Interpersonal hope and loving attention

Abstract

Imagine that your lover or close friend has embraced a difficult long-term goal, such as advancing environmental justice, breaking a bad habit, or striving to become a better person. Which stance should you adopt towards their prospects for success? Does supporting our significant others in the pursuit of valuable goals require ignoring part of our evidence? I argue that we have special reasons––reasons grounded in friendship––to hope that our loved ones succeed in their difficult goals. I further propose that hope is an attitude governed by distinctive norms of epistemic rationality. It has a unique impact on motivation and rational action and a special capacity to be met with uptake in hope. Owing to these features, hope is the central attitudinal dimension of truly amiable support based on ‘just vision’.