希望とは : 希い望むこと

What is hope? : beg and wish

Kondo Yoshiki

広島大学大学院文学研究科論集

The Hiroshima University studies, Graduate School of Letters

KIBOU (hope in Japanese) is not a physiological desire, but a social demand. And this demand is not one-sided claim but a polite wish and a careful ethical request. KIBOU has two Chinese Character, KI and BOU. BOU means “wish" or “request". KI means on the one hand KOINEGAU (beg, ask), and on the other hand MARE (rare, uncommon). Then KIBOU (hope) means “politely wishing (begging)" and its object has “rare" high value.

KIBOU-SURU (hope in Japanese verb) has the high valuable direct object of hope, and also the indirect object (P) as the person whom man begs. “P" in the hope is the person of surrounding, whom man wishes to understand and support his hope. Also in the case that man realizes his hope independently by himself, man has his neighbor. And in this case the man of hope (KIBOU) may suggest his courteous request modestly, “Please permit me to do only by myself". That is the Japanese KIBOU (hope).

Usually man takes up only “W" as the rare high valuable object of hope, but strictly must adopt “a (W)” (a=the conduct of human, W=its object), for example, “to possess (a) the camera (W)" or “I become (a) a teacher (W)". If “W" is negative-value, for example “dirty matter", which can not be the object of hope, man must say in his hope “to exclude W" i.e. “a (W)". The object of hope i.e. “a (W)" is realized by the man of hope and other persons voluntarily. The “a" of KIBOU (hope) exists in human spontaneous conduct, so must not be natural matter. In English man can say, “I hope it will rain tomorrow", but any Japanese can not say so in his hope (KIBOU), because rainfall is a natural matter.

希望

期待

絶望

希う

望む

Ethics. Morals [ 150 ]

jpn

広島大学大学院文学研究科

Copyright (c) 2007 by Author

[ISSN] 1347-7013

[NCID] AA11643449