Now hope and history, probably the most topical subject we have. In the last decennium of the 18th century, which means in the decennium of the French Revolution, somebody asked the following question, I'm quoting, whether the human race is continually advancing towards the better. Now, this somebody was Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, 70 years old at that time. He says, abstractly speaking, there are three possible answers to this question. And it seems, at first sight, that for him, nothing is already decided. So he says the first possible answer is, yes, we are going uphill.

[01:08]

And the second answer would be, no, we are going down. And the third answer would be, history takes its course more or less on the same level. kind of circle. Now, one of these possible answers is immediately eliminated by Immanuel Kant, without any discussion. The second answer—retrogression to the words, as he says. And this is simply inconceivable to him. And why? He says it. because this would imply that the human race might blot itself out. And just this, for the man of the 18th century, was an obviously unthinkable idea.

[02:12]

Now, exactly the same representation, on the contrary, has become for the man of our time, of this modern epoch, not only thinkable and discussable, but immediately acute. Man's existence now and for the first time is threatened. That is the first statement of a paper given in the London Symposium on Man and His Future in 1962, which I already mentioned here in another context. And, of course, the most striking argument is the actual destructibility of man by his own weapons. Now, this has been said many times in the historical or philosophical literature of the last years. I shall quote here only Carl Jaspers, who said, I'm quoting, The situation is irrevocable.

[03:19]

Man is able to put out mankind and all life on the earth by his own action. And mere reason tells him that this end will come likely in the near future. So, Carl Jaspers. Another diagnosis is summarized this way. We are the first men who master the apocalypse. although this phrase, of course, mastering the apocalypse is somewhat unfortunate, mildly speaking, the meaning is, anyway, is quite clear. And this knowledge, this certainty, gives us from the beginning such a superiority over the man of the 18th century Since Kierkegaard's remark, after all, is not entirely wrong, he says, he who has been deceived is wiser than he who has not been deceived yet.

[04:35]

So I said there is a superiority on our side over the man of the 18th century that it might seem not very fair to debate on this matter with Kant, wasn't he simply unable to think of the self-destruction of man, that it could be even technically possible? That's true, but the nature of historical man has not changed since Kant, even since Adam. or, shall I say, since Cain. By the way, I use that term modern epoch in our modern epoch. Now, epoch sounds all too deceptively like long duration, and it may give the likewise deceptive impression of academic neutral distance.

[05:43]

It hides a bit the explosiveness of our situation, which suddenly may change from one moment to the other into the catastrophe. Nobody will, as Conrad Lorenz says, this behavioral scientist, who is well known, I think, also in this country, Nobody will predict a long life to man when he looks at him as he is standing there, the H-bomb in his hands, which he got as a gift of his reason, and the instinct of aggression in his heart, which that same reason is not able to master. That's Conrad Lorenz. And in the London Symposium I mentioned, It has been said several times, I'm quoting, these are not long-term problems.

[06:46]

They are upon us now. So it goes without saying, in this situation, the question, hope and history, has got an unprecedented urgency. But of course, what does this question mean exactly? The problem hope and history may be viewed under several different aspects. It is a many-sided problem. And I should like to mention only two aspects of that question and of that problem. First aspect, does it belong or not to the nature of human hope to reach its fulfillment in the field of history at all? Can what man is hoping for possibly be realized within history?

[07:51]

That's one aspect. And second aspect, does the cause of human history actually foster and encourage the hope of man? To put it otherwise, is it possible, without any intellectual dishonesty, not to despair looking at human history? But before we go into any further discussion, it has to be said as clearly as possible what we shall understand by hope and what we shall understand by history. Now, what then do people mean whenever they speak of hope and hoping? The first element is certainly this, expectation. But I can possibly expect something which I do just not hope for.

[08:56]

I can expect, for instance, something indifferent and irrelevant, or even something terrible. but I speak of hope only where my longing and my desire is involved. I am hoping only for something good, good in a very large meaning here, so good weather today, or how good that you came. Yet longing and desire all alone do not make hope, possibly I may yearn after something which I know I shall never get, which means after something that I am not really hoping for. So hope implies confidence and even a kind of certainty, a certainty which is very difficult to describe.

[09:58]

Of course there is also futile hope, and there are hopes that are disappointed at last. But in the very moment in which I become sure of the fruitlessness of my hope, I cease hoping. This, by the way, is the reason why joy belongs, if not to the essence of hope, then to its permanent company. Hope aims at the attainment of what we love, and therefore it cannot be without joy. We spoke of this connection between the attainment of what we love and joy, and that joy is something secondary. In a German philosophical dictionary, I found as a first description of hope freudige Erwartung, joyful expectation.

[11:04]

This certainly is very much to the point, but it is far from a complete characterization of what everybody actually understands by hope. It may well be that I am expecting something desired and something wished for. with confidence and with joy, and nevertheless nobody would speak of hope. There is a famous German poem which begins, Come, peaceful night, world's comfort come. Now, I possibly could say this from the depth of my heart, but of course it would be nonsense to speak of hope here. Nobody hopes for the nightfall. I cannot hope at all for anything that will happen anyway with necessity. This statement, by the way, has some consequences.

