“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”

Peace to all… Behold!

I came across this quote just browsing the internet. “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” This quote came from a Greek Writer Nikos Kazantzakis. I honestly can say I never even heard of this man before, yet, these words left me pondering. He also stated, “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” Question: Is hope a necessity for our human existance and is hope even beneficial for our well being? What is hope and why do we feel we need it at all? So… I went to Wiki to gain some insight on the word hope and it stated…

[i]Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best. [1] Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude.

When used in a religious context, hope carries a connotation of being aware of what Christians see as spiritual “truth”; see Hope (virtue). In Christian theology, hope is one of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), which are spiritual gifts of God. In contrast to the above, it is not a physical emotion but a spiritual grace. Hope is distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic process used in psychology for reversing pessimism. The term false hope refers to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.

In some religious contexts hope changes from being a verb to a noun. For instance, when Christians say they have hope in God they are not saying they hope God will give them good things and make their lives happier but that god is in fact, their hope.[/i]

History

[i]Hope was personified in Greek mythology as Elpis. When Pandora opened Pandora’s Box, she let out all the evils except one: hope. Apparently, the Greeks considered hope to be as dangerous as all the world’s evils. But without hope to accompany all their troubles, humanity was filled with despair. It was a great relief when Pandora revisited her box and let out hope as well. It may be worthy to note that in the story, hope is represented as weakly leaving the box but is in effect far more potent than any of the major evils. In some faiths and religions of the world, hope plays a very important role. Hope can be passive in the sense of a wish, or active as a plan or idea, often against popular belief, with persistent, personal action to execute the plan or prove the idea. Consider a prisoner of war who never gives up hope for escape and, against the odds, plans and accomplishes this. By contrast, consider another prisoner who simply wishes or prays for freedom, or another who gives up all hope of freedom.

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that “Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment.” Emily Dickinson wrote in a poem that “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers-- / That perches in the soul–.” Ernst Bloch in “Principle of Hope” (1986) traces the human search for a wide range of utopias. Bloch locates utopian projects not only in the social and political realms of the well-known utopian theorists (Marx, Hegel, Lenin) but also in a multiplicity of technical, architectural, geographical utopias, and in multiple works of art (opera, literature, music, dance, film). For Bloch hope permeates everyday life and it is present in countless aspects of popular culture phenomenon such as jokes, fairy tales, fashion or images of death. In his view Hope remains in the present as an open setting of latency and tendencies.

Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism (1990) strongly criticizes the role of churches in the promotion of the idea that the individual has little chance or hope of affecting his or her life. He acknowledges that the social and cultural conditions, such as serfdom and the caste system weighed heavily against the freedom of individuals to change the social circumstances of their lives. Almost as if to avoid the criticism, in his book What You Can Change and What You Can’t, he is careful to outline the extent that people can hold out hope for personal action to change some of the things that affect their lives. More recently, psychologist Anthony Scioli (2006) has developed an integrative theory of hope that consists of four elements: attachment, mastery, survival, and spirituality. This approach incorporates contributions from psychology, anthropology, philosophy and theology as well as classical and contemporary literature and the arts.[3][/i]

Ok, here lies my problem. Should hope be in the external things in which you really have very little to know control of? Hope seems more like a thirsty desire that can never be fully quenched. It’s like an illusion of constant wishful thinking. Do hope stem from fear? Conversely, if you hope for nothing is that because you fear nothing and just accept fate as is… amor fati? That just seems more self liberating. Hope in yourself is understandable. I just can’t comprehend hope for nothing. What would life be without it? How can you even reach a level to where you hope for nothing? It doesn’t seem like it can be practiced because you are still hoping to reach that level. It’s kind of hard for me to explain my question… Is hope a necessity and what drives humanity to evolve? Why do we feel we even need hope? Something isn’t right.

~Enlighten Me~

hope is used mainly as a psychological mechanism of compensation, to reduce cognitive dissonance and to act as a “soft barrier” to despair, sorrow and feelings of powerlessness or regret.

when we hope for something, we are expressing a desire. when the desire is realistic and expressive of a true motive that we may achieve and actually can work for, the desire serves as a motivation for our actions and beliefs about actions. in this case, we could be said to have hope for achieving our desire, which would make hope more benign or passive-reflective in nature (just an expression of our desire to achieve something)… yet when we hope for something that is out of our reach or seems very unlikely or impossible, then hope is more of an “evasion of reality” and becomes a blind hope or a false hope, designed to help us avoid contact with an undesirable reality.

as for the phrase in the title here, to “hope for nothing” could mean either having an active hope/desire for a literal nothing, a state of nothingness; or, it could also mean “i dont have any hopes at all”. in the first case, this would seem to be an active desire for nothingness or death itself, a permanent evasion of life itself and of the work/time/effort/energy that being alive requires of us on a daily basis. this sort of “hopelessness” is not really a hope for something, but a hope for an end to all somethings. as to whether this would “free” you or not, that depends on what you mean by the word “free”. sure, it would free you from any emotional or mental investment in acting or working for anything, and this would probably free you from being alive, in the long run, as it would free you from achieving or producing anything at all (assuming a true and literal “hope for nothing” as expressed in the original quote)… as to whether that is desirable, of course is debatable; if you desire death, or desire to not live, then sure, having a hope for nothing is probably something that would benefit you.

