiness (barring, say, conflicts between desires), all hope would concern such happiness if an object of hope is ipso facto an object of desire (such that hoping that p entails desiring that p).^[16]

Second, Kant regards hope as a desiderative attitude – an object of hope is ipso facto an object of desire. He glosses “the matter of the faculty of desire” as “objects of inclination, whether of hope or fear (Furcht)” (AK 5:74). On first pass: when an agent desires that p from fear, she desires that p for want of avoiding ~p (or its consequences). By contrast, when an agent desires that p from hope, she desires that p for want of attaining p. So whereas a desire that p from fear involves aversion from ~p, a desire that p from hope involves attraction to p.

Bringing these two claims together: given that happiness (in the thinnest sense) consists in desire satisfaction and given that any object of hope is ipso facto an object of desire, one cannot hope that p without taking p to contribute to one’s happiness. This idea translates into the following condition on hope:

1. Final Cause Condition: agent S hopes that p only if and because (i) S desires that p (ii) for the sake of p’s contribution to S’s happiness.

The final cause condition expresses a rational condition on hope in a twofold sense: insofar as the ought of happiness (i) stems from (human) reason and (ii) provides the inferential base for the rational inference from ought to is that is constitutive of hope.^[17]

Does the final cause condition imply that the ought of morality is simply irrelevant to hope? That would not seem to sit well with Kant’s focus on hopes for substantive moral ends (e. g., moral progress). But note that Kant distinguishes physical happiness and moral happiness. Whereas physical happiness merely requires desire satisfaction as such, moral happiness also (minimally) requires that the desires do not conflict with moral laws.^[18] The question, then, is whether the notion of happiness in the final cause condition expresses physical happiness or moral happiness.

Fortunately, we need not make a choice when further distinctions will suffice. Specifically, we might distinguish two species of hope: prudential hope (involving physical happiness) and moral hope (involving moral happiness). For instance, the scoundrel could have prudential hope that his morality-defying machinations succeed under the guise of its contribution to his physical happiness. But the scoundrel could not have the corresponding moral hope.^[19] Both species of hope are still oriented towards (some kind of) happiness. Indeed, I surmise (but will not push beyond a footnote) that hope’s orientation towards happiness helps to distinguish hope from Kant’s notion of faith or belief (Glaube).^[20]

4 Internal Cause for Hope

The inference from ought to is that is constitutive of hope now turns on understanding the conditions of the inferring itself: under what conditions can reason infer that reality would be a certain way from the fact that it ought to be that way? Since hope is a kind of desiderative attitude (per the final cause condition), my guiding thread here is that the answer lies in specifying the kind of desire constitutive of hope. Over the next two sections, I aim to show how Kant differentiates hope from other desiderative attitudes (such as mere wishing) by the agent’s distinctive commitments regarding the conditions under which the object of her hope would be realized. Specifically, we will see that hope (unlike other desiderative attitudes) requires taking the realizability of the object of hope to be jointly grounded in an internal and external cause. In this section, I will elucidate the internal cause condition.^[21]

Kant bifurcates desires into active and idle ones:

Insofar as it [the faculty of desire] is joined with one’s consciousness of the ability to bring about its object by one’s action it is called choice (Willkür); if it is not joined with this consciousness its act is called a wish. (AK 6:213).

Desires are 1) idle or inactive, 2) practical or active. Idle desires are mere wishes, desire, longing; but they are called ‘practical’ from their objects: the first are mostly conversed about, through novels and novelistic ideas, they are such that one gets all too exaggerated ideas about the happiness of life. Idle desires are thus those that cannot move our activity, because one sees that it is impossible to attain to such happiness. All fruitless stimulations are harmful to the health of the mind; and the habit of filling the mind with empty wishes gives it a certain inactivity; if we represent to ourselves a happiness such that we can never hope to get it, then no desires are incited in us through this. (AK 25:795).^[22]

A desire is idle if it “cannot move our activity.” Its failure to move an agent’s activity is rooted in her taking its object to lie completely beyond her own power to help realize. That is, an agent’s desire that p is idle if she takes it that (“if we represent to ourselves”) nothing she could do would help bring about p. In just this sense, idle desires are mere wishes. Her desire that p remains idle even if she holds that something else could suffice to bring about p, and thus even if p is possible in abstracto.

