What hope for what philosophy

If the elevation of hope to the dignity of an explicitly philosophical question takes the form of an interrogation ("What am I allowed to hope for?" (Kant), it is above all a question addressed: to whom? To what Bloch calls the "utopian animal", but whom Marcel elegantly calls "homo viator". Is it the march of humanity that would resemble the construction of a dwelling that only the last generation would have the leisure to inhabit, a presupposition well and truly inscribed in the perspective of progress inherited from the Enlightenment? Even Kant found the idea inconceivable. To be intelligible, the despairing catastrophes of the 20th and 21st centuries require a dialectic of future and past, of the memory of the future (Marcel) that takes into account the wounded memories of the past (Benjamin). A "docta spes africana" (Bidima) is thus proposed, and quickly put to the test in this book. All that remains credible and reasonable is a hope that first hopes for the unhoped-for, which is the sole domain of the event, and therefore of a gift. Thinking this way is the condition for a philosophical practice that promises openness to the future.