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Infinitely Full of Hope: Fatherhood and the Future in an Age of Crisis and Disaster
A philosophical memoir about becoming a father in an increasingly terrible world – can I hope the child growing in my partner's womb will have a good-enough life?
For Kant, philosophy boiled down to three key “What can I know?”, “What ought I do?”, and “What can I hope for?” In philosophy departments, that third question has largely been neglected at the expense of the first two – even though it is crucial for understanding why anyone might ask them in the first place. In Infinitely Full of Hope , as he prepares to become a father for the first time, the philosopher Tom Whyman attempts to answer Kant’s third question, trying to make sense of it in the context of a world that increasingly seems like it is on the verge of collapse.
Part memoir, part theory, and part reflection on fatherhood, Infinitely Full of Hope asks how we can cling to hope in a world marked by crisis and disaster.
For Kant, philosophy boiled down to three key “What can I know?”, “What ought I do?”, and “What can I hope for?” In philosophy departments, that third question has largely been neglected at the expense of the first two – even though it is crucial for understanding why anyone might ask them in the first place. In Infinitely Full of Hope , as he prepares to become a father for the first time, the philosopher Tom Whyman attempts to answer Kant’s third question, trying to make sense of it in the context of a world that increasingly seems like it is on the verge of collapse.
Part memoir, part theory, and part reflection on fatherhood, Infinitely Full of Hope asks how we can cling to hope in a world marked by crisis and disaster.
205 pages, Paperback
Published April 13, 2021
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285 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 19, 2021
Whyman’s book participates in a new kind of genre—one that perhaps has not yet been named. It is part memoir, part personal meditation, but also includes theoretical argument and analysis of our social and political situation.
Perhaps the best way to describe this book is to talk about what it does. “Great”. works of art used function to remake our ideologies (in the positive sense of that term). That is, they used to clarify a problem, moving us from appearance to reality (this is one understanding of Aristotle’s term “catharasis”); but then they would also work to motivate us to act differently in the world—in Althusser’s phrase, to go out and complete the play, but in real life. Unfortunately, most “art” today has abnegated this responsibility. Instead, in novels and television shows, even in podcasts and YouTube videos, we are offered only the worst kind of pure wish-fulfillment, fantasy in the worst sense. Art is now meant to give us a compensation, in fantasy, for our misery in reality.
Whyman’s book is not so much a work of philosophy, which generally functions to clarify our thinking on some (usually unimportant) point. Instead, he uses extended argument in prose to do what most existing works of “art” are no longer attempting to do. I’m not sure this could be done in any other genre today. We need more books like this, if we want to move people out of the despair Whyman so well describes in the world today.
One complaint: I wish there were citations for the many books and essays cited in this book. Sometimes, it is difficult to tell exactly what text is being quoted.
Overall, and inspiring book, that does what novels, poems and plays are no longer able to do in the current publishing industry.
Perhaps the best way to describe this book is to talk about what it does. “Great”. works of art used function to remake our ideologies (in the positive sense of that term). That is, they used to clarify a problem, moving us from appearance to reality (this is one understanding of Aristotle’s term “catharasis”); but then they would also work to motivate us to act differently in the world—in Althusser’s phrase, to go out and complete the play, but in real life. Unfortunately, most “art” today has abnegated this responsibility. Instead, in novels and television shows, even in podcasts and YouTube videos, we are offered only the worst kind of pure wish-fulfillment, fantasy in the worst sense. Art is now meant to give us a compensation, in fantasy, for our misery in reality.
Whyman’s book is not so much a work of philosophy, which generally functions to clarify our thinking on some (usually unimportant) point. Instead, he uses extended argument in prose to do what most existing works of “art” are no longer attempting to do. I’m not sure this could be done in any other genre today. We need more books like this, if we want to move people out of the despair Whyman so well describes in the world today.
One complaint: I wish there were citations for the many books and essays cited in this book. Sometimes, it is difficult to tell exactly what text is being quoted.
Overall, and inspiring book, that does what novels, poems and plays are no longer able to do in the current publishing industry.
