Introduction For and Against Hope Is hope a virtue? Not necessarily. We hope for many things, some of them good, some bad. What we do or don't do about our hopes may also reflect on us, for better or for worse. One might hope for world peace or an end to poverty, and these appear to be worthy if improbable objects. Yet hoping for such things is not a good, or much of a good, in and of itself. Merely passive hope scarcely seems a virtue; it may appear an idle daydream. Hope for the good becomes meritorious when coupled with exertion: "I am hopefully helping, in my small way, to make good things happen." Conversely, hope, passive or active, can be for bad or morally dubious things: "I hope he breaks a leg." Not that all people would find this a bad hope. Hope for revenge may seem perfectly acceptable, and failure to avenge a slight dishonorable or shameful. There are hopes that fewer would condone: for instance, in President Truman's account, the Nazis' "hope to enslave the world."8 Yet people can and do hope for the success of persecuting regimes, the elimination of foes and foreigners. Envy, hatred, revenge, selfaggrandizement, and injustice are no less salient as motives and objects of hoping than their opposing virtues"--