as for this meaning “i have no hopes at all”, then in this case its more of a hopelessness in a literal sense. basically, to have no desires at all. this is, however, practically impossible. if this state was achieved, a person would just sit down and not move, and eventually die. no desire to eat, think, act, work, live. if you have a desire, then that means you have a hope for something, which would be to achieve the desired thing. desire and hope cannot be separated, and you cannot have one without the other, even though technically they are different-- they are different expressions of the same thing (hope being more emotion-based, desire being more cognitive-based).

so, i would consider that quote a load of bullshit, because even if the author was being serious, he was lying. he did not have a “hope for nothing”, because if he had, then he wouldnt have been writing his ideas and thoughts down at all. he would just literally sit down and die. if, instead, the quote is (and this is of course more likely) just an expression of a general attitude of extreme pessimism/skepticism/nihilism or emotional vacuity, then of course you would be “free” from experiencing emotions or desires or goals or enjoyments of achieving these things, but thats probably not a state of mind that most people would prefer, and is very counter to human nature and the physiological basis of life itself, which is to desire. a life without desires, even a passive attitude of hopelessness such as is probably expressed by the quote, is not a life which can sustain itself for very long unless it benefits from the charity of others.

another interesting point is that hope and desire are of course very similar, and it is hard to conceive of one without the other, but hope seems to need some sort of uncertainty, whereas desire does not. in otherwords, we can desire something which we KNOW we will get, but we cannot hope for something which we KNOW we will get… because if we KNOW FOR CERTAIN that it will occur, its meaningless to hope for it to occur, because you KNOW it will. however, you could still DESIRE that it occur and also KNOW it will. yet, practically this distinction breaks down, because in reality nothing is absolutely certain, and even things which we desire and are VERY CERTAIN will occur (such as, “i desire a sandwich” and then i go to the kitchen to make one) are still never a given-- i could be out of bread, for example, or it could have been eaten already, or lost, or maybe i die before i finish making the sandwich. so this shows that, even though to desire and to hope are different in that certainty of achievment seems to preclude one but not the other, since nothing is certain in life, every desire we have, even those whose achievments seem inevitable, must be accompanied by some sort of hope that conditions will work out such that achievment of the desire remains possible at all.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
I thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
And that even the weariest river,
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

The Gardens of Proserpine
Algernon Swinburne. English 19th century poet.

I came to that conclusion as well… that quote is a bunch of Bull.

^…Your explanation was very well said, but let me expatiate a little further on the subject. Is desire paramount to all forms of hope? Im starting to think, tentatively speaking, that desire is a step before hope. It almost seems like desire is everything we do in a way. Everything we think is a desire is it not? Or else why would we even think it at all. It is a desired thought. Then when we consciously analyze the thought through congnitive reasoning and try to estimate the probabilty of that desire becoming real. If it seems possible to achieve we then hope for it which brings about our action to manifest it if one chooses. I know there are many things I desire but it just doesn’t seem that achievable at all which needs no hope prior to effort. Basically, desire can only exist without hope but not vice versa…

… As for desire, I find this word rather fascinating as well because it just seems to be on auto-pilot through our everyday lives and funtions. What is paramount to desire then? What triggers this response even to our biological make up? For an example, like you said you can desire a sandwich and if it is possibly in the kitchen we hope to get it which brings about your action to get it. Now, you being hungry is a desired response from your brain telling you to eat because your body needs energy. Your brain from neurological responses also tell you if you want something sweet or not which makes you desire a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or just a ham and cheese. If, we have an itch we desire to scratch it. If you want to read a book it is a desire. When you think your next thought it was a desired response from some kind of stimulant…

…To simplify it to even a deeper level, it seems like atoms may have desires as well. Why do they move as they do left or right, low or high vibrations, and interact/communicate with other atoms? Everything seems to be an expression of desire. I can be totally off and missing something but I don’t even think we’re conscious of all our desires. When we dream most of the time it wasn’t our will before we slept to dream those type of dreams. Or were they and we just wasn’t conscious of it? Do we dream our dreams out of some type of desired response? Sorry, I hope your keeping up with me because I’m apparently all over the place now. But do you see what I’m saying? This proves further…(off subject) free-will is an illusion from very intricate responses… well, besides atoms. “I” only say this because I have no idea what atoms are responding from because it really do seem like they move freely. But what I am inferring is that desire appears to be everything in a way…

~Take it Lightly~

Someone who says they hope for nothing and fear nothing is lying to themselves, or are to stupid to understand the concepts of the emotions.

Free as a rock or any other unthinking object.

There is nothing wrong with having “hope”.

One might say “I hope” but then in the next instant, let it go and detach from what is hoped for.

I think that there is a line between hope and attachment.

I don’t think that hope itself is emotion. Hope can just be an inner awareness of something looked for.

Once that hope or inner awareness has moved towards yearning or attachment, it becomes need.

So hope is not need, but awareness…and need is turned into emotion.

