Just like anxiety, fear or joy, hope is a fundamental anthropological phenomenon that is characterized by its profound ambivalence. More than once, the antagonistic forces of hope and fear pull us in different directions, causing a disequilibrium that impedes the ego capacity to act. From Hesiod to Nietzsche, via Heraclitus (men “hope wildly”) and Spinoza, hope was often suspected of being something bad rather than good. It was not forgotten, however, that the “black sun of melancholy” can transform existence into a sterile desert, where the only words that circulate are the interminable lament of grievance. Hence the cosmopolitical, anthropological and clinical importance of the Kantian question: “What may I hope for?” which needs to be asked once again in the dark times we are living through today. This boils down, in particular, to asking ourselves under what conditions life itself can be regarded as a promise, and what resources of hope lie buried deep down within us, when we perceive ahead of our childhood and behind our death.