September 19, 2022
Not particularly well written, as many in the genre (memoir) are these days, nor is it particularly insightful philosophizing. A labyrinthine maze through a few of Theory's Great Hits (Adorno, Derrida), made mercifully accessible but ultimately breathless and unsatisfying. Going about your normal day as if you'd never read this book or following the suggestions Whyman makes in the end are one and the same. Remember Rilke's "Du musst dein Leben ändern!"? Well, not necessary it turns out. A lot of talking without saying anything at all.
January 14, 2023
I was expecting more pop-psychology and philosophy, but this is extremely carefully and intelligently written. However, the very academic approach leaves large swaths of the book difficult to pull useful thoughts and applicable analysis from. There were portions that really resonated with me, but overall it was just too academic for my interest, taste, and need.
January 6, 2022
"[W]hen it comes to my own pain, I typically forget it almost as soon as I’ve stopped experiencing it: the pain doesn’t matter to me anymore (although what caused it, in fairness, might). But the traces of the purest pleasures I’ve experienced will always remain in my memory, little treasures that I can look back on to know that I am happy, to have been allowed to exist at all."
"One does not need to downplay the severity of the world’s sufferings, to recognise that fun and beauty and wonder are also part of it. These things are not worse than nothing — in fact in a way they are everything that matters."
"From a materialist perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to attempt to improve the future by limiting the number of people with a direct interest in carrying it on."
"An analysis of our ordinary language use of the word “hope” tells us that it requires the recognition of at least two possibilities: one good and one not. The hopeful person is one who recognises these two possibilities, then desires that the better occur. Thus, hope can be recognised to the extent that it involves some active engagement with or involvement in the world. But of course: in order to be effective, this engagement must also be genuinely attentive to how things in fact are: the hoper must be sincere in their hope; they must ideally be able to show this by performing actions that have at least something to do with the outcome that they hope will occur."
"from a hopeful perspective, cynicism must seem less scary than it does pathetic. Cynicism is a lonely, embittered uncle of an attitude: the cynic recognises that yes, it would be good if good things were possible, but believes it to be a mark of hard-won maturity to disavow them. But this is, frankly, laughable. Not everything that the cynic maintains is wrong: on the contrary, a big part of why cynicism has been able to proliferate is that it gets so much of how British politics works right. But this is a mere, pedantic correctness, a correctness which fails to grasp that things are not necessarily doomed to stay the same — the sort of correctness, in short, that Adorno believed it to be the “good fortune” of real thought to help us move beyond.
"Chortling, unthinking, cynicism holds fast to its fear of failure. But in just this way, the cynic exposes their ultimate childishness: the cynic, who wants to be oh-so-grown-up, is in truth someone who has let their inner child win. It’s just that — rather than being open and enthusiastic, playful and naive — the cynic’s inner child is trapped on its first day at school, terrified and alone and crying, broken to be bullied into a lifetime of conformity. The cynic lacks the courage required to risk losing themselves."
"The hopeful person is the one who is able to think for themselves. Only critical thought can be sure it has genuinely recognised the possibility of the better; only critical thought can sketch out realistic possibilities of action, displaying an active desire that the better occur. Self-knowledge here goes hand-in-hand with autonomy, refusing to entrust one’s will to some transcendent force."
"'Thought is happiness,' Adorno tells us at the close of his address, 'even where it defines unhappiness: by enunciating it. By this alone happiness reaches into the universal unhappiness. Whoever does not let it atrophy has not resigned.'"
"One does not need to downplay the severity of the world’s sufferings, to recognise that fun and beauty and wonder are also part of it. These things are not worse than nothing — in fact in a way they are everything that matters."
"From a materialist perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to attempt to improve the future by limiting the number of people with a direct interest in carrying it on."
"An analysis of our ordinary language use of the word “hope” tells us that it requires the recognition of at least two possibilities: one good and one not. The hopeful person is one who recognises these two possibilities, then desires that the better occur. Thus, hope can be recognised to the extent that it involves some active engagement with or involvement in the world. But of course: in order to be effective, this engagement must also be genuinely attentive to how things in fact are: the hoper must be sincere in their hope; they must ideally be able to show this by performing actions that have at least something to do with the outcome that they hope will occur."