To illustrate, suppose an aging amateur pianist regrets her decision to not become a professional concert pianist. Although she desires to change her past decision, she regards doing so as lying completely beyond her own power. For this reason, her desire would be idle. Indeed, her desire would not suddenly cease to be idle even if she were to believe (even truly!) that an advanced race of time-travelling extraterrestrials had the power to change her past decision – provided that she did not regard herself as having the power to do anything about it.^[23]

Whereas an idle desire for p cannot move an agent to activity directed at realizing p, an active desire can. The latter’s ability to move an agent’s activity is rooted in her taking the object of her desire to lie at least partly within her own power to realize (“one’s consciousness of the ability to bring about its object by one’s action”). That is, she must believe that p’s realizability partly hinges upon her own efforts, i. e., that she has the capacity to help realize p. Thus, an agent’s desire that p is active not merely because she regards p as possible in abstracto, but rather only if and because she regards the possibility of p as partially grounded in a certain way, namely in her own causal power to help realize it. To continue the previous example, suppose our wistful pianist came to hold that she had the power to help change her past (say, by holding that she could persuade a time-travelling extraterrestrial to help her change it). In that case, her previously idle desire for changing her past decision might well become an active one.^[24]

Whereas mere wishing involves an idle desire, Kant suggests here and elsewhere that hope involves an active desire (“if we represent to ourselves a happiness such that we can never hope to get it, then no desires are incited in us through this”). Given this, it is not enough for the hoping agent to regard the object of her hope as possible in abstracto; an agent hopes that p only if she regards the possibility of p as partially grounded in a certain way, viz. within her own power. So to hope that p requires an agent to regard the realization of p as not being wholly up to chance; it requires her to affirm her own power to help bring about p.^[25]

An agent’s desire accordingly amounts to a hope only if she has an internal cause for hope. More formally:

1. Internal Cause Condition: agent S hopes that p only if and because S believes that the possibility of p is partially grounded in her own power to help realize p.^[26]

Because theoretical reason enables us to infer something from its cause or ground, the use of theoretical reason is required for an agent to satisfy the internal cause condition – and thus is required to hope at all.^[27]

The internal cause condition finds expression in many passages.^[28] Its role in distinguishing hope from mere wishing is starkly illustrated in a passage from the Religion (AK 6:116–117). Here we return to the scoundrel, now ailing on his deathbed. He desires that he will be rewarded in the afterlife. Does this desire amount to a hope, or a mere wish? On the one hand, suppose that our scoundrel believes (per Kant’s view) that he will be rewarded in the afterlife only if he reforms his moral character (AK 6:116n). Given the internal cause condition, his desire would then amount to a hope only if he believes himself still capable of reforming his moral character. As Kant writes:

[H]owever reprehensible a human being might find himself at the end of his life, he must not on that account allow himself to stop short of doing at least one more good action which is in his power; and that, in doing it, he has cause to hope (zu hoffen Ursache habe) that, in proportion as he now harbors a purely good intention, it will yet be of greater worth to him than those deedless absolutions which are supposed to make up for the lack of good actions without contributing anything to the lessening of the guilt. (AK 6:162n).

If he takes it, then, that the opportunity for moral reform has slipped away at this late hour, his desire for reward will amount to a mere wish. Yet on the other hand, suppose the scoundrel believes that “deedless absolutions” (mere thoughts and prayers) would now help win reward in the afterlife. In that case, Kant says, he may transform his mere wish into a hope: “self-love often transforms the mere wish for a good into a hope, for which one does nothing or can do nothing, as though the object were to come on its own, lured by the mere yearning for it” (AK 6:117, translation modified). So the fact that the ailing scoundrel hopes (rather than merely wishes) for reward in the afterlife does not merely hinge on his belief that this object of desire is possible in abstracto (say, as being within God’s power to give him). To hope this, he must believe that his own powers would help bring about this object of desire – just as the internal cause condition implies. This power thereby provides a “ground for hope” (Grund zur Hoffnung) (AK 6:117).^[29]

One remaining question concerns the notion of a partial ground or cause at play in the internal cause condition. It seems too strong to construe a partial cause of p here as necessary for p’s realization. For instance, I can presumably hope that environmental justice will prevail, even if I do not believe that my contribution is necessary for realizing this end. I tentatively propose construing partial causes less strongly as INUS conditions, or necessary parts of a cause that is itself sufficient (but need not be necessary) for the effect in question. For instance, although my effort is not necessary for environmental justice to prevail, it nonetheless would be a part of a cause that is sufficient for this end. I could therefore still count as satisfying the internal cause condition.^[30] This proposal does not rule out that, in certain cases of hope, one’s own contribution will also be necessary for realizing the object of one’s hope (e. g., in hopes that concern one’s own moral progress).^[31]

