A Mr A.M. Burnham announced at his elevation that he would bring ‘hope’ to the country. A fine sentiment. But hope in what? And how many parsnips will it butter?
Greek myth told of Pandora, the first female. Because of the tricks Prometheus had played on Zeus to help men, Zeus made her irresistible to males, but the source of men’s woe. She was given a jar said to be filled with all (‘pan’) the gifts (‘dora’) of the world but filled instead with all the evils. She opened it, flooding the world, with only hope left as a counterbalance.
But the Greek word we translate as ‘hope’, elpis, had strong overtones of ‘expectation’. It could be a source of comfort and resilience, but equally of delusion. Plato contrasted a ‘blind’ elpis – irrational, little better than mere opinion – with a ‘good’ elpis, which has a firm, rational, moral basis. Aristotle connected elpis with courage. The coward fears everything. But in the brave man, elpis generates confidence, enabling him to override fear and act with good judgment. To the Stoics, true wisdom meant abandoning both elpis and fear to live fully in the rational present.
Greeks, then, had a range of reactions: ‘elpis has often created a shipwreck’; ‘the elpis of the wise is attainable, the elpis of the witless in vain’; ‘it is elpis that maintains most of mankind’; ‘countless are the elpides of countless men. Some are fulfilled, others come to nought. But I call blessed the one who lives happily from day to day.’
For the historian Thucydides, ‘elpis and desire are everywhere: desire leads, elpis attends; desire contrives the plan, elpis suggests the helpfulness of fortune; the two passions are most ruinous and, being unseen, prevail over seen dangers.’ He also wrote: ‘Mindless elpis encourages men to believe they will get what they want but they use all-powerful reason to discount any possible outcome they dislike.’
We can certainly expect something from Mr Burnham, but will it give us hope? Britain’s postcodes need not hold their breath.
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