"from a hopeful perspective, cynicism must seem less scary than it does pathetic. Cynicism is a lonely, embittered uncle of an attitude: the cynic recognises that yes, it would be good if good things were possible, but believes it to be a mark of hard-won maturity to disavow them. But this is, frankly, laughable. Not everything that the cynic maintains is wrong: on the contrary, a big part of why cynicism has been able to proliferate is that it gets so much of how British politics works right. But this is a mere, pedantic correctness, a correctness which fails to grasp that things are not necessarily doomed to stay the same — the sort of correctness, in short, that Adorno believed it to be the “good fortune” of real thought to help us move beyond.
"Chortling, unthinking, cynicism holds fast to its fear of failure. But in just this way, the cynic exposes their ultimate childishness: the cynic, who wants to be oh-so-grown-up, is in truth someone who has let their inner child win. It’s just that — rather than being open and enthusiastic, playful and naive — the cynic’s inner child is trapped on its first day at school, terrified and alone and crying, broken to be bullied into a lifetime of conformity. The cynic lacks the courage required to risk losing themselves."
"The hopeful person is the one who is able to think for themselves. Only critical thought can be sure it has genuinely recognised the possibility of the better; only critical thought can sketch out realistic possibilities of action, displaying an active desire that the better occur. Self-knowledge here goes hand-in-hand with autonomy, refusing to entrust one’s will to some transcendent force."
"'Thought is happiness,' Adorno tells us at the close of his address, 'even where it defines unhappiness: by enunciating it. By this alone happiness reaches into the universal unhappiness. Whoever does not let it atrophy has not resigned.'"
April 22, 2021
The moronic text of a fear monger.
Or how people would today die of Polio, and Syphilis, and Small Pox, diseases not known to the Americans merely half a century ago. Well, during the 19th century Obesity was the main problem with American kids, because of the Capitalistic Sugary Fizzy Drinks, when today we have a real crisis with children dying of starvation and Dysentery before the age of five. Think of the Civil War that just ended in the US, or the War with England that started just when the Falklands War ended. And I guess the numbers are there to tell how these years are the highest in male children eaten by Dragons.
Or how people would today die of Polio, and Syphilis, and Small Pox, diseases not known to the Americans merely half a century ago. Well, during the 19th century Obesity was the main problem with American kids, because of the Capitalistic Sugary Fizzy Drinks, when today we have a real crisis with children dying of starvation and Dysentery before the age of five. Think of the Civil War that just ended in the US, or the War with England that started just when the Falklands War ended. And I guess the numbers are there to tell how these years are the highest in male children eaten by Dragons.
December 11, 2021
I discovered this book earlier this year and the timing couldn't have been more ideal. The philosophical principles described, and which I had great joy reflecting on, are embedded in personal experiences of the author, that I then experienced similarly in the middle of the year myself.
Now at the end of the year and after some middle of the night reading sessions when my little one fell asleep again, I eventually could finish the book.
Favorite quotes:
"I started to have quite disturbing, radically self-justifying thoughts about how if I had done anything different before my son’s conception — anything at all — he would never have existed, or he would have been someone else entirely, that my particular sperm that was part him would never have met Edie’s particular egg that was the other half; that I owed it to him to simply fail to recognise my mistakes as anything other part of my most brilliant success."
"So I suppose I would answer the question “how can we hope better?” with the prescription: “cultivate hopeful virtues!” It is by cultivating virtues such as charity, solidarity, and modesty, that we can start to hope better today. If we are not (genuinely) hopeful, we cannot simply sit around hoping-to-hope. We must teach ourselves to be hopeful instead."
Now at the end of the year and after some middle of the night reading sessions when my little one fell asleep again, I eventually could finish the book.