Even if partial causes in the internal cause condition are construed as mere INUS conditions, Martin (2011) would challenge this condition through the following two kinds of cases. In the first, the hoping agent lacks power over whether the object of her hope is realized. On her view, it is coherent for an agent to hope that it does not rain today despite having no power over the weather. In the second, the agent can – but does not – help bring about the object of her hope. To borrow her example, suppose that some heinous law is up for public vote in a state of which I am not a resident. Even if I do nothing to contribute to the law’s defeat (e. g., I do not give money to the No campaign), it seems coherent (and arguably even justified) to hope that the law is defeated. This is another apparent example of hope without satisfying the internal cause condition, since I do not regard the realization of the object of hope as depending upon my own power (even construed as an INUS condition).

Reconciling these two kinds of cases with the internal cause condition comes back, in part, to how we understand the connection between Kant’s notion of hope and our ordinary notion of hope. Despite my provisional neutrality regarding this connection, I want to briefly sketch how the two main options mentioned in section I – the species view and the identity view – might handle these two kinds of cases. First consider the species view, which takes Kant’s notion of hope to be a particular species of our ordinary notion of hope. The species view could accept that the above two kinds of cases are cases of ordinary hope but not Kantian hope (because they do not satisfy the internal cause condition). They therefore pose no threat to the species view; they simply illustrate that the internal cause condition helps differentiate Kantian hope from ordinary hope.

But now consider the identity view, which takes Kant’s notion of hope to be identical to our ordinary notion of hope. Ex hypothesi, the above two kinds of cases must either (i) be rejected as cases of bona fide hope or (ii) be shown to satisfy the internal cause condition after all. As for the first kind of case: since satisfaction of the internal cause condition is (by stipulation) impossible here, the proponent of the identity view will presumably deny that it involves any bona fide hope. Although we may ordinarily speak of hoping for things that lie completely beyond our power to realize, these are mere wishes. My ‘hope’ that it will not rain today is in fact a mere wish. For the proponent of the identity view, this kind of case simply illustrates that intuitions only go so far in theorizing about hope. By Kant’s lights, hope is a distinctive attitude that serves reason’s interest of comprehending how reality would be from how it ought to be. Ordinary speakers of English need not respect this in using the term ‘hope.’^[32] The proponent of the identity view might say the same thing about the second kind of case: the agent’s alleged hope for the defeat of the heinous legislation is actually a mere wish. Alternatively, she might relax the standards on what it takes to be a partial cause, e. g., by maintaining that making an indirect contribution suffices to satisfy the internal cause condition. In the above example, a contribution to defeat heinous legislation in one’s own state might indirectly help contribute to the defeat of heinous legislation in another state, and thereby satisfy the internal cause condition.

In short, then, the species view and the identity view can both offer potentially viable strategies for reconciling the internal cause condition with the two kinds of cases raised by Martin. More generally, then, these cases do not seem to pose an intractable challenge for Kant’s internal cause condition. Regardless, the final and internal cause conditions still do not suffice to transform mere wishes into hopes. Elucidating this point will lead us to a third (and final) kind of cause needed for hope.

5 External Cause for Hope

When an agent hopes that p, can she ever take p to fully lie within her own power to realize? If not, then satisfying the internal cause condition will not suffice to ground the agent’s belief that p is realizable, and thus will not suffice for her desire that p to be active (rather than idle). Yet as we just saw, hoping that p requires an active desire for p. So a negative answer would imply that the satisfaction of the internal cause condition alone cannot bridge the gap between mere wishing and hope. Another condition on hope would evidently be needed to bridge this gap.

