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Full Idea
To divide the soul into reason and passion …divides us against ourselves, forcing us each to be defensively half a person, instead of a harmonious whole.
Gist of Idea
Dividing ourselves into confrontational reason and passion destroys our harmonious whole
Source
Robert C. Solomon (The Passions [1976], 2.3)
Book Ref
Solomon,Robert C.: 'The Passions (1993 ed)' [Hackett 1993], p.58
A Reaction
This is the best aspect of Solomon's book. I'm not sure, though, how this works in practice. Should I allow the winds of emotion to alter the course of my reasoning, or stunt my feelings by always insisting that reason plays a part? That's too dualist!
| 5963 | Some say emotion is a sort of reason, and others say virtue concerns emotion [Plutarch] |
| 17203 | Minds are subject to passions if they have inadequate ideas [Spinoza] |
| 4864 | An emotion is only bad if it hinders us from thinking [Spinoza] |
| 12935 | Every feeling is the perception of a truth [Leibniz] |
| 23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche] |
| 23937 | It is reason which needs the anchorage of passions, rather than vice versa [Solomon] |
| 23947 | Dividing ourselves into confrontational reason and passion destroys our harmonious whole [Solomon] |
| 23958 | The supposed irrationality of our emotions is often tactless or faulty expression of them [Solomon] |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| 23967 | Some emotions are direct responses, and neither rational nor irrational [Goldie] |
| 23971 | Emotional thought is not rational, but it can be intelligible [Goldie] |