[12:11]

If it really would be true that the classless society is coming with a necessity of a law of nature, then it can eo ipso not be an object of human hope. Once again, whatever happens anyway, and also, by the way, whatever is reachable easily and without much trouble, that cannot be really an object of human hope. If there is a glass with wine, And I would say, I hope I will get some wine sometime. Then you would ask me, that's nonsense. It is there. You can just drink it. So we don't say hope then. The ancients spoke here of the bonum arduum, the steep gourd.

[13:22]

which means something which does not lie within the reach of my hand. It means something that I may possibly fail to get. Now, at this point there comes inside still another element of the concept of hope. The object of hope is not at the disposal of the hoping man that belongs, simply. Nobody hopes for something which he is able to make or to procure himself. And if so, we do not speak of hope. We need only to have a look at the everyday usage. And that's my point. I'm not trying here to get a, let's say, scientific abstract philosophical definition. What I'm trying to do is to explain what everybody has in mind when he is speaking of hope.

[14:25]

And the everyday usage. I hope the train or the plane will arrive in time. Or let's hope the weather will be fine tomorrow too. Or we say, it is to be hoped that our friend will regain his health. Or we hope that there will be no World War III. And so on. Now, one thing is completely clear in all these phrases. We do not dispose of what we are hoping for. If an artist who is about to transform his idea in his mind or in his heart, to transform that into a bodily work of stone or wood or maybe of verses, if he says, I hope I shall succeed in doing so, then he is expressing quite correctly the fact that this does not depend on himself alone.

[15:38]

or when a carpenter tells me, I hope the desk or the book rack will be delivered within the fixed time. Now then he expresses, again quite correctly, that he is depending on several circumstances and on other people outside his range of influence. I should like to extend a bit this example. If the same craftsman after a long talk with him on the very special shape of that desk or that book rack, which I have in mind, if he would tell me after that long conversation, now, Doctor, I hope I shall succeed in making the desk exactly according to our outline. Well, I think I had better take another carpenter, because Nobody speaks of hope if he is really able to make it himself.

[16:46]

The father may say to his high school boy, to his son, I hope next year you will be much more diligent. If the boy would answer, that's what I'm hoping for too. So this is just nonsense. So which altogether means a very serious thing. And now I'm quoting Gabriel Marcel. The only genuine hope is directed to something that does not depend on ourselves. And this again has some consequences. One consequence sounds like this. If really as Friedrich Engels said, and Ernst Bloch, and almost all the Marxists, that man himself is the maker of history.

[17:54]

Now, of course, under a certain aspect this is quite correct, but if this statement is meant to be a complete description of the fact in question, If that is true, if that would be true, then it had become, in the very same moment, meaningless to connect at all the concepts of hope and history. But human language, spoken and understood by everybody, I would like to stress that again, that that's my point, to explain what everybody understands and everybody his meaning when he speaks. So human language has in Peto some more, perhaps unexpected, insights.

[18:54]

In Plato's Symposium, Diotima speaks of the strange phenomenon that although there are many makers, she said, many makers, and many things that are made Only one specific maker is called simply the maker, poetet, the poet, which means the maker. In the linguistic field of love, she continues then, there is something quite similar. There are many kinds of love, love of parents, love of friends, love of one's native country, and so on. But if you simply speak of lovers, you do not mean those who love their country. Nobody will mistake that. Or their parents. You mean those who love in the sense of Eros.

[20:00]

And I think that again something similar comes true in the case of hope. There are countless different things from the fine weather for vacation to the peace in the world, which can be the object of hope. And in fact, they are. But nevertheless, there seems to be only one object, the hope for which makes a man simply, and so to speak, absolutely hopeful. Perhaps the inverse side may make things clearer. There are a thousand hopes which may man give up and which may dashed or buried without man becoming necessarily hopeless in the absolute sense. Apparently, there again is only one single hope, the hope for one single thing.

[21:06]

whose loss would make a man plainly hopeless, purely destitute of hope. The question is, what sort of hope is that? The hope for what must a man have lost, so that rightly it might be said he is now simply without hope and plainly hopeless? Now, in order to become able to answer or even to discuss this question adequately, we have to consider a distinction for which I think neither the English nor certainly the German language have the term, in contrast with the French language. The French distinguish between espoir and espérance. A German philosopher suggests to distinguish between hope, singular, and hopes, plural.

[22:13]

I think that's not bad in order to get that difference, espoir et espérance. Espoir has also entrenched a specific relation to the plural, whereas espérance has this specific relation to the singular. Now, the enormous relevance of the underlying distinction, however it may be named, the relevance comes to light in the findings of modern medical psychology. I am speaking here of the very exact phenomenological investigation which have been made within the last years in the University Hospital of Heidelberg. by Professor Herbert Plüge. So this man, this Professor Plüge, for years has concerned himself with the inner situation of people for whom hope had become questionable in a very decisive way.

