How Free Are You?: The Determinism Problem by Ted Honderich

Author:Ted Honderich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-27T18:23:00+00:00

E hope for a lot of things, most of them small. We hope to get home by 7 o'clock for the news on television, that someone won't be annoyed by what was said last night, that it will be sunny on Sunday. More important, we also hope for large things, for what can be described as one large thing. A young woman hopes above all to become an actress. She holds to this hope and guides herself by it and does all she can to realize it. Others preserve their hope to get some other kind of standing or respect, or to possess something, perhaps a home of a certain kind. I may hope to succeed in a long struggle against my competitors, or to come to have a kind of relationship with another person, or to avoid a disaster. Someday I may mainly hope to delay death.

Hopes for large things can be given the name of life-hopes. Such a hope gives to an individual's life a good deal of its inside nature. Different such hopes mark the stages of a life. It is such a hope that at any time provides or rather is an individual's attitude to his or her future. To contemplate my future now, my coming life, is to have such a hope. It would of course be mistaken to suggest that each life-hope has sharp definition or is for some single thing, as in the examples so far. A life-hope can be vaguer, as when someone wants life to turn out decently, or not to get worse. It can be for a few large things rather than one. The thing or things will be large in terms of the individual's life, but not necessarily regarded as large by others. We can be so unlucky as to hope above all for just enough to eat. That is the prospect we want, what we feel will satisfy us.

Life-hopes seem in general to have two kinds of content. There is a state of affairs that we hope for-say being regarded as in some way a success, or the family's being in good shape, or just owning a car. The state of affairs in this narrow sense is important, but less important than something else. The other kind of content of a hope has to do with our future actions, maybe a long campaign of them.

What this comes to in one part is that we want not just to have things, but to achieve them. The state of affairs of being regarded as a success is one thing, and having earned it is another. But even if we are not self-examining strivers focused in this way on doing things for ourselves, our hopes will have everything to do with our future actions. That is because we rightly believe that it is only, mainly, or importantly through our own actions that we will get what we want. Even if what I want is to be rich, and I do not much mind how that comes about, I will take it that my getting rich will depend on what I do.

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