„Ca și cum” nu am muri. Schema cognitiv-afectivă a speranței
“As If” We Did Not Die: The Cognitive-Affective Scheme of Hope

Summary/Abstract: In this text, I aim to analyze the cognitive and affective foundations of hope. The temporal dimension specific to hope is the future, yet death is inevitably linked to the future as its ultimate limit. How, then, is it possible for hope to coexist with the future? One obvious solution is to deny death – through the religious imagination of an afterlife, a situation in which hope necessarily relies on faith. Much more common, however, is the ignoring of death, the activation of an “as if” type of coping mechanism: we live our lives as if we did not know that death is inevitable. Another attitude, increasingly prevalent today as awareness of the “objective tragedy” of entropy grows – a view scientifically confirmed by the scholars of our world – is to look at the world as if we were already dead, to see it with a “dead eye,” in a state of self-induced posthumousness.

• Details
• Contents