Episode 6 - La passion

A production, the podcasters. Hello, yes hello ! You know, I am always Marie-Rober. Since now, more than two years, I have an offer to make for you. And if philosophy was becoming sexy, and if it continued to be abstract, to come and light our days, like our nights, and if it left the space confined to the libraries, and it came to fall into our daily life. The dissertations and bad memories of the terminal are over. Here, we change the tone. Philosophy is not a method to follow, it is a step aside. It allows us to take back on people, things, and above all, what submerges us. Suddenly, by the magic of words and reasoning, we approach the events of life differently. And we even manage to find comfort in areas of discomfort. In short, we learn to do good. That is why, during these few minutes in your company, I have no other ambition than to stop the counters and to share a bubble of breathing. Let's get inspired, and let's do it together, our now traditional step aside. We said it unresolvable and dangerous. We accuse it of being a source of suffering or despair. We confuse it with repulsion. And we attribute it to our biggest mistakes. And yet, yet, we are all looking for it. It constitutes the one of our lives, the supreme lens that gives a purple color to our daily life. The color of the heart, the rose of the day, the life that palpates under the veins. You understood it. The theme of the day is passion, so devouring as desirable. Is it necessary to fear it or to commit suicide? When do philosophers say, and how can they inspire us? Are you ready? Let me take you on a journey that I hope is exciting and exciting. Seneca, in his attempt to anger, declares, "Passions are also bad instruments than bad guides." Condemnation is clear as it is immediate. While a few years later, it is around Voltaire to affirm that true passions give strength by giving courage. Through these two well-themed quotes, all the ambiguity of the notion is revealed. Unsensitive to each other, passion is essential to others. In order to choose our camp, we may have to start with the beginning and understand what is its origin and its curious history. As often, let's first stop on the etymology. Passion suffers from its dark origin, because the same word comes from the Latin "patior", "patis". "Omonim du grec patos" means "sufferance", "suplice". "Etat de celui qui subit". In short, passion, in its essence, and this strong emotion, well too strong, is proved by a person whose mind is at peace by someone or something and who does not manage to get out of this obsession. In the classical philosophy, passion is translated by an impulse of the body. It is something that is impossible to master and that is seen in our flesh. In modern philosophy, passion is what threatens our mental balance, what makes us tense. Even worse than a simple inclination or a taste or pronunciation, passion is characterized by the depth of the territory it conquers. There is a war of place for the rest. Contrary to the fixed idea, which is located on the intellectual level, passion is a matter of emotion. We cry, we laugh, we blush, we gasp, passion makes us see all the colors. And according to nature or our ages, we see what it is. We are passionate about a Netflix series that prevents us from sleeping, for the bike, the weekend that deprives us of our family, or for a lover crossed by a bullet like Cleve's princess meeting the Duke of Nemours in the novel of Madame de Lafayette, passion is therefore primal, a balance that seems to deprive us of freedom. And it is for this that in the history of thought, she has not always had good press. Let's take a look at her detractors and her defenders. In the end, as we said in the introduction, