On Hope by Josef Pieper

Author:Josef Pieper
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Catholicism, Christianity
ISBN: 9780898700671
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

ANTICIPATION OF FULFILLMENT

(PRESUMPTION)

BY IMPLANTING IN MAN the new “future” of a practically inexhaustible “not yet”, supernatural hope lays the foundation for a new youthfulness that can be destroyed only if hope is destroyed. In both forms of hopelessness—in despair as well as in presumption—the youthfulness of one who hopes is reduced, as it were, to nothingness, but in different ways: in the case of despair, by senility; in presumption, by infantility.

The “infantility” of presumption lies in its perverse anticipation of fulfillment. Because man comes to believe that he has actually attained the “arduous” goal that, in reality, lies still in the future, the tension of hope is relaxed in the middle of the “way” and passes into the peaceful certainty of possession.

The (objectively speaking) “inopportune” character of presumption has in it a certain element of comedy, whereas despair has rather an element of tragedy.

Incidentally, presumption is less opposed to hope than is despair. For despair is the true antitype of hope, whereas presumption is but its falsa similitudo,1 its fraudulent imitation. In much the same way, infantility has a false and merely “imitative” resemblance to true youthfulness, the proper antitype of which is aging.

The presumption that is opposed to the theological virtue of hope is the individual’s perverted attitude toward the fact that eternal life is the meaning and goal of our earthly “way”.

We are not speaking, then, of that other presumption that has to do with natural powers and goals. More than a hundred questions will intervene in the Summa before Thomas will devote two articles to this kind of presumption.2

The presumption of which we speak is, rather, an attitude of mind that fails to accept the reality of the futurity and “arduousness” that characterize eternal life. In conjunction with attainability, these two characteristics—futurity and “arduousness”—constitute the formal nature of the object of hope.3 If one of these characteristics is missing or ceases to be genuine, hope is no longer possible. In other words, presumption destroys supernatural hope by failing to recognize it for what it is; by not acknowledging that earthly existence in the status viatoris is, in a precise and proper sense, the “way” to ultimate fulfillment, and by regarding eternal life as something that is “basically” already achieved, as something that is “in principle” already given.

The notion of overconfidence, of an overreaching of oneself,4 that is never absent from the false anticipation that is presumption clearly indicates the negative relationship of presumption to reality.

For the essential nature of presumption is, as Saint Augustine says, a “perversa securitas”,5 a self-deceptive reliance on a security that has no existence in reality. In the last analysis, what appears to be a “superhuman” element in the anticipation of fulfillment is, in reality, none other than a yielding to the, if not exactly “heroic”, yet certainly not despicable, weight of man’s need for security. In the sin of presumption, man’s desire for security is so exaggerated that it exceeds the bounds of reality. It is important to keep in mind what presumption really is.

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