counsel of despair

counsel of despair (plural counsels of despair)

1. A proposal or piece of advice that indicates one has given up on trying to fix a given obstacle or problem.
   • 1956, Mortimer Brewster Smith, The Public Schools in Crisis: Some Critical Essays, page 8:

     Without holding any particular brief for a diet of Shelley, I would think it only a counsel of despair to say that the majority, or any sizable minority, of average intelligence can't be reached with the values of education, with some of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the race, but must be shoved into "attractive" courses devoid of any real educational meat so they will be kept off the labor market or the streets.

   • 1986, George Shultz, Proposed Arms Sales to the Kingdom of Jordan:

     But it is a counsel of despair. You say somebody else might do something to make themselves stronger, therefore we should not bother to look to our own security.

   • 2019, Matthew Landauer, Dangerous Counsel: Accountability and Advice in Ancient Greece, page 176:

     And so we might think that the dialogue offers little more politically than a counsel of despair. There seem to be only two options: either a wholesale reconstitution of the political, so that those with a true understanding of the good would replace the ignorant as wielders of political power (the ostensible solution of the Republic), or if that proves impossible or undesirable, a retreat from politics and an embrace of political quietism on the part of the philosopher.

2. An action or decision that reflects the attitude behind such advice.
   • 1897, Metropolitan Pulpit and Homiletic Monthly - Volume 33, page 491:

     Again, Agnosticism is “right” if it be a "counsel of honesty” ; wrong if it be a “counsel of despair.”

   • 1917, Richard Cornthwaite Lambert, The Parliamentary History of Conscription in Great Britain, page 311:

     If a man adopts an exceptional measure in a state of absolute extremity, that does not make it a fundamental article of his faith. It is a doctrine of despair, and he merely adopted it on that occasion as a counsel of despair, and when a Liberal and a democrat adopts an exceptional measure as a counsel of despar that does not constitute that measure in harmony either with Liberalism or democracy.

   • 2013, Theodor Mommsen, Dero A. Saunders, John H. Collins, The History of Rome, page 122:

     To take up the way of force was no doubt a counsel of despair.

• counsel of perfection

• “counsel of despair”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “counsel of despair”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.