And Kant indeed gives a negative answer: to hope that p, the agent cannot take the realization of p to fully lie within her own powers. Even if an agent does her part, her efforts will always provide a merely partial cause or ground of p. As he puts it:

[1] Our good fortune in life (our welfare in general) depends, rather, on circumstances that are far from all being in our control. [2] So our happiness always remains a wish that cannot become a hope, unless some other power is added. (AK 6:482, numbering added)

Although he does not explicate his rationale for [1] here, it becomes clear in light of the final cause condition (from section III). As we saw, happiness always involves desire satisfaction for Kant. Yet he further assumes that an object of desire, insofar as it contributes to an agent’s happiness, is never fully within her own power to realize. This assumption plays a prominent role in his account of happiness: even if an agent does everything that she can (or even should do) to attain her own happiness, it can happen that disease, misfortune, and injustice conspire to preclude its attainment. Kant emphatically rejects a broadly Stoic conception of happiness as an inner state (come what may externally).^[33] Of course, the degree to which the realization of an object of hope depends on factors beyond the agent’s powers can vary dramatically. For instance, realizing environment justice depends on external factors to a far greater degree than drinking from the glass in front of me. But even the latter’s realization depends on external factors to a certain degree (e. g., that my table will not collapse when I go to grab the glass, that an asteroid will not crash through the room, etc.).

In any case, since the realizability of an agent’s object of hope cannot lie completely within her own powers, her belief that she can help realize it (per the internal cause condition) will not suffice to ground her belief that the object of her hope is realizable. Yet as an active desire, hope requires the agent to hold the latter belief. The satisfaction of the internal cause condition therefore will not suffice to transform her mere wish into a hope. So to bridge the gap between mere wishing and hope, another condition is needed that would (when combined with the internal cause) suffice for the realizability of the object of hope.

Since the requisite condition cannot invoke the hoping agent’s own powers, it would have to invoke an external cause. And that is what Kant suggests in [2] above (“So our happiness always remains a wish that cannot become a hope, unless some other power is added.”). More specifically, an external cause would have the following two features. First, it would be external to the agent herself; whether it holds lies beyond the agent’s powers. Second, it would supplement the agent’s efforts; it would include those causal conditions that, when combined with the agent’s efforts, would suffice to bring about p. In effect, if the agent’s own contribution provides an INUS condition of the object of her hope (as I suggested in the previous section), the corresponding external cause would provide the complementary part of the sufficient condition. So if the agent did her part towards p and the external cause did its part, they would jointly suffice for the realization of p.

Because hoping for p (as an active desire) requires belief that p is realizable and because an external cause is required to bridge the gap between the hoping agent’s own power and the realizability of p, hoping that p requires believing that an external cause of p is possible. If an agent lacked such a belief, she would plausibly regard her own efforts towards p as futile (and, perhaps, subsequently sink into despair). Putting this condition more formally:

1. External Cause Condition: agent S hopes that p only if and because S believes that an external cause of p is possible.

Just like the internal cause condition, this condition highlights that it is not enough for the hoping agent to merely believe that p is possible – she must believe that p’s possibility is grounded in a certain way. And satisfying the external cause condition likewise requires the inferential activity of reason in drawing a connection between p and an external cause. This condition thereby further fleshes out reason’s constitutive role in hope.^[34]

To illustrate, consider an agent’s desire that environmental justice will prevail. Her desire would amount to a hope only if she believes it possible for an external cause to supplement her own efforts. The external cause here might include other people doing their part to realize environmental justice (by recycling, conserving energy, etc.). Kant likewise indicates that the desire that humanity will agree to unite into a universal ethical community cannot become a hope until everyone is in a position to do their part to realize this agreement: “[s]uch a universal agreement [to unite into an ethical community] is not to be hoped for, unless a special business is made from the union of all with one another for one and the same goal and establishment of one community under moral laws” (AK 6:151).^[35]

Nonetheless, the external cause condition raises new complications. Here are two. First, whereas the internal cause condition always picks out the causal powers of the hoping agent herself, the external cause condition might not pick out a particular external cause. Certain cases might allow for multiple external causes, each of which would independently suffice to supplement the agent’s efforts. To satisfy the external cause condition, the agent presumably merely needs to believe that at least one external cause is possible. A second issue concerns the kind of possibility ascribable to the external cause. Drawing on certain versions of the minimal account of hope, this kind of possibility might be construed as physical possibility.^[36] This construal would entail the impossibility of hoping for something that would require a supernatural external cause (e. g., hopes for miracles). Yet by Kant’s lights, such hopes are not psychologically incoherent (even if some of them are unjustified). Drawing on Chignell (2014), this kind of possibility might be construed more broadly as metaphysical (or real) possibility. This construal would allow for the possibility of hoping for something that requires a supernatural external cause. Although I am sympathetic to this suggestion (given Kant’s discussion of hopes involving God and the afterlife), I leave it for discussion elsewhere.^[37]

The external cause condition is not merely another necessary condition on hope. From an agent’s beliefs that (i) an internal cause of p is possible (per the internal cause condition) and (ii) an external cause of p is possible (per the external cause condition), she can infer that p is possible. By making this inference, she is no longer condemned to regard the object of her desire as completely beyond her reach. Since this is what differentiates active desires from idle ones (as we saw above), the satisfaction of the internal and external cause conditions jointly help to transform a mere wish (qua idle desire) into a hope (qua active desire).

