Abstract
0. F Bollnow insists that we should not remain in existential despair : “we must learn to hope.” The purpose of this paper is to reconsider what it means for us to learn to hope.
Bollnow regards hope as an essential ground of human life which is underlaidwith comprehensive trust upon the whole being. At the same time, he emphasizesthat true hope is deeply related with threatening anxiety or hopeless distrust. But he leaves us only a few descriptions of the relationship between anxiety and hope.
Hence, we are prompted to explore the deep relationship between these two contrastive moods. First, I shall studyBollnow's theory about the absolute hope. Next, I shall look into Bollnow's study on anxiety, tracing it back to Heidegger's theory in his Being and Time. It will be then revealed that hope and anxiety are both deeply connected with penetrating unfathomableness of our Being-in-the-world.
In the state of anxiety, we are confronted with the unfathomableness ofthe world and of ourselves. Unlike our ordinary lives, there is no opportunityfor stable and meaningful projections. In this ruthless instance, however, only one possibility of projection remains : projection towards the unfathomableness itself which makes possible the possibilities of all otherprojections. If we decide to live spontaneously in the unfathomable world, we shall recover the possibility of stable projections. In conclusion, it will be revealed that entrusting ourselves to the unfathomableness is essential for learning to hope. According to Heidegger, this is the possibility of quest for being which is often misunderstood and denied by Bollnow.
