Monaco Philosophic Meetings: “Does hope really give life?”

Monaco Philosophic Meetings continue with the question “Does hope really give life?” on Thursday 16 November 2023 from 7 pm to 9 pm at the Princess Grace Theatre.

It is never hope that gives life: it is the vagaries of life that give hope its wings or, on the contrary, cut them off. We know it well: we “feed” hope, we “caress” it, we “give birth” to it, we “lift” it, we “arouse” it – as if, in itself , it was only motionlessly waiting, sometimes confident, sometimes naive, for the advent of a Good, a favorable, gratifying, beneficial event. Moreover, a language such as Spanish only has one verb to say wait and hope. In the Old Testament, God himself is called Hope or Confidence, the Fathers of the Church made it a theological virtue, and contemporary philosophy was nourished by the “hope principle” of Ernst Bloch. But when we say that hope keeps us alive – or that hope is always the last to die – we should understand that to make hope live, we must first start ourselves, in other words “do the first step” of action, putting it in motion by taking “a step forward”, by committing, by going if one wishes towards God, by faith, by going towards the other, by love and friendship, by reaching out to others, through kindness, hospitality, solidarity.