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The hope of the goal, however, is necessarily at odds with false satisfaction, necessarily at one with revolutionary thoroughness; – crooked seeks to be straight, half to be full.
Bloch
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
The substance of hope is a deep conviction that something is meaningful, independent of any concern for whatever actual results are achieved. Hope is located in the transcendent, beyond the inner-worldly course of events. As a faith, it makes it possible to act amid absolute despair. The goddess of hope – Speranza – whom Orfeo invokes in the underworld, leads him through Hades, the kingdom of the dead, which represents negativity. Without Speranza, orientation in this place is impossible. Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo transforms this speranza assoluta into song:
Thinking has an affective, bodily dimension. Goosebumps are the first thought image. Thought images have deep roots in the physical body. Without feelings, emotions or affects – in general terms, without being stirred – there is no knowledge. Stirrings innervate thinking. This is precisely why artificial intelligence cannot think. Because feelings and affects are analogue, bodily events, they cannot be represented in algorithms. Intelligence merely calculates. It is based on ‘inter-legere’, meaning ‘to choose between’. And the choice is between already existing possibilities. Intelligence
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