Hope: evolutionary or historical?

 In what was the second of his lectures since published in the short book Hope and History, Josef Pieper moves from attempting to characterise the nature of hope to attempting to characterise the meaning of the word "history". Josef Pieper draws a firm distinction between evolutionary thought, with its suggestion of universal laws to progress and ascent, and what he terms more strictly "history" that comes from the freedom of human actions. He particularly enters into a dialogue with the thought of Teilhard de Chardin on this point (pp.33 ff in my Ignatius Press edition).

Part of the essence of history is that it rests upon freedom and decision - and that it can therefore be marked by the presence of evil, whereas any use of that concept in relation to evolution would naturally be pointless.

Josef Pieper summarises his position as follows:

... in the midst of the evolution of the cosmos, which also shapes the nature of man's being; in the midst of "natural history", which includes that of mankind; alongside and outside of the many other sorts of "development" (more or less pre-determinable as regards direction and pace) of intellectual life, in the sciences as in the arts, in the technological mastery of natural forces - apart from all that and in the midst of it .... there is also a fully different, irreducible, incomparable, and in the strict sense "historical" kind of event that issues from the free decisions of men, comes about through them, and itself participates in the mode of being proper to human acts of the will; which means, for instance, that it cannot be predicted or calculated on the basis of evolutionary or historical laws and above all that it possesses, beyond any mere factuality, the quality of having to be "answered for" and of being "good" or "evil". 

 Josef Pieper's thought has relevance to how we might understand the meaning of the hope that is the subject of the Jubilee Year 2025. If we see that hope as being a naturally occurring part of evolutionary and determinative historical processes, we will experience the Jubilee Year as something that happens to us, not feeling that we need to do anything about it. In appealing to individuals and nations, in his Christmas Urbi et Orbi address, to enter through the Holy Door opened at the initiation of the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis on the other hand suggests that we need to take an active step in the celebration of hope:

Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives. Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, and surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!