Current pop and media culture puts a lot of emphasis on "passion." Often one can hear in marketing phrases such "find your true passion." But is it, from a philosophical standpoint, good or healthy to be passionate? Throughout the history of philosophy, from the Stoics through to Spinoza, there has been a lot of distrust about passion? Can passsion be said to be our true feelings and therefore authentic? How does passion compare to Platonic love?

The clue as to why philosophers through the ages have been so distrustful of passion lies in the word itself. Etymologically, "passion" is the opposite of "action". When you do something, you are active; when something is done to you, you are passive, i.e. subject to a passion. Looking at things in this way, it would seem that our passions, far from being "our true feelings", are not really ours at all. Only our actions can be properly attributed to us. The passions belong more to their sources, the things that are genuinely responsible for them: we merely receive them at the behest of those external forces. And it's a very natural thought that activity should be regarded as superior to passivity. With respect to our passions, we are like leaves drifting in a stream, subject to fortune. Moreover, many passions are decidedly unpleasant; and, even in the case of the pleasant ones, we can lose them just as easily as we acquire them, precisely because we have no autonomous control over them as we do...