Denkmodelle der Hoffnung in Philosophie und Literatur : eine typologische Annäherung Hope originally meant anticipation of what is to come and was related mostly to the material here and now or a religious dimension in the beyond. By the modern era at the latest however this reading becomes problematic. Instead literature and philosophy develop conceptions of hope that are increasingly characterized by ambivalence and paradox conceptions that evoke the future in a mode of uncertainty.