On Hope

There was an important lecture at the College de France by an eminent philosopher, though his ideas and methods had fallen out of favor in the past few years, called, enigmatically, “On Hope.” On the day when the lecture was supposed to take place, a letter went out and notices were put up that the lecture would be postponed for an indefinite amount of time. Many thought it was a joke, and that there was no lecture at all, that the postponement itself “was” the lecture. But after a few weeks, a notice went out stating that the lecture had been rescheduled for the following week. This time only a few showed up, the rest assuming that another notice of postponement would arrive at the eleventh hour, so to speak, and the performance of deferred “On Hope” continue. But the philosopher was indeed there, and not perceiving the way his lecture was received, was so depressed by the meager turnout that he decided to postpone his own lecture indefinitely, and only spoke a few words about the personal tragedies that had afflicted his life in the past years, which had not only postponed the lecture scheduled for the previous month but had caused his silence over the last few years, which undoubtedly, he concluded, is why he has fallen into such unpopularity by the academy.