If as Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, then what life is worth living? Is it the passionate life?
The language of the modern self-development literature is full of passion—or at least references to passion. We are advised by these Gurus of Passion that passion is the key to finding joy and a fulfilling life; finding our destiny and securing our purpose lies in living with passion. See this site for a variety of claims by modern Gurus of Passion.
This “Selling of Passion” was probably bound to happen in a world driven by technology: a revisiting of the supposed value and efficacy of passion as opposed to “cold” instrumental (technological) reason. The futurist John Naisbitt coined the term “high tech, high touch” in which we yearn for a more emotionally richer life in a technologically driven age. In other words there is clearly a market for passion.
If as Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, then what life is worth living? Is it the passionate life? What do philosophers have to say about the meaning and value of passion that can help us here?
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Can they give us any suggestions on the differences between the various passions? Are there passions we should avoid and ones we should embrace? Does reason inevitably conflict with passion such that the passionate life has no place for reason? And does reason automatically exclude the passionate life?
Not-so-Passionate Philosophers
One stream of philosophical argument warns that passion make us less free.
The Stoics of the Hellenistic Age held that “emotions like fear or envy (or impassioned sexual attachments, or passionate love of anything whatsoever) either were, or arose from, false judgments, and that the sage—a person who had attained moral and intellectual perfection—would not undergo them”.
For the Stoics, “the passions or pathê are literally ‘things which one undergoes’ and are to be contrasted with actions or things that one does” The Stoics argued that one should not be psychologically subject to anything—manipulated and moved by it, rather than yourself, being actively and positively in command of your reactions and responses to things as they occur or are in prospect. It connotes a kind of complete self-sufficiency. It is significant that the original Latin meaning of “passion” (“passio”) meant suffering and endurance.
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The philosopher Lucretius said that the “lovers’ passion is stormed tossed ,even in the moment of possession, by the waves of delusion and incertitude….They clasp the object of their longing so tightly that the embrace is painful. They kiss so fiercely that teeth are driven into lips.”
Too much passion then makes us slaves to desire according to this view-even destroying us.
Plato (in Book 8 of the Republic) tells the story of the young man who, living in his “heyday of passion,” cannot tell the difference between necessary pleasures and unnecessary pleasures- and thus wastes his life. He is living in the land of delusion, the land of “lotus eater.” Plato alludes to a line from Homer’s Odyssey about “drone desires.”
The More Passionate Philosophers
Yet there is another train of philosophical thinking that is more accepting of passion.
Philosopher David Hume, notwithstanding his adroit usage of logic, asserted that our reason is the slave of passion--a simple fact of human nature. He also distinguished between good emotions and bad emotions.
Soren Kierkegaard, known for integrating his Christian beliefs into his philosophical thinking, defended the sincere passion of a non-Christian pagan as against Christian believers who had no deep feelings about their beliefs.
Jean-Paul Sartre argued that passion and responsibility are compatible: passion is not a power, he said, that is a “ravaging force which fatally leads a man to certain acts”--thus answering Lucretius and the Stoics.
Contemporary philosopher Martha Nussbaum also rejects the notion that emotions are blind forces that have nothing to with reason or responsibility--even finding a role for "rational emotions" in public affairs.
Kant has the reputation for being a very austere, very logical philosopher, rejecting the role of moral passions as part of sound ethical judgments (in lieu of “duty”), however he did integrate feeling into his aesthetics of judgment. He also declared: “Nothing ever great is done without passion.” Other examples of philosophers who saw the passions in a less negative light are Hegel and Nietzsche.
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