Hope among the virtues: The challenge of delineating a virtue of hope

Abstract Scholars have examined how hope can be a distinct moral virtue. Some consider it to be a moral virtue along Aristotelian lines, while others consider it to be a structural virtue. My goal in this paper is to examine hope's relationship to emotions and moral virtues. I highlight hope's relationship to emotions such as anger, fear, despair and love, and discuss how various moral virtues (and vices) promote, sustain or mitigate various hopes. This complicates the view that there is a singular moral virtue of hope. The upshot, I argue, is that the virtue‐making features of hope are best captured by a combination of virtuous dispositions present in other virtues, and so, if hope is a single moral virtue, it is constituted by features of other virtues.