If Bloch’s view is valid, then it follows that hope flows with the tide of the universe rather than moving against the current. Yet if this is true, any particular act of hope is subtly devalued. Because it partakes in the general tendency of the cosmos, it is a less arduous affair than hope despite – hope that refuses to give way even in the most joyless of situations.62 Bloch’s hope lacks the ‘and yet’. It is no longer a daring. It is not wrested away from the negativity of despair. Its ubiquity is precisely what devalues it: ‘Hope, to be enduring and well-founded, needs to be dearly bought,
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Terry Eagleton
