The gloom that envelopes the Labour party stands in strong contrast to the confidence and hope that the Prime Minister exudes. But is he wise so to exude? Most ancients regarded hope as a delusion.
Achilles in the Iliad argued that the best man could hope for was a life of mixed good and evil. The farmer-poet Hesiod described how all the world’s evils flew out of Pandora’s jar (not box), leaving only hope inside. But did that mean hope was available to mankind, or kept from him? Hesiod went on to emphasise its double-edged nature — it could energise the active man or delude the idle. Greek tragedy usually emphasised the huge gap that lay between men’s hopes and the actual outcomes. The historian Thucydides saw a connection between hope and desire, each urging the other on, usually disastrously, unless constrained by reason.
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