“… hope is only possible on the level of the us… and it does not exist on the level of the solitary ego, self-hypnotised and concentrating exclusively on individual aims.”
(Marcel 1951, p. 10)
The ‘I and thou’ (Marcel, 1951) of community extends beyond the literal and immediate presence of ‘bodies’ (Bennett, 2010) into how our agency through ecologies of politics and imagined futures materialise. I have interpreted Gabriel Marcel’s (1951) ontology of hope as fundamental to perceiving of our lifetimes as always becoming - Marcel describes this as being a ‘traveller’ - how our choices directly and indirectly diffract and affect the lived experiences of others . Our actions and thoughts are never singular. Ourstories are instead how we decide to ethically impact other lives; other times and places, and hope is entangled within that consciousness of affect and consequence. The very response-ability (Haraway, 1997) of living and dying with others (Haraway, 2016), be that human or non-human, is also entangled through ourstories of relationally affective choices, actions or inaction. Therefore, the ‘I and thou’ embodied through objects of hope we project into unknown future landscapes must be birthed from the ‘level of us’ otherwise they would be mere personal desires, goals or aspirations, which returns one to a ‘level of ego’ and self (Godfrey, 1987; Marcel, 1951; Waterworth, 2004).
Hope, for Marcel (1951), is explored further in Jospeh Godfrey’s (1987) concept of Sound Hope, where both state that hope is about really seeing, hearing and feeling the ‘troubling’ and ‘joyful’ experiences of those around us and digging down into the layers of a community to find where justice is exercised or is denied. It requires ‘us’ and outstories to expose unjust beliefs, assumptions and abuse of power, entering ‘us’ into uncomfortable yet inspirational spaces with others to collaborate in visioning a different future. As ‘travellers’ with sound hope one enters all relationships with trust that our lives matter to one another and that the worth and quality of each life is as significant and meaningful as any other. Marcel (1951), and thus Godfrey (1987), both propose that hope is inherently an essence of achieving human wellbeing, possibly a fundamental part of wellbeing itself. Hope is a characteristic or essence of being human that continuously observes where injustice and suffering happen and to respond situationally by co-creating a different possibility with ‘opening’ (Marcel, 1951, Solnit, 2016). As ‘travellers’ through outstories and other lives hope shifts and changes to respond to each moment; each struggle; and each community or place and thus retains it’s futural uncertainty and anticipation. Each journey is weaved through a trust-in the other, a ‘hope-in-you’ that our lives have meaning to each other as we live and die together (Godfrey, 1987; Haraway, 2016; Marcel, 1951).
Reference:
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter.
Godfrey, J. J. (1987) A Philosophy pf human Hope.
Haraway, D. (2016) Manifestly Haraway.
Harway, D. (1997) Second_Millennium. FemaleMan _Meets_OncoMouse.
Marcel, G. (1951) Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysics of Hope.
Solnit, R. (2016) Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.