What exactly is hope and how does it influence our decisions? In How We Hope, Adrienne Martin presents a novel account of hope, the motivational resources it presupposes, and its function in our practical lives. She contends that hoping for an outcome means treating certain feelings, plans, and imaginings as justified, and that hope thereby involves sophisticated reflective and conceptual capacities. Martin develops this original perspective on hope--what she calls the ""incorporation analysis""--In contrast to the two dominant philosophical conceptions of hope: the orthodox definition, whe.

Cover; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction What Is Hope?; Questions about Hope; The Orthodox Definition and Its Critics; Hope as a Syndrome; The Incorporation Analysis; Summary of Chapters; Chapter 1 Beyond the Orthodox Definition of Hope; The Orthodox Definition in the Modern Period; The Orthodox Definition in Recent Philosophy; Challenge Cases; First Analysis: Luc Bovens and Mental Imaging; Second Analysis: Ariel Meirav and External Factors; Third Analysis: Philip Pettit and Cognitive Resolve; Final Analysis: Incorporation. Hopeful Thoughts: FantasyHopeful Feelings: Anticipation; Summary; Chapter 2 Incorporation; Understanding Mental States through Their Fundamental Norms; Two Constraints on Reasons; Normative Governance Requires Deliberative Responsiveness; Deliberation Constrains Reasons; The Licensing Stance; The Transparency of Doxastic Deliberation to Evidence; Putting Transparency and Deliberation Constrains Reasons Together; Practical Deliberation about the Licensing Stance; The Other Part of the Incorporation Element: Treating Desire as a Practical Reason; The Inadequacy of Monist Theories of Motivation. The Dualist Theory: Subrational and Rational Motivational RepresentationsHope as Incorporation; Hoping and End-Setting; Cases: Hoping without End-Setting; The End{u00AD}Setting Conception's Inability to Accommodate These Cases; Conclusion: A Unified Theory of Hope and the Worry about Excessive Reflectiveness; Chapter 3 Suicide and Sustenance; Virtue and Sustenance; The First Extreme: Aquinas and Irascible Hope; The Thomistic "Inner Cathedral"; The Concupiscible and Irascible Passions; The Second Extreme: Calhoun and Seconding Practical Commitment; Hopeful Fantasies and Sustenance. Contingent SustenanceAn Example: "Self{u00AD}Help" and Self{u00AD}Sabotage; Summary; Chapter 4 Faith and Sustenance without Contingency; Chief Plenty Coups and Unimaginable Hope; Kant on the Highest Good and Morally Obligatory Hope; The Transformation of Hope into Faith; Marcel's Hope; Grounding Hope in Love; The Possibility of Secular Faith; Summary; Chapter 5 Normative Hope; Strawson and the Reactive Attitudes; Mapping the Territory: Interpersonal Relations; Gratitude, Disappointment, and Normative Hope; Hope for the Vicious; Summary; Conclusion Human Passivity, Agency, and Hope; Index.