Hopeful pessimism
Lugt, Mara van der, 1986-2025
Book
The climate debate is rife with calls for optimism. While temperatures rise and disasters intensify, we are asked to maintain optimism and hope, as if the real threat is pessimism and despair. In this erudite and engaging book, Mara van der Lugt argues that this is a mistake: crude optimism can no longer be a virtue in a breaking world, and may well prove to be our besetting vice. In an age of climate change and ecological devastation, the virtue we need is hopeful pessimism. Drawing on thinkers that range from J.R.R. Tolkien and Mary Shelley to Albert Camus and Jonathan Lear, Van der Lugt invites us to rethink what we thought we knew about optimism and pessimism, hope and despair, activism and grief.
Main title:
Hopeful pessimism / Mara van der Lugt.
Author:
Lugt, Mara van der, 1986-, author
Work:
Imprint:
Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2025.
Collation:
280 pages : illustrations (black and white, and colour) ; 22 cm
ISBN:
9780691265605 (hbk)
Dewey class:
149.6
Language:
English
BRN:
3949899