The famous and popular Thomistic philosopher, Josef Pieper, addresses the topic of hope from the perspective of human history and asks the questions: "Is man's hope such that it can find any fulfillment in the field of human history?" And: "Is man's human history such that it can give us any grounds not to despair?" Pieper looks at the movement of history, the idea of progress, man's hope for a better future, and then counters the temptation to despair with a Christian philosophy of hope based on faith in divine providence and the compatibility of faith and reason.

"In its continuing contribution to the common good, Ignatius Press now adds Hope and History to its distinguished list of the works of Josef Pieper, easily the most eminent living Catholic philosopher. This book brings together five lectures delivered in Salzburg which complement and extend Pieper's prolonged meditations on history and the appropriate attitude toward it."
- Ralph McInerny
University of Notre Dame

"Josef Pieper has carefully worked his way through the major philosophical issues of our time. Pieper has an uncanny instinct for slight deviations in thought, be they from Kant, Nietzsche, Teilhard, or other figures of modern theory. Hope and history need to be explained together. Essentially, Pieper deals with the question on inner-worldly history, whether man's purpose in history is a full kingdom of God on earth or a self-chosen destruction of all he knows. There is no substitute for the concrete hope that each of us shall be redeemed. Pieper is aware that beside man's own hopes for his kind, there is a divine plan, which ironically, is more hopeful and more historical than any alternative that the philosophers have imagined."
- James V. Schall
Georgetown University