Favorite quotes:
"I started to have quite disturbing, radically self-justifying thoughts about how if I had done anything different before my son’s conception — anything at all — he would never have existed, or he would have been someone else entirely, that my particular sperm that was part him would never have met Edie’s particular egg that was the other half; that I owed it to him to simply fail to recognise my mistakes as anything other part of my most brilliant success."
"So I suppose I would answer the question “how can we hope better?” with the prescription: “cultivate hopeful virtues!” It is by cultivating virtues such as charity, solidarity, and modesty, that we can start to hope better today. If we are not (genuinely) hopeful, we cannot simply sit around hoping-to-hope. We must teach ourselves to be hopeful instead."
May 18, 2021
Best perhaps to say first that this book is extremely in my wheelhouse; my little one is about 18 months older than Iggy, plus moral philosophy, Adorno, Benjamin, Mark Fisher? Very me. So. Ymmv, but I loved this book.
I think what Tom Whyman is speaking to here is something that a lot of us have felt in facing the possibility of having a child - can I do this to the world? can I do this to a child? It's such a hard thing and this is a beautiful collection of ideas about hope and the ways children can shape our understanding of our situation and our collective future. Since the UK general election in 2019 I've really struggled with political despair, and I found this a really gentle way of calling me out from that and setting me thinking about how to - as Tom puts it - "hope better".
It's the other side of the coin, for me, from Clint Smith's poem "When People Say We Have Made it Through Worse Before", and I can give it no higher compliment.
I think what Tom Whyman is speaking to here is something that a lot of us have felt in facing the possibility of having a child - can I do this to the world? can I do this to a child? It's such a hard thing and this is a beautiful collection of ideas about hope and the ways children can shape our understanding of our situation and our collective future. Since the UK general election in 2019 I've really struggled with political despair, and I found this a really gentle way of calling me out from that and setting me thinking about how to - as Tom puts it - "hope better".
It's the other side of the coin, for me, from Clint Smith's poem "When People Say We Have Made it Through Worse Before", and I can give it no higher compliment.
October 2, 2023
I’m wavering between a 2 or 3. I guess I didn’t agree with the early premise that hope is a rational activity without any religious conviction, so it made later points sort of fruitless? For as much as he referenced Kierkegaard, I never got a satisfying opposing view as to why I should hope vs begrudgingly do activities that might seem hopeful. I agreed with the concept of hope as an action item and something one needs to cultivate a practice of, but marking it as something *necessary* didn’t seem so important until the final chapters.
Overall not particularly memorable, but I did love the emotional writing about Edie/the baby to come — very sweet in those characterized moments!! I think I would’ve enjoyed this much more as an article with fewer lines about Theresa May. I like Jeremy corbyn and babies so those lines were more fun.
Overall not particularly memorable, but I did love the emotional writing about Edie/the baby to come — very sweet in those characterized moments!! I think I would’ve enjoyed this much more as an article with fewer lines about Theresa May. I like Jeremy corbyn and babies so those lines were more fun.
April 12, 2023
Felt like reading an academic essay that happened to be relevant to my worldview and situation (raising a small child). Very intelligently written, but almost to a fault. At times it resonated profoundly, usually when the author delved into his own thoughts and opinions. At others, it was very dry and a bit of a slog. Coincidentally, those trying bits were when he describes the work of old philosophers.
February 7, 2024
I expected this book to be a exploration of the hope of the future for our world. Instead it's mostly a philosophical analysis of how a person can have hope in a hopeless world. The author references both well-known and obscure philosophers and step by step develops a philosophy of hope. If I'm being honest it was a little too academic for me. All the same, I did enjoy the challenge of reading about philosophical thought. It just wasn't what I thought
May 19, 2025
"If we want to be hopeful, really hopeful, we need to overcome the atomized individualism which has become the norm across western society."
Expected a book on Fatherhood based on the subtitle "Fatherhood and the Future in an Age of Crisis and Disaster," but instead got a scholarly deep dive into the philosophy behind Hope. Really interesting intellectual work, if a bit dense and jargony at times. Still, worth a read. Gave me some hope for the future.
