Beyond Eschatology: Environmental Pessimism and the Future of Human Hoping

In much environmentally concerned literature, there is a burgeoning concern for the status and sustainability of human hope. Within Christian circles, this attention has often taken the form of eschatological reflection. While there is important warrant for attention to eschatology in Christian exam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of religious ethics
Main Author: Swenson-Lengyel, Willa (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2017]
In: Journal of religious ethics
Further subjects:B Environmental Ethics
B Virtue
B Moral Psychology
B Eschatology
B Hope
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:In much environmentally concerned literature, there is a burgeoning concern for the status and sustainability of human hope. Within Christian circles, this attention has often taken the form of eschatological reflection. While there is important warrant for attention to eschatology in Christian examinations of hope, I claim that to move so quickly from hope to eschatology is to confuse a species of Christian hope for a definition of hope itself; as such, it is important for theological ethicists to examine hope also from the experiential perspective of the human hoper. In particular, this is important today given the shortcomings of an eschatological focus in addressing anxieties arising due to the environmental crisis. Through examining hope as a fallible human activity, one can come to better understand hope's importance to human life, its profound ambiguity, and the potential threat that the environmental crisis poses to it.
ISSN:1467-9795
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jore.12184