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Fordim Hedgethistle · 01-26-2006, 12:14 PM

My initial thought is that both hope and despair are directed toward the future so in that way they are alike. You hope for a good outcome and are in despair when you fear a bad one.

More specifically both are wrapped up in desire -- you hope for the outcome you desire but despair that your desire will not be achieved. When I look at it this way it seems to me that perhaps rather than representing opposite states of mind or emotion hope and despair are two ways of describing the same feeling...? Or more simply, you can't have one without the other because both exist upon the same precondition: imperfect knowledge.

If you know for an absolute fact that your desire is going to be fulfilled then you aren't experiencing hope but expectation. If you know for an absolute fact that your desire is going to be denied then you aren't experiencing despair but sadness. Hope is made hope only insofar as it exists alongside the fear that you won't gain your desire; despair is made despair only insofar as it exists alongside the possibility that maybe you could were circumstances different.

So perhaps when Aragorn find at the "brink" that "hope and despair are akin" he is confronting the fact that the future is at an absolute crisis -- the future is itself torn between the conquest of evil and evil's triumph. The hope (rather than the absolute knowledge) that Sauron will fail exists only because of the despairing thought that he won't; the despair (rather than the absoulte knowledge) that he will triumph exists only because there's still hope that he won't.

To desire something necessarily engenders hope and despair: having something to desire gives you hope that you will have it, but it also becomes something that you despair about losing. At the moment Aragorn makes his statement the desire felt by himself and his followers is as painfully accute as it is profound -- they don't just desire a precious object or another person or even a better future but the fall of Sauron. Their desire is that the whole course of history will be altered from bad to good -- that the fundamental nature of their world will be changed forever and that evil as an incarnate force in their lives will disappear.

01-26-2006, 12:14 PM	#26
Fordim Hedgethistle Gibbering Gibbet Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Beyond cloud nine Posts: 1,844	My initial thought is that both hope and despair are directed toward the future so in that way they are alike. You hope for a good outcome and are in despair when you fear a bad one. More specifically both are wrapped up in desire -- you hope for the outcome you desire but despair that your desire will not be achieved. When I look at it this way it seems to me that perhaps rather than representing opposite states of mind or emotion hope and despair are two ways of describing the same feeling...? Or more simply, you can't have one without the other because both exist upon the same precondition: imperfect knowledge. If you know for an absolute fact that your desire is going to be fulfilled then you aren't experiencing hope but expectation. If you know for an absolute fact that your desire is going to be denied then you aren't experiencing despair but sadness. Hope is made hope only insofar as it exists alongside the fear that you won't gain your desire; despair is made despair only insofar as it exists alongside the possibility that maybe you could were circumstances different. So perhaps when Aragorn find at the "brink" that "hope and despair are akin" he is confronting the fact that the future is at an absolute crisis -- the future is itself torn between the conquest of evil and evil's triumph. The hope (rather than the absolute knowledge) that Sauron will fail exists only because of the despairing thought that he won't; the despair (rather than the absoulte knowledge) that he will triumph exists only because there's still hope that he won't. To desire something necessarily engenders hope and despair: having something to desire gives you hope that you will have it, but it also becomes something that you despair about losing. At the moment Aragorn makes his statement the desire felt by himself and his followers is as painfully accute as it is profound -- they don't just desire a precious object or another person or even a better future but the fall of Sauron. Their desire is that the whole course of history will be altered from bad to good -- that the fundamental nature of their world will be changed forever and that evil as an incarnate force in their lives will disappear. __________________ Scribbling scrabbling.