Social Research articles from June 1999

Social Research archives from June 1999

For Lisa Mack (1954-1998), who knew what it meant to hope and to despair.
June 22, 1999... What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not, what resolution from despair. Paradise Lost, John Milton Hope and its polar opposite, despair, are the subject of this issue of Social Research. When this theme first occurred to me, I...

The Evolution of Hope and Despair.
June 22, 1999... Love joins hate; aggression, fear; expansiveness, withdrawal, and so on, in blends designed not to promote the happiness of the individual, but to favor the maximum transmission of the controlling genes. (Wilson, 1975) EMOTIONS can be...

Hope After Hope?(hoping for social change in the 21st century)
June 22, 1999... Is there reason to hope today? Whose voice asks this? Sadly, virtually all of humanity might be posing the question today, after a century that can best be depicted by setting one melancholy inventory atop another: of mass murders, of...

Nietzsche and the Melancholy of Modernity.(German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
June 22, 1999... THE widespread romantic and late nineteenth century suspicions that the two greatest accomplishments of European modernization--modern natural science and technology, and a progressive, liberal democratic culture--were also slowly and...

The Place of Despair and Hope.
June 22, 1999... On the twin subjects of hope and despair one can but alter the skeptical believer's credo: I write because it is impossible. With topics so deeply tinctured by human suffering, one can only hope to suggest a few lines of consideration--mere...

Limits and Hope: Christopher Lasch and Political Theory.
June 22, 1999... "Limits and hope," wrote Christopher Lasch, "these words sum up the lines of the argument I have tried to weave together." Lasch insisted that much of what makes up "the texture of daily life" is an "experience of loss and defeat," and he went...

Hope and Despair in the Writings of William Cowper.
June 22, 1999... How do literary texts express hope and despair? And how does the form of literary texts affect the hopes and despairs they embody? Every genre is also an interpretation that shapes the way the writer understands experience and the way the...

Despair in the Medieval Imagination.
June 22, 1999... Visitors to the Cathedral of Strasbourg will remember the representation of virtues and vices on the western facade. The virtues, all large scale, erect female figures, some wearing crowns and holding spears in their hands, are treading on the...

The Politics of Hope and Optimism: Rorty, Havel, and the Democratic Faith of John Dewey(*).(Vaclav Havel, Richard Rorty)
June 22, 1999... Hope vs. Optimism In a series of essays culminating in his recent book Achieving Our Country, the philosopher Richard Rorty has advised the Left to become more modest with regard to revolution and more fervent with regard to reform....

Hope Springs Internal.
June 22, 1999... The editors are correct to characterize this subject as a negotiation between opposites. Insofar as hope and despair are both very different and also plainly central to human life processes, they fully respond to a good working rule for...

You've Got Mail: A Few Observations On Hope.
June 22, 1999... Ken Hope. Who, I wondered, would dream up so cruel a stunt? But, then, the man who called me and said I had won a MacArthur "genius" fellowship clearly did say his name was "Ken Hope." What a clever taunt! "Yes, Michael, you `c'n hope' to be a...

The Effect of Hope on Pain Tolerance(*).
June 22, 1999... Information-Based Manipulation of Hope Common sense views hope as the belief, or expectation, that the future will be better than the present. Although one can engage in hoping even when all is well, like the hope of winning a lottery and...

Hope: An Emotion and a Vital Coping Resource Against Despair.
June 22, 1999... When we consider human well being, hope should be of interest to everyone. Because there is relatively little research to draw on, my speculations about hope derive largely from personal and clinical experience. With a modest number of...

Liberalism's Hope and Despair: Lincoln's Peoria Speech of 1854.(Abraham Lincoln)
June 22, 1999... The Problem of Extreme Moral Conflict The hope of liberal politics is that it can establish a tradition of fair dealing among people of different interests and views. At a minimum, when liberalism moves us to recognize that we usually have...