In The Principle of Political Hope, Loren Goldman draws on Immanuel Kant, Ernst Bloch, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey to offer an account of political hope as a frame for navigating the relationship between subjective aspiration and objective possibility. Considering what political hope is, how it operates, how it has been thought about, and how to think about it in the contemporary world, Goldman's conceptualization of hope rejects grand notions of progress while still maintaining the possibility of a brighter future. This hope, as opposed to optimism, is characterized by uncertainty, haunted by the possibility of failure, and works to overcome despair. It is rooted in political action and democratic experimentation.

Through an insightful reading of each thinker, Goldman shows that the anticipatory aspect of political thought allows us to make sense of political acts as prefigurative instead of merely expressive. Participation in voting, electoral politics, protest, aesthetic happenings, and even everyday minor acts of illegality are not merely activities serving instrumental ends-in-view but fleeting enactments of and preparation for a better future. Refreshing and lucid, Goldman reconstructs hope as a necessary condition for social and political engagement, reinvigorating the possibility of utopia in the process.