Such banal matters as socially different goals rarely concern the contributors of this volume. The thirteen essays collected by Dr Fitzgerald are above all concerned to assert the need for transcendental horizons over and above the familiar social and psychological differences between classes, ethnic groups, national interests or whatever. Such a concern for transcendent and lofty matters which override the mundane world we lesser beings are stuck with is all very well if one considers such putative panaceas as something more than wishful thinking. If not, this volume is rather a waste of time.

The two main areas which the various contributors regard as most likely to give like-minded souls a shot of optimism are the areas of theology and metaphysics on the one hand, and forms of psychology and the therapies attendant upon them on the other. In fact the bulk of the writing is concentrated in the first group of concerns.

The most prestigious, in brief, essay is a translation of a fragment of the late Ernest Bloch’s ‘The Hope Principle’. This is not an essay that is easy to read despite the efforts of the translator, Wayne Hudson, in his introduction to sketch out some of the background of Bloch’s thinking. As Dr Hudson notes it is a ‘highly esoteric text’ full of oblique references and difficult terminology’. It certainly defies summary.

In general, Bloch the Marxist metaphysician seems closer to the Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann than he does to previous Marxist philosophers. Moltmann provides a brief, if uncritical, commentary on Bloch’s essay.

Several other pieces strongly advocate by implication, if not directly, the value of philosophical anthropology (speculations about the meaning and nature of human existence) which is supposed to provide an antidote to a variety of evils, real imagined, generally stemming from other philosophies more sympathetic to the natural and social sciences.

Max Charlesworth regards the question of the meaning of human existence as one worth asking and is critical of those dependent upon a dubious scientific naturalism who deny such a possibility. This is an unpopular position in contemporary philosophy and perhaps worth considering, but we are given no more than a brief indication in this piece.

David Holbrook, predictably enough, takes a more extreme view and pillories a variety of caricatures – for an absurd series of alleged defects, and urges psychotherapies and metaphysics as an alternative. The preposterous title, ‘Hope for the Triumph of Truth about Life’, gives the game away and is borne out in the utterly unargued guilt by association finger pointing that has become his hallmark.

A.F. Davies and Charles Rycroft treat hope as essentially a matter of mental states and pay due attention to psychanalysis and psychology.

Most of these writers clearly believe that much that is wrong in the world can be combatted by producing an expanded view of human nature and – its creative possibilities in a way that is incompatible with science-based metaphysics. This may be right, although I doubt it, but the only way to convince others by rational means, is through argument, and this cannot be done if opponents’ positions are reduced to the flimsiest of strawmen.