Gabriel Marcel's ethics of hope
Subtitle: evil, God, and virtue
By: Jill Graper Hernandez
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 156
ISBN-13: 9781441196279
Subjects: Existential ethics
Description: The idea of 'hope' has received significant attention in the political sphere recently. But is hope just wishful thinking, or can it be something more than a political catch-phrase? This book argues that hope can be understood existentially, or on the basis of what it means to be human. Under this conception of hope, given to us by Gabriel Marcel, hope is not optimism, but the creation of ways for us to flourish. War, poverty and an absolute reliance on technology are real-life evils that can suffocate hope. Marcel's thought provides a way to overcome these negative experiences. An ethics of hope can function as an alternative to isolation, dread, and anguish offered by most existentialists. This book presents Marcel's existentialism as a convincing, relevant moral theory; founded on the creation of hope, interwoven with the individual's response to the death of God. Jill Hernandez argues that today's reader of Marcel can resonate with his belief that the experience of pain can be transcended through a philosophy of hope and an escape from materialism
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Citing Marcel; title: Evil and the problematic man; title: The problem of evil : the death of God and an ethics of hope; title: The ethical life; title: Ethics in personal crisis; title: Ethics in global crisis.