Expected a book on Fatherhood based on the subtitle "Fatherhood and the Future in an Age of Crisis and Disaster," but instead got a scholarly deep dive into the philosophy behind Hope. Really interesting intellectual work, if a bit dense and jargony at times. Still, worth a read. Gave me some hope for the future.
August 20, 2023
This book is billed as something anyone can read and as a non academic book. That might be true but that doesn’t mean it is accessible for non philosophers. It’s dreadfully boring. The best part, the reason i even picked up he book, is the first 20 pages…but after the introduction you become so dogged down with questions and ideas that you can’t focus on his point.
August 19, 2022
There's this great joke:
What's the difference between environmentalist parents and humanist parents?
Environmentalist parents care about global warming before they create humans who'll have to suffer through it.
That joke sums up this book, minus the irony.
What's the difference between environmentalist parents and humanist parents?
Environmentalist parents care about global warming before they create humans who'll have to suffer through it.
That joke sums up this book, minus the irony.
August 19, 2022
Never has a book left me feeling so much dispair.
Read
September 2, 2022I read this for my book club. It was okay, but not extraordinary.
October 23, 2022
The book would be better labelled, “some smart things other people said and my journey through childbirth”.
July 14, 2025
Political and a little dry. This did not feel like embodied writing.
October 26, 2022
Part philosophical argument, part exhortation, and part memoir, 'Infinitely Full of Hope' is a thought-provoking read about how and why to maintain hope even in the face of existential despair. It builds on concepts Whyman had previously written about on the now-defunct website The Outline, which can help give you an idea of the themes and concerns that he seeks to address (https://theoutline.com/post/7925/havi...).
The book draws heavily on critical theory, but even as a reader with limited background (I read a little of Benjamin and Adorno during college, but am not familiar with most of their works) I found it easy to follow — the right balance between accessible and rigorous. In addition to the theoretical arguments, it's also a paean to his son, and to parenthood in general. I teared up at some of his descriptions about his son's birth and the purity of his love for his child.
I'm not sure that I'm fully satisfied with Whyman's ability to answer one of his central questions — "How can we maintain [realistic] hopes for the future in light of existential threats to humanity?" Part of Whyman's thesis is that hope needs to be actionable, and as best as I can tell, his advice for the future is to recalibrate our expectations and be satisfied smaller, more achievable, less utopian forms of progress. He hopes that this will prevent us from falling permanently into despair, and allow us (and more importantly, our children) to continue doing the work needed to someday enact greater changes. But I'm not sure that this answers how to maintain hope in the face of climate change so much as it does sidestep the question. I've only recently finished the book, so perhaps I need more time to sit with the argument. And, of course, the world as a whole has yet to find a solution to the climate crisis, so perhaps I'm asking too much of Whyman.
Even with those caveats, I still found the work clarifying, thought-provoking, and beautiful. If the linked Outline article grabs your attention, I highly recommend the full book.
The book draws heavily on critical theory, but even as a reader with limited background (I read a little of Benjamin and Adorno during college, but am not familiar with most of their works) I found it easy to follow — the right balance between accessible and rigorous. In addition to the theoretical arguments, it's also a paean to his son, and to parenthood in general. I teared up at some of his descriptions about his son's birth and the purity of his love for his child.
I'm not sure that I'm fully satisfied with Whyman's ability to answer one of his central questions — "How can we maintain [realistic] hopes for the future in light of existential threats to humanity?" Part of Whyman's thesis is that hope needs to be actionable, and as best as I can tell, his advice for the future is to recalibrate our expectations and be satisfied smaller, more achievable, less utopian forms of progress. He hopes that this will prevent us from falling permanently into despair, and allow us (and more importantly, our children) to continue doing the work needed to someday enact greater changes. But I'm not sure that this answers how to maintain hope in the face of climate change so much as it does sidestep the question. I've only recently finished the book, so perhaps I need more time to sit with the argument. And, of course, the world as a whole has yet to find a solution to the climate crisis, so perhaps I'm asking too much of Whyman.
Even with those caveats, I still found the work clarifying, thought-provoking, and beautiful. If the linked Outline article grabs your attention, I highly recommend the full book.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews