Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness - by John T Lysaker (Paperback)

About the Book

"Hope, trust, and forgiveness have the potential to enrich and empower human lives. Each is a facet of a life well lived, but each also possesses significant challenges from complex personal, interpersonal, and institutional forces. In Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness, John T. Lysaker draws our attention to the ways in which hope, trust, and forgiveness are capacities that intimately contend with the finitude of ethical life. Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness explores the contentions of each at length, clarifying those challenges and empowering us to meet them. In doing so, Lysaker grapples with the question of how a philosophical essay can offer ethical insight. He answers with an experimental, improvisational moral perfectionism that refuses the lure of universalized moral claims as well as the parochialism of conventional accounts of ethical life"--

Book Synopsis

A new ethics of human finitude developed through three experimental essays.

As ethical beings, we strive for lives that are meaningful and praiseworthy. But we are finite. We do not know, so we hope. We need, so we trust. We err, so we forgive. In this book, philosopher John T. Lysaker draws our attention to the ways in which these three capacities-hope, trust, and forgiveness-contend with human limits. Each experience is vital to human flourishing, yet each also poses significant personal and institutional challenges as well as opportunities for growth. Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness explores these challenges and opportunities and proposes ways to best meet them. In so doing, Lysaker experiments with the essay as a form and advances an improvisational perfectionism to deepen and expand our ethical horizons.

Review Quotes

"A rich meditation upon human finitude. Calling upon a potpourri of philosophical voices while relating a number of accounts from his life, Lysaker prompts his reader to a shared openness and vulnerability. . . Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness is an achievement in pluralistic and ethical deliberation, richly observant of challenges with which we are beset."-- "Journal of Value Inquiry"

"A work in fragments without ever feeling fragmented, the book's individual tesserae communicate a vibrant, beautiful, troubled world. Many of the text's connected interventions stand on their own as self-contained ephemera advocating decency and care in harsh and uncertain times. Taken as a whole or in parts, this is a rich and intimate book that suggests philosophizing risks failure in the unshakable hope of getting 'it' right and in the knowledge that forgiveness must remain possible."--Mark Christian Thompson, Johns Hopkins University

"Drawing upon diverse thinkers from several philosophical traditions, Hope, Trust, and Forgiveness is a beautiful exploration of how we relate to ourselves and one another as we navigate uncertainty, intimacy, and injustice. Lysaker has a rare and remarkable ability to capture the nuance of our lived experiences through his powerful writing. This book is rich with new insights."--Katie Stockdale, University of Victoria

"With creativity and candor, Lysaker returns us to scenes of ordinary life, reminding us of our finitude while also showing how finitude itself throws us toward each other in ways that demand courage and imagination. Above all, Lysaker performs the hope he describes, forging conversations between disparate thinkers and giving readers new resources for thinking about incremental action, pragmatic hope, and partial (therefore real) forgiveness. This might well be the handbook for our time."--Megan Craig, Stony Brook University

About the Author

John T. Lysaker is the William R. Kenan Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is the author of many books, including Philosophy, Writing, and the Character of Thought, also published by the University of Chicago Press.