6 Conclusion, or the Audacity of Hope

Kant strikingly suggests that hope manifests reason’s overarching interest in comprehension; hope involves inferring how reality would be from a ground in how it ought to be. On Kant’s rationalist account of hope, I have argued, hope requires an agent to trace her desire that p and her belief that p is possible back to a distinctive set of causes – as spelled out in the above three conditions. Without doing so, her desire may remain a mere wish. The fact that this account of hope (i) integrates the ubiquitous idea of a cause for hope into the core conditions on hope, (ii) allows hope to be differentiated from nearby desiderative attitudes, and (iii) makes hope apt to manifest reason’s overarching interest in comprehension all speak in its favor as an interpretation of Kant – and, perhaps, as a basis for a systematic account of hope.

Although this rationalist account of hope implies that the above three rational conditions suffice to distinguish hope from mere wishing, I do not feign that their joint satisfaction suffices for hope. For all I have argued, hope might well have other necessary conditions that are not entailed by these rational conditions, e. g., affective conditions (as Zuckert 2018 argues). What’s more, this rationalist account of hope does not directly answer Kant’s famous question, what may I hope? That question concerns when hope is justified; this account merely provides necessary conditions on hoping at all. Nonetheless, this account would provide constraints on the answer: whether an agent’s hopes are justified will depend upon whether she is justified in having a final, internal, and external cause for them.

Finally, one might still worry that the resulting rationalist account of hope does not do justice to the value of hope. By focusing on how rational conditions serves reason’s overarching interest in comprehension, this account might seem to render hope cold and calculating – far from the source of psychological sustenance promised by hope. So in concluding, I want to briefly indicate how the above rational conditions, when properly recognized, might underlie hope’s true value.^[38]

Although Kant’s published works typically cast hope in a positive light, his lectures on anthropology astutely identify the follies that can accompany hope. To take one representative passage:

Whoever feeds himself with hopes and plagues himself with fears is a fool (Thor), because commonly the consequence of the expectation is not met[…] [I]t is for him all the worse, whenever he finds himself betrayed in his hopes. (AK 25:43, my translation).^[39]

We feed ourselves with hope when we obsess over a hope. The more we obsess, the more the absence of its object engenders anxiety and dread. And if its object fails to come to pass, we find ourselves doubly betrayed – not only by our failure to obtain it, but also by ourselves for having hoped at all: “This is a double kind of betrayal; one is first betrayed by the object, and secondly one considers his entire state (Zustand) as a state of misery, and then hope is all but lost” (AK 25:316, my translation).

Yet the rational conditions on hope, when properly recognized, can safeguard our hopes against such self-destructive follies. On the one hand, by recognizing our internal cause for hope, we can recognize the adequacy of our own efforts – that we are worthy of the happiness promised by the realization of the object of hope in question. Hope can thereby express self-contentment, in Kant’s sense of “a satisfaction with one’s existence, an analogue of happiness that must necessarily accompany consciousness of virtue” (AK 5:117).^[40] On the other hand, by recognizing that the realization of the object of hope depends on an external cause, we can recognize that we are not to blame if the object of our hope does not come to pass. Hope can thereby come to express the “self-sufficiency of a person, insofar as he thinks righteously (rechtschaffen)… [H]ope can to this extent be audacious (muthig), when it finds itself at peace with failures” (AK 25:43, my translation). To recognize one’s internal and external cause for hope is not merely to concede the possibility of failure, but the audacity of recognizing the value of one’s efforts despite that possibility. Hope, then, would sustain us not so much by the object it projects, but by the subject it reflects. In short, not only is reason’s contribution necessary for us to hope at all, but the proper recognition of its contribution can help us to hope well. And this, indeed, can be cause for hope.^[41]

AK

Kant, I. 1900 – . Kants gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Berlin-Brandenburg (formerly Royal Prussian) Academy of Sciences. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.