Thus the dragon has spoken. Coffee time.

Whoever said that Kazantzakis’ quote ( Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα, δεν φοβάμαι τίποτα, ειμαι ελεύθερος / I hope nothing, I fear nothing, I’m free) is a “load of bullshit” is obviously unaware of the meaning of the quote and also of the fact that the quote is taken out of context.

When Kazantzakis said “I hope for nothing” he meant it in a metaphysical way. That is, he has no hopes of an afterlife/, of paradise, of god etc. The writer argued that a free man is someone that does not hope in a life after death and is still not afraid of anything, that is he/she has set themselves free of any metaphysical “hopes” as well as fear. This follows one of the major themes in Nietzsche’s’ philosophy…

I hope this makes sense

Actually, this is not how Kazantzakis lived his life but his view of death.
I hope nothing, I fear nothing, I am free was writen on his grave.

I find it difficult to believe that a human being would have absolutely no fear at all. We all have a fear of something.

This though I can understand. And seeing no life after death, one may be more ready to actually live a life, detaching from those things which might drag one down or drag life down.

Why even hope for something which is entirely out of our control? Hope is a bitter enemy at times.

Oh give it a break.

Hope is NOT “an emotional state”. Everything positive and affirming today is referred to as “merely a chemical” or merely “an emotional state”. Gee… I wonder why that is.

Hope is the situation wherein UN-emotional calculation, often from intuition, is that a chosen goal is either in reach or being reached. Emotionalism often follows (of course). Hope is the actual situation. And the feeling of having hope, the “Perception of hope” is often in error, yet leads to behaviors associated with hope (of course).

The perception of hope, the feeling of hope, and the actuality of hope are 3 different and often contrary things. Feelings can be and often are chemically induced. Perceptions are often in error for a variety of reasons both intentional and unintentional. But the actual situation is what it is, regardless of what anyone wishes or attempts.

He who perceives no threat nor hope, has lost his guide in life and thus has no life (Buddhism 101). He fades into oblivion, which is why you had never heard of the guy (assuming he ever existed int he first place).

He who is totally free, is dead.

This can be looked at two ways… freedom is the ability to do whatever you want to do without negative consequence OR it is doing just what you need to do without any negative consequence… personally I think the first one is right. But it brings up a paradox… if you could destroy every being forever in existence, you’d have no negative consequence.

You are not “free”.

Ecmandu

Hmmm, for some reason I do not intuit that as being freedom. Where there is freedom, at least for me, there has to be an awareness of some kind of consequences, unless I’m misunderstanding you. Where there is freedom, “real” freedom, there is an awareness of responsibility and the embracing of what comes to be because of it - cause and effect.
Otherwise it’s just stupidity and narcissism.

I don’t that that that is a paradox but maybe just a not-so-thought-out premise.
First, why would you want to destroy every being in existence? Does that include yourself? And second, what about the negative consequence of total aloneness, total loneliness. We may enjoy our solitiude but if it was forever, well, think about the consequence to your psyche, your spirit, your emotions, et cetera.

I registered onto this forum just to reply on this subject. I love Kazantzakis a lot, I studied Greek language and literature, and this is how I understood his epitaph.

I hope for nothing - in Greek original is Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. The verb ελπίζω is understood not like “hope”, more of a English “expect”.
I fear nothing.
I am free.

I understand it like: “When you free yourself of your expectations which puts you down, or puts images in your head, or drives you to expect and hope for something which might not happen, and when you free yourself of all the fears which are preventing you to live life fully or to strive somewhere, you will liberate yourself and then you will get the full satisfaction of how is it to be human and how is it to live life right now, in this moment. You will literally be free.”

If you think more about it, us as humans are always putting ourselves rules, regulations, when we go into relationships we build all these expectations, when parents selfishly get a child, they burden them with their desires and again expectations. When you watch a movie trailer you have expectations of how movie is gonna be.

Further on, one part of human nature is that we are driven by fear. If you don’t know how to ride a car or if you haven’t driven a car in more than 5 years, you will hesitate to do it just because you are fearful of the cause.

When you lose these two (expectation, or hope or your predictions of what might happen) and when you stop fearing and just do it, you will finally see the things as they are and be free.

It’s a bit complicated subject to explain in short, but I hope someone understands, even though it is old topic.

To try to explain it simply, I will use my movie trailer example. You know the feeling when you watch a movie completely open minded, you just click the title (let’s say you didn’t have expectations regardless of title itself), you don’t feel fear in this stage because you already chose to watch it. In the end, it turns out that it was a really good movie, you didn’t know anything about it, you watched it without fear, and you feel inner satisfaction that something was very good and it fulfilled you. You were free.

Nikos’ life was very rich and influenced by many aspect (like every one of us), but he traveled a lot and met many people in his life, translated many books, read a lot, lived in several countries, got in a fight with the Greek church, but he literally lived like this quote, and no wonder that this is on his gravestone, written in his native dialect, and his handwriting.

Bane said hope is the only way to experience hell in all it’s depths.

Bane said if you want to torment someone, give them the illusion of hope, then take the thing they hoped for away from them.