What Does It Mean To Be Human Essay

To be human, is to have hope. Constitutive of the human being, the phenomenon of hope necessarily orders man to that for which he was created. However, in its present usage, the term ‘hope’ commonly refers to a mere wish or optimistic disposition toward the future. Influenced by Freud and grounded by rationalism, the prevalent contemporary thought fixes hope as an emotion or feeling - i.e. “nothing less than a state of mind which changes with shifting circumstances.” Indeed, the modern setting not only cautions against but even discourages one from possessing hope, for in essence, hope appears as antithetical to reason. For St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), however, hope (spes) is not only rational but also virtuous. Having formulated

Since it is proper to man to act for an end, happiness is man’s “supreme perfection” and the object of his desires. All human acts of man are oriented toward happiness, upon which depends the object of the will, that which is the good. However, motivated by hope, the will’s object can, properly speaking, only regard the good. As Lamb explains, “Hope’s objects are ‘good’ since they presuppose desire and motivate pursuit.” More appropriately though, strengthened by hope, the will not only necessarily seeks a good but rather the ultimate good. Naturally inclined toward the good, the hope-spawned will is given supernatural grace to seek that good alone in which man finds perfect happiness (beatitudo perfecta). Thus, hope is oriented toward the objective good which Aquinas identifies as “nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence.” As he notes, “Hope makes us tend to God, as to a good to be obtained finally.” The object of hope is conditioned by the future good of God: “for hope does not regard that which is present and already possessed.” The objects of hope’s acts are “‘future’ since they are uncertain and not yet possessed.” Thus, infused by God, man’s hope illustrates his efficient and final causality. In other words, “theological hope represents a reaching out for the ultimate goodness that is God himself, and so initially perfects the passive capacity in the human person to find complete fulfillment only in God, a capacity that God has made part of being human.” Therefore, since God is the principal object, considered as a virtue, hope is properly identified as a theological virtue, since “the very idea of a theological virtue is one that has God for its