Topics Love

Question 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?

Accepted:
April 15, 2007

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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 over our actions.

This distinction between action and passion was traditionally tied to a distinction between the intellectual mind and the animal soul. The soul would be passive to the extent that it would be subject to influences from physical things. It will feel what is going on within its own body, but it will be passive with respect to these feelings: for as long as the stomach is empty, the soul will have no option but to feel hungry. Even in the case of a more outward-looking passion such as love, this might actually feel quite pleasant, for a while at least. But it can also be tempered by anxiety, jealousy, and the pains of loss, and the subject cannot control this. (I'm put in mind of an old song from the 1920s: "You made me love you: I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it. You made me happy sometimes, you made me glad. But there were times, dear, you made me feel so bad.") By contrast, when one indulges in philosophical contemplation, one activates the pure intellect which, by being detached from bodily things, can autonomously chart its own course through a more sublime realm (of Platonic Forms, or whatever), and thereby achieve greater and more enduring rewards than mere carnal pleasures.

This is why so many philosophers over the centuries have so highly sung the praises of philosophy as a discipline. It's worth noting, however, that there have been exceptions. David Hume, for one, believed that this sort of intellectual contemplation could ultimately lead only to a thoroughly impractical scepticism. Notwithstanding their faults, our passions were the only things that could actually guide us through our lives. "Reason", he wrote, "is and only ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." (Treatise, book 2, part 3, section 3).