Hope and desire
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 20, 2026
As for hope and desire, our condition resembles that of those who, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, dwell suspended in Limbo and, in Virgil’s words, without hope live in desire (sanza speme vivemo in disio). We too, like the inhabitants of Limbo, are suspended between desire and hope; we’ve lost hope for a better world and, nevertheless, we vainly continue to desire it — we cannot help but do so. In order to exit from this status of limbo, we must direct our hope not to a good we lack but wish to possess, but rather to the one we already possess — the good which is within us — so that it may remain alive and makes us live. And if, in the apostle’s words, faith is the substance of things hoped for, then these things are present within us and before us, and the desire for a good in which we believe is always already fulfilled. Hope in what we already possess is, therefore, a special form of memory, which does not merely recall a past good, but acts relentlessly so that it remains present and alive. And this inversion of hope into memory is the thought, the life of the mind.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, October 20, 2026
As for hope and desire, our condition resembles that of those who, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, dwell suspended in Limbo and, in Virgil’s words, without hope live in desire (sanza speme vivemo in disio). We too, like the inhabitants of Limbo, are suspended between desire and hope; we’ve lost hope for a better world and, nevertheless, we vainly continue to desire it — we cannot help but do so. In order to exit from this status of limbo, we must direct our hope not to a good we lack but wish to possess, but rather to the one we already possess — the good which is within us — so that it may remain alive and makes us live. And if, in the apostle’s words, faith is the substance of things hoped for, then these things are present within us and before us, and the desire for a good in which we believe is always already fulfilled. Hope in what we already possess is, therefore, a special form of memory, which does not merely recall a past good, but acts relentlessly so that it remains present and alive. And this inversion of hope into memory is the thought, the life of the mind.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Valentine Hugo, Dream of December 21, 1929 (Self Portrait). Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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