Taking life philosophically.
31 May 2010
Many people think passion is an important thing in life. The idea is that you should learn to know yourself to realize what it is you want to do in life. Once you find out what you want to do you should throw yourself into it without reservation. In the end you will become very good at it, and you will be doing what you want, enjoying it and making a living doing it.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits exemplifies this view that I will call passionalism:
I’m lucky — I’ve found my passion, and I’m living it. I can testify that it’s the most wonderful thing, to be able to make a living doing what you love.
I want to ask some critical questions about passionalism. Etymology is a good place to start. Etymology is not my main concern here, but it serves to highlight the difficulty in the passionalist view. In light of passionalism, it is surprising to find such meanings as “suffering” and “enduring” when you look at the etymology of the word “passion”. Should we suffer then, according to the passionalist view?
No. I believe that passionalists generally do not think being passionate about something means to suffer. They generally regard suffering as undesirable. What they mean is that to follow your passion is a way to realize yourself, to actualize your whole potential, to be the best you can be. There are thus two views on passion:
The difference between the passionalist view and the view of passion as suffering may not too great, however. It may be just that any kind passion motivates a person, but some people have success and others do not. The person who enjoys self-realization manages to overcome whatever difficulties there may be, while the passion of the suffering person drives him against insurmountable obstacles, and only the obstacles cause him to suffer. However, this is not a complete picture, as obviously it is also possible for suffering to be intrinsic to the passion: thus the idea of the suffering artist trying to give a form to his suffering in his art.
Whatever the full truth of the matter is, the two views or the two kinds of passion have something in common. On the passionalist view, a passion is—roughly—a strong want that moves you into doing something, and when you do it, it gives you immense satisfaction. On the second view, a passion is suffering that you have to endure. But on both views passion is something that you undergo.
On both views, there is no choice for the passionate person. You are not an active agent but an object of passion. It is not you who is in charge but the passion. The passionalist might respond that it is still your passion, but this would not be enough, as not everything that is your own is good for you, unless you think that your sweet tooth or back ache is good for you too.
With this in mind, another piece of etymological information comes as no surprise: passion is connected to passivity. In a sense, the person under the yoke of passion is a passive person. He may seem an active person in the sense that he is doing a lot of things, particularly unpleasant and heavy things. Although he does this things, he is still passive in the sense that a slave is passive: in relation to the slaveowner. Although the slave does many things, it is the slaveowner who is the active party between the two. The passionalist says you should be passive, a slave of your passion.
This reasoning is open to an objection. You can say that we never do things because we choose to, because (depending on how you want to put it) choices can only made on the basis of what we want: if a person does not want anything, he lacks the motivation to act and consequently does not act. In this you would be following David Hume, who thought that reason in itself lacks the capacity to motivate, and is only a “slave of the passions”.
You might be right in following Hume. But this would not help you defend the passionalist view. Hume’s point is a dry, philosophical point about the kinds of things that motivate us. He is only saying that all choices begin with an emotion.
The passionalist on the other hand cannot commit himself to this, because for him it is a meaningful question whether or not to follow your passion. For the passionalist, passion is about more than just emotions that you happen to have, but a normative concept. The passionalist believes that following your passion is the key to the good life. He is not saying (and in fact could not say) that we follow our passions anyway (which would be what Hume is saying)—he is recommending us to follow them.
Why is the passionalist recommending passion? I do not know. How is passion better as a source of motivation compared to other things like pleasure, wisdom and justice, for example? Is it?
The journal of Timo Laine (contact information). Cultural commentary from the perspective of a philosophy student in Helsinki.