[23:23]

Namely, with a situation of incurable. That means of people who just had got to know that they were incurably ill. And also, second, with the inner condition of people who had tried to commit suicide. And in the course of this, from the beginning, purely empirical investigation, Herbert Plügel gets, or got, sight, as he says, of a quite different hope. different from what he then called the ordinary hope, the common hope, the everyday hope. That, again, is plural. Whereas the new hope is singular. Blücher called this new hope the fundamental hope, the genuine hope.

[24:26]

And the ordinary hopes, he says, are directed towards an object that belongs to the world, towards something which we are expecting from somewhere else, from outside. We are expecting a new or a success or also bodily health coming from outside. Whereas the fundamental hope, he says, has no object of this kind. You cannot point at it with your finger, and it is rather difficult to describe it at all, this object of the hope. And moreover, the fundamental hope, the hope, singular, seems to come about only if the ordinary hopes are disappointed. But of course, although the hope, singular, does have an object, Herbert Plücker says this object does not belong to those things that man can have.

[25:42]

It has to do with what man himself is. And the object is, he says, self-realization in the future, or personal wholeness. Now, one main point, however, is that, I'm quoting here Herbert Glückl, that the genuine hope comes into existence out of the loss of the ordinary hope. So disappointment means here to become free from and to get rid of an illusion, a deception. the illusion which perhaps nobody is able to avoid from the beginning. The illusion consists or consisted in the belief that the wholeness of existence would imply the attainment of certain material good, including the bodily health, whereas the disappointment of all

[26:54]

Whereas, no, the disappointment all of a sudden enables man, enables us, to realize what perhaps we knew somewhat, in some way, theoretically. Namely, that not only the true wholeness of man consists in something else, but also that we ourselves, in fact, are and were hoping for this something else, which is much more vital and even with an invincible power of our soul. We didn't know that before. And yet disappointment does not mean only the correction of an error. Plügge speaks here of liberation. He says, the definite experience of incurability, the definitive experience and certainty of incurability, makes possible, I'm quoting him now verbally, makes possible a freedom from the captivity of illness which could not be

[28:15]

possibly reach before that breakdown. And I think the relevance of this finding goes far beyond the immediate topic of Plough's investigation. Although, as to the deadly ending, we are, by the way, all in the same position. Now, every deep disappointment of our hope which had been directed toward something within this world, contains, as it seems, a chance. The chance that the hope, singular, without any resignation, that is important, without any resignation, might turn to its true object, and that in an act of liberation, a larger breathing space might become open and enterable.

[29:19]

So just in the disappointment, perhaps only in the disappointment, we receive an invitation, the invitation which we certainly are not bound to follow. But it is still an invitation to enter this larger room of the hope. Now, the question may be raised, of course, whether the hope, singular, the fundamental hope, perhaps cannot be disappointed either. Surprisingly, it looks as if the answer to this question actually had to be no. The hope cannot be disappointed. Man may lose it, that hope. He may give it up, put it aside, which rightly should be called not disappointment then, but despair.

[30:30]

That's quite different. To be disappointed, to prove to be fall, to come to nothing, to be broken off, All that can never happen to the whole. And why not? Where is that written? Now, the answer, I think, should start from a clearer understanding of what disappointment means. It means a positive experience. The positive experience of the fruitlessness and of non-fulfillment. Now, this experience never can be made in the case of the hope, because the time span of waiting for the event of fulfillment or non-fulfillment is exactly identical with the time span of our life itself.

[31:31]

So despair does not mean that the hope actually would have been disappointed. Despair is the anticipation of such a disappointment. To despair means to anticipate the non-fulfillment. The moment in which the true result of human existence becomes manifest is imminent, precisely as long as that same existence lasts. and reach it. There is not one moment in life in which a man can be a hundred years old and be at the threshold of death. There is not one moment in which man would be allowed or even able to say, now I am no longer on the way.

[32:37]

The fulfillment lies no longer in the future. I already have and possess whatever has been intended with me. To put it in another way, man's existence itself has the structure of not yet. I could say also it has the structure of hope. Now it is not hard to see that this whole structure of man's existence has to do with what the philosophers call historicity, which means with his quality by reason of which man is able to have history. History could even be called the field of man's hope and hopes. Now, this is the point to say more exactly what we have to understand by history.

[33:42]

The German word Geschichte is derived from geschehen, which means from to happen. History is that which happens. But apparently not all that happens is history. There are also non-historical happenings. that the water flows and that the lightning shoots down and the turn of the tide, all this is not history. It has been said an event, even such a natural event, becomes a strictly historical event as soon as it comes in relation to man. There is some truth in that. However, not even all that happens to man himself makes automatically his history.

[34:48]

Not that we are born and that we grow up and that we get old and that we die. Not this is, strictly speaking, our history. And not even what we come across with in our life. May that be a man a teacher, an adversary, a lover, or a loved one, or may the man, or may it be what we come across with, loss of fortune, or gain of fortune, or of health, or of beauty, or may it be what we have by birth, talent, temper, strength or weakness. All this is not our history either, not yet. Our history is what we are making of all this.

[35:52]

Our history is the together of what happens to us and of what we ourselves are doing and making out of it. So an event becomes a strictly historical event whenever freedom, responsibility, decision come into the play, but also the possibility of guilt and misdeed. Now, this again is the reason why historical events cannot be deduced. They cannot be calculated because this freedom is always in the play. They cannot be derived from what is known already. And this, among others, makes the difference between history and evolution.

[36:54]

And I should say that just this difference is in danger to be obscured and to be forgotten. in our contemporary discussion. But I would say it is exactly this difference between history and evolution which is important with regard to hope. In a brief and somewhat oversimplifying formula, it could be said hope and evolution, there is no problem at all. The problem is hope and history. I once had the honor to have among my listeners Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in a lecture given in Paris in 1951. Unfortunately, I did not know that he was there at that time.

[38:00]

I only learned it ten years later in his biography by Claude Cueno. And I learned at the same time, unfortunately, that Teilhard de Chardin passionately refused my thesis. Now my topic was, at that time, the hope of the martyrs, l'espérance des martyrs, And I was especially anxious to make clear one thing, that it is not worthwhile to speak of human hope at all if there is no hope left to the martyr. That is, to him whose worldly hopes altogether have become just groundless and who, in the common meaning of the word, is in a hopeless situation.

[39:03]

in the compensation camp, about to be executed, left alone, ridiculed, and so on. I said, if there is no hope for that man, then we shouldn't talk about hope at all. And I did not suppress either that it is nowhere written that the situation of the Martyr must be an exceptional situation, which here and there, especially in remote times and countries, may take place. Now, Teilhard de Chardin, as I said, declined vehemently as defeatism even the way of putting the question. He said the decisive point is quite a different one. He says that in a letter which was published in that biography of Claude Quesnoy.

[40:13]

He says, the decisive question is whether there is for man, biocosmically, biocosmiquement, a right to hope beyond all sentimentality, philosophy, and misstitute. That was me, of course. So the decisive point is, he said, that mankind is, considering its evolutional potentiality, objectively young and full of future, and therefore entitled to hope. Now, this is exactly what I would call confounding history and evolution. Of course, there is evolution. That means the development and the unfolding of what was before still enveloped and folded.

[41:16]

There is evolution also in the realm of the specifically human, also in the realm of the intellectual human life. In the earliest clutch of prehistorical man at the powers of nature, and in the very first use of any energy of the material cosmos, there was something still undeveloped which then consistently, and even to some degree automatically, over man's head has unfolded up to the conquest of atomic energy. And there is no doubt, no doubt at all, that mankind will develop and improve immensely all this achievement in this field. So regarding this possibility of progress, we certainly may look forward to the time to come with composure and confidence and hope

[42:27]

question mark. At this point, we hesitate. In fact, we are not at all confident, nor hopeful and calm, facing the growing affection, for instance, of the nuclear weapons. And this nervousness has its reason in something quite different from any disbelief in the potentiality of human technological intelligence. It has its reason in the anxiety what man, as a moral being, may actually do with this immeasurable power, and for which purpose he may use it. As a moral, which means as a historical being. In Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo Galilei, this man, Galileo, says, I am quoting, you may gradually discover whatever can be discovered, but one day it might happen that your cheer for a new achievement will be answered by a universal cry of horror.

[43:55]

At this point, I think, the difference between history and evolution becomes absolutely obvious. In Desjardins' main work, The Phenomenon of Man, of course, he knows that difference, too. And there is one sentence in this book on the phenomenon of man in which both aspects are connected. I am quoting. I'm quoting Teilhard de Chagall. If mankind makes use of its immeasurable remaining time of life, then it has inexhaustible possibilities ahead of it. Now, the potential of immeasurable possibilities, mankind is still young. That is the aspect of evolution. On the other hand, the if, if mankind makes use of its possibilities, this if is the aspect of history.

[45:11]

But what actually happens and what will happen, that will be decided not in the field of evolution, but in the field of history. And nothing but this is concerning us immediately. This is a question of life and death. After all, the question of the biological potentiality of mankind doesn't rob us of sleep. But the question of our historical future does. We are always about to ask this question. At the same time, however, it is clear that there is an enormous difference with regard to the answerability of both questions. It might be quite possible, I don't know, but it might be possible to find out scientifically whether mankind as a species is still young.

[46:15]

But how could it be made possible to find out whether mankind, however young, one day will eradicate itself. Here comes freedom and decision in the play. And that is why there never will be any calculable certainty about man's historical future, even if the methods of statistical prognostication may be perfected as much as possible. Some years ago I made some example, I constructed some artificial maybe example. It was certainly possible to predict rather exactly on the basis of statistics. It was possible

[47:20]

to predict some years in advance how many fatal traffic accidents there would be in the city of Danzig in April 1945. The date and the place is here important. That this very city of Danzig at that time actually did not exist anymore. And that there was nothing at all like traffic. This could not be predicted, at least not on the basis of statistics. There is in Pascal's pensée a remarkable aphorism. It is almost undecipherable. It is decipherable only if you consider the year, the year in which it was written. The aphorism goes down.

[48:22]

Could anyone enjoying the friendship of the King of England, the King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden have believed that he might be without refuge and asylum in the whole world? Now, the year is 1656, and this was the year of the deposition of the King of Poland. And two years ago, the Queen of Sweden had voluntarily abdicated, and the King of England had been executed seven years ago. There was no refuge anymore. So the truly historical event, concrete in every respect—when, where, who—but this alone is of interest to the man concerned. The historical event, in this strict sense, cannot be foreseen at all in prognostication.

[49:34]

For this, a kind of prediction would be necessary which would not depend on the knowledge of some foothold in the past or in the present. If all prognostication does, The art of prognosis consists exactly in this, that you are able to discover in the fund of experience itself pointers to the future. And there are certainly ingenious scientists or historians which have this gift of prognostics. But with this, I already gave a kind of negative definition of prophecy, namely. Prophecy, if there is one at all, prophecy means that it is the only prediction which possibly could graph a future historical event.

[50:52]

I said it belongs to the essence of history that it cannot be deduced from what has been before. Now, prophecy, by its very definition, is a prediction which is independent of any knowledge of what has been before. And the question is whether there is a strictly prophetical information about the historical future. If not, then it is just meaningless to make any conjectures on how history might go on, or even how it might end. And this is the reason, I think it is the quite respectable reason, of the deep distrust with which we take notice, and the average man also takes notice, of the visions of future proclaimed with more or less certainty in the realm of sciences, of philosophy, of social religions, and so on.

[52:03]

Wherefrom should we know and could we know that the human race, in fact, is continually advancing to the better? Wherefrom Should anyone know that man's effort to change the world, socialistically or not, will actually bring about the Golden Age, the Regnum Humanum, and the Kingdom of Liberty, and the building of the Earth, and all that? Who really knows anything about it? But this is only one doubt. This is only one scruple. The other doubt coming to one's mind, at least it came to my mind, while considering all those visionary expectations, the other doubt is even more to the point. It has to do quite directly with the topic of hope.

[53:09]

In all those visions of future, It came out last night already in the discussion. In all those visions of future, there is said not a single word about death. I do not speak here of any metaphysical theory of death or so. No, I'm speaking of the very simple fact that we shall be dead before the golden age will have come. In this London symposium of 1962, I already spoke of several times, a man named Hilary Koprowski, professor of medical research of the University of Pennsylvania.

[54:11]

So I first thought this American. But then I had a closer look to the biographical and bibliographical note at the end of the book, and I found out it was a Polish immigrant, which means, in this context, a man who had the burden of old Europe on his shoulder. So this man, Professor Kokroszty, ironically called in question all the optimistic planning which thrived excessively in the climate of that convention. And he reminded his listener of the fact of death. And he was quoting an American poet, E. E. Cummings. He said, and he put it even as a kind of motto over his talk,

[55:13]

It is funny, you will be dead someday." And he also quoted the old epitaph, et in Arcadia ego, which does not mean, I too have been in Arcadia. It means, even in Arcadia am I dead. And I think he intended to say, what about Arcadia, and the Golden Age, and the Regnum Humanum, and the Kingdom of Liberty, and all that? What about that, as long as there is something called death? Salvation is vain. unless it delivers us from death.

[56:17]

This is a sentence by Gabriel Marcel, which I immediately understand and subscribe, whereas I do not understand a single word of what Ernst Bloch has to say to this same point. He says, the certainty of the class consciousness is a herb against death. I don't understand Of course, there is no expectation that death could ever be put out of the world. And of course, I do not say that it would be absurd to hope as long as the hoping person has to die. By the way, death does not happen to the universe, or to the society, or to evolution, or to the cosmos. Death happens exclusively to the individual person, and also hope is not performed by any other subject except, again, the individual person.

[57:32]

So I repeat, I do not say that hope is meaningless as long as there is death, but I do maintain No conception whatsoever of the future condition of mankind, in which death and man's destination to die simply have been left out of account, can never seriously claim to be an object of human hope at all. Of course, I may cultivate some prognostical ideas of what people will do on this planet, let's say, 200 years from now, pitch to the moon, or pocket-sized electronic means of communication, raising maybe also the average lifetime by 10 years or 20 years, and so on.

[58:43]

And maybe I get rightly enthusiastic about that as a result of human intelligence and human courage. Maybe. But how and in what sense could I set my hope on all that? All that is concerning me insofar as I am prognostically interested, insofar as I am curious, eager for knowledge. But it does not concern me insofar as I hope. The hoping person is not one who wants to know something. The hoping person is one who wants to receive something that is good, to partake of the good. Now, everybody knows the polemical phrase to feed people with hopes of the beyond.

[59:46]

Now, this phrase occurring a hundred times in Marxist literature and everywhere, and it's not very far from the famous opium for the people, this phrase implies, as you know, a blame, a reproach. The blame that one is diverting the attention of the exploited people from pushing through its just interest by telling them of the glory of heaven. Now, I do not say that this never happened, nor that it may not happen always again. But I insist on this. If those decidedly inner-worldly pictures of the future simply leave out death and the other side of death, which means our own future, impending to all of us, then I would say they themselves are a merely abstract and deceptive consolation.

[61:00]

and in an exact inversion of the usual phrase, it is they which call people's attention to something which indeed is absolutely beyond their real life. The only future which in fact already has begun is the life on the other side of death, as Tarana said. This does not mean not at all that the earthly history of man and mankind would not concern the hoping individual. But it does mean that if the earthly history shall possibly concern my hope, the hope of mine, then it has to be taught in connection And it has to be in connection with my own destiny on the other side of death.

[62:06]

So how then to conceive of the historical future of man? I said, if there is no legitimate prophecy, nobody knows anything. Now the Christians are convinced that such a strictly prophetical information on history is existing indeed. Among their sacred books there is, for instance, the Apocalypse. But it lies in the nature of a prophecy not to be just a plain description of what will happen in the future. Prophecy does not deprive the time to come of its character of being really future. The future remains still unknown to us, in spite of prophecy. John Henry Newman even said, the event is the true key to prophecy.

[63:14]

On the other hand, there certainly is something which we really get to know once we accept a legitimate prophecy as true. But what is that? What is it that we get to know? I would say, first of all, we are confirmed in an insight which our own thinking is able to reach. Namely, that man's history will not come to its fulfillment in the way of a continuous process of evolution. In the heart also of the universal history, there is the frontier and the borderline of death, which separates mankind from its own. But what is that? What is it that we get to know?

[64:16]

I would say, first of all, we are confirmed in an insight which our own thinking is able to reach, namely, that man's history will not come to its fulfillment in the way of a continuous process of evolution. In the heart also of the universal history there is the frontier and the borderline of which separates mankind from its own perfection. Even Teilhard de Chardin, although enthusiastically convinced of the absolute future of the universe, even he speaks of a point of dissolution, un point de dissociation, through which the evolution must go in order to come to its perfection.

[65:22]

Now, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his last years, he is speaking much more realistically and more clearly to this point in his pondering essay, The End of All Things. This end 13 years after the critique of purism. This end, he said, apparently has to be thought in analogy to the death of the individual, which in the devout language, as he said, by the way, far from speaking ironically here, anyway, which in the devout language usually is called a transition out of time into eternity. In this representation there is, he says, something horrible and at the same time something inviting.

[66:34]

This is the reason, he says, why man cannot cease turning his terrified eyes on it always again. Now, one thing is altogether evident here, I think. This step out of time into eternity never can be imagined as a gradual, continuous development, but rather as a kind of rupture and even destruction. And this again in analogy to human dying. which also looks more like destruction than like progress and fulfillment. But if really through the breakdown and together with it, fulfillment is taking place and consummation, then it does not only happen latently, but against every appearance, which we really do believe.

[67:47]

of the good human death. And above all, of that paradigmatic dying in the fullness of time, no observer could have found out what in truth did happen there. So whoever is considering this we may be prepared to accept a further and even more important message included in the apocalyptic prophecy. And he will at least, he will no longer be inclined to take it as something absurd, at least, even if terrifying. The message is this, that human history within time, this is important, It includes that there is history also beyond time, or that history has a continuation beyond time.

[68:53]

So that human history within time will not end with the plain triumph of the true or the good, nor with the clear victory of reason and justice, but with something which again may be hardly distinguished from a catastrophe. not a cosmic catastrophe, but a historical catastrophe, consisting in a gigantic pseudo-order, upheld and guaranteed by the political power, by a world despotism of the evil. No modern mind taking notice of this is, of course, first about to rebel. That's quite understandable. But, in fact, such a gloomy expectation is quite familiar to the historical thinking of our epoch. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, passionately interested in the topic future, his main work, which never has been completed, originally should have this title, What is Coming.

[70:13]

So this Nietzsche copied in his posthumous notebook a word of Baudelaire, whom I already quoted in another context. And Nietzsche gave it, this word of Baudelaire, he gave it himself the heading, Further Evolution of Mankind. And Baudelaire, for his part, is speaking of I'm quoting, of an imminent phantom of order, as he said. I said pseudo-order. A phantom of order, erected by the political power with the help of violent measures which would make shudder our contemporary world, however stupid it may have become. Now, a modern politician legitimized by an especially intimate knowledge of totalitarian regime.

[71:24]

Hermann Rauschening, I quoted him already last night, formerly president of the Senate of Danzig, and today here somewhere, farmer in the States. Rauschening thinks it altogether possible that there might come a world civilization of materialistic enjoyment on the basis of progressing dehumanization and under the totalitarian monopoly of power held by a world Grand Inquisitor. Now, the term Grand Inquisitor, as you know, reminds us of the name of another great European who likewise had this pre-sentiment of what was to come, Dostoevsky. And indeed, in his Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, we read the bewildering statement, I am quoting, at the end they will come

[72:36]

and lay down their freedom at our feet, and say, Make us your slaves, but do feed us. Perhaps I should also quote the fierce remark out of the ungarbled thoughts of the Polish intellectual Stanislaw Letz. I should, he says, there are wonderful aphorisms in that book, But this one is to our point. He says, I should have to lie if they wouldn't have finished the destruction of the world before the end of the world. But our objective is not to discuss modern visions of the historical future. We are still asking which prophetical information might be attainable on the end of history. Of course, it wouldn't have much meaning to try a private interpretation of the apocalypse.

[73:41]

Instead, we should find out what theology, the scientific, real theology of today, has to say on this point. And you know, all of you know, that modern theologians react rather reticently, to say it very mildly, they even fall almost mute as soon as the question of the end of the world or even of Antichrist comes up. It's very little that can be said here, that Caruana. But if you look a bit closer of that little, they actually do say You get a rather clear answer. The answer sounds like this. I'm quoting modern theological handbooks, reference books, dictionaries, Catholic and Protestant.

[74:47]

The answer sounds like this. The antagonistic character of history will be intensified at the end. there has to be expected an extreme concentration of the energy of the evil and a vehemence never known before in the fight against Christ and Christendom and against all men of goodwill, as St. Thomas Aquinas said in the 13th century. and that Potentia Secularis, or Antichrist, is called the strongest world power in history, and so on. I think this alarming message cannot easily be ignored, and its implications certainly are manifold. But one thing again is made unmistakably clear.

[75:51]

that it is impossible to think of the end of history as of the crowning and harmonic conclusion of an uninterrupted and continuous, though perhaps difficult and dialectic, advancement. Although, as Steyart de Chardin rightly says, although this would be much more in harmony with the theory, his and certainly not only with the theory of evolution, but also of Marxism, and also of the idealistic philosophy of progress. The conception of history which is behind the apocalypse, if there is a conception of history at all. But anyway, it is certainly thoroughly different. Because in this conception, not only the human freedom, Freedom also for the evil is taken seriously, but also the evil one is considered to be a demonic power of history.

[77:04]

And therefore, conflict, frustration, failure, unadjustable discord, and even catastrophe cannot be foreign to the essence of human history, not even in its normal But nevertheless, this is not the last word of the Apocalypse. Of course not. The last word and the decisive message is, in spite of all, blissful ending, beyond all expectation, triumph over the evil, victory over death, drinking from the source of life. resurrection, God's dwelling with man, new heaven and new earth. All these terms and images, as you know, are taken from the Apocalypse. And with all that, there is apparently said something about hope. About hope, too.

[78:10]

It is said that the true hope cannot be touched or even paralyzed by man's being prepared for an inner-worldly catastrophic end. May this end be called dying, which is also a catastrophic end, or martyrdom, or defeat of the good, or world despotism of the evil. But now the two previous questions, both of them are coming back in their full sharpness. Hasn't it come true that human history is a desperate business? Or what reasons for hope could possibly be furnished by history? Does it really belong to the nature of human hope, of the hope, singular, that it never can be satisfied in the field of history?

[79:12]

No, I think this last question indeed has been answered, meanwhile. If this worldly human existence itself has altogether the structure of not yet until the moment of death, and if man is a pilgrim, really on the way up to that moment of death, then this hope, identical with our existence itself, is either thoroughly observed, or it will find its final fulfillment on the other side of death, beyond the here and the now. Nevertheless, the blame of a secluded beyondness would absolutely miss the point, and that for several reasons.

[80:17]

These reasons, however, can be made evident, I am afraid, only to Christians, only to believers, to faithful. This does not mean that there would not be wrong ideas of hope among Christians either. especially wrong ideas of its beyondness. But in this case, the Christians are misunderstanding themselves. However, it might be possibly expected from the non-Christian just to take notice of the Christian arguments to this point. So, first of all, it is not true what Friedrich Engels and the Marxists maintain that the Christian hope aims at the perfection of a separate history of the Kingdom of God, apart from real history, which Christians allegedly declare to be meaningless.

[81:19]

That's nonsense. The opposite is right. It is precisely this worldly creation the creation before our eyes, whose perfection we are expecting through death, that's true, through death and catastrophe. The Kingdom of God will be realized nowhere but in the midst of this historical mankind. It is true that nobody can know what, in fact, resurrection means, concretely. and what New Earth concretely means. But it cannot be mean anything but that not the least jot will ever be lost of anything that earthly and historically is good, true, beautiful, genuine, right, and so on.

[82:22]

As my friend Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it in his essay on Solovier, world's harvest will certainly be brought in. The question is by whom? And he says, by Christ, not by mankind itself. And above all, this is point two, The Christians are convinced that the frontier of death, the borderline between here and yonder, in a certain sense has been overcome already from the other side, namely by that event which is meant by the theological term incarnation. One of the recurring symbols in which men have tried to make clear to themselves the quintessence of what they are hoping for is the Great Banquet.

[83:27]

Plato, too, speaks of it, and I think this should not be forgotten. He reminds us not only of the Synodia, as he says, the common life of God and man on the other side of death. He says, the man who is willing to do the good, he will on the other side of death come to a place where in the temple not only the image of God will be, but the gods themselves. And there will be a synodia, a common life. God's tend among men. If I would quote that, I said it many times to my students, if I would quote that to you in Greek, this statement of Plato, and I would quote at the same time in Greek that text of the Apocalypse, you wouldn't even see where the

[84:40]

where the frontier is between Plato and the New Testament. But Plato describes also the banquet in which the soul participates outside of time and in the super-celestial place as a guest and companion of the gods, satisfied by the contemplation of the highest being. The Christians could not say it much better, I think. And indeed, they say it not very differently. But of course, Plato, for his part, could not have the least inkling of that community around God's table in which Christendom recognizes and celebrates the anticipation and the real beginning of that great banquet on the other side of death. Here comes again our topic with which we began, celebration of the mystery of the Eucharist.

[85:48]

From the earliest time, this anticipation of the great banquet on the other side of death, from the first and earliest time This anticipation has been called synaxis, communio, communion, which not only means communion with God, but above all that, of course, but also mutual community among man, a community which is misunderstood and misused. if it is not conceived and realized as an alliance from which nobody must be excluded by any arbitrary restriction. And I think a better, a deeper foundation of human solidarity cannot be conceived at all. But it is also true that wherever the true solidarity of man is realized or even longed for,

[86:54]

This universal meal community, knowingly or not, is in preparation, no matter how the keywords go. Democracy, realm of freedom, regnum humanum, classless society, and so on. Provided, this is by the way very important, provided that one's own dictatorship and the discrimination or even the liquidation of the others is not on the program at the same time. In this case, everything is depraved from the beginning. But you know that's not unusual. The relation to our topic, hope, is closer than it might seem. Namely, Wherever and by whomever the realization of fraternity and brotherhood among man is imagined and set about as the essence of what we are hoping for, there is, eo ipso, an underground connection to the elementary hope of Christendom.

[88:12]

The great Christian theology always has said, Whoever, as a non-Christian, is convinced that God, in a way which is pleasing Him, will be the deliverer of man, he believes in the way of implicit faith in Christ, in St. Thomas of Thessalonica. And I think it should be spoken correspondingly also of an implicit hope not only fides implicita, but also spes implicita. Thus, whoever summons all his energy of hope for a perfect human community to come, wherein man is man to his neighbor and no longer wool, as Ernst Bloch puts it, and the goods of life justly distributed, He is participating in the hope of Christendom and the implicitly, implicitly faithful, non-Christian.

[89:23]

As he often enough outrivals the declared Christian by his living and serious faith, he may likewise overtop him, the declared Christian, by the ardor of his hope. whose religious absoluteness, perhaps in opposition to the heralded program, whose religious absoluteness seems to show how much the expectation, in fact, is aiming at something that cannot be brought about by any human activity for changing the world and building the earth. On the other hand, such correspondence, such underground correspondence, can only be perceived from the side of the explicit faith and the explicit hope. To put it more aggressively, if the Christians do not perceive those underground conformities and connections and call them by their proper name, then nobody in the world will perceive them.

[90:38]

which means they will remain mute and they will remain without any historical effect. And everybody knows how much there is still to do in this field. But correspondences and conformities do not yet mean identity. And I think the distinction of Christianity, that's an expression of Guadini, Unterscheidung des Christlichen. The distinction of what is Christian is also an everlasting task. And in conclusion, I should make a short remark on one of the points of difference, namely on the non-fixability of the object of hope, the object of the hope. Gabriel Marcel several times formulated the profound insight that the hope always reaches beyond the object at which it originally had been kindled.

[91:55]

And he says even the hope loses the best of it as soon as man makes conditions. and even as soon as he tries to imagine concretely what he is hoping for. By the way, it is the same with prayer. If the petition is so concrete that we exactly know what, exactly what we are praying for, then the prayer is problematic. And if this concrete petition is not fulfilled, then in that case we would say we have prayed in vain. No, the real man at prayer knows that if he doesn't get what he is praying for concretely, his prayer hasn't been in vain.

[93:03]

So we don't really know what to pray for, for what. And that is the same with hope. Petitio est interpretativa ste. I quoted that already. The petition is the interpretation of hope. So both belong together. So true hope, like true prayer, keeps itself open for a fulfillment which surmounts every thinkable human plan. And whoever is stamped and formed by this true hope, he will direct the energy of his heart, not so much toward the militant carrying through of defined plans or eschatological visions of order, whereby, as everybody knows, the solidarity of mankind has been marched down often enough. On the contrary, he will direct the energy of his heart toward the daily realization of what is now good and just.

[94:15]

I surmise that this might be the true and the most human form of historical activity at all. And this surmise has nothing to do with any reluctance to the radicalism of great political decisions. which might be just now good and just and they have even less to do with any lack I mean this surmise has even less to do with any lack of confidence in the future of human history but it does have to do with the mistrust of any limitation and any fixation of the object of our hope. And a last remark. The reason for this mistrust or distrust has been formulated very adequately by a German poet named Konrad Weiss.

[95:27]

adequately, insofar, I would say, insofar as he avoids every all-too-positive phrase. He says, and that shall be my last sentence, he says, every attempt to outline a fixed image of the future of mankind is burdened with the heavy paradox that it is not humanity which is the goal of the incarnation. Thank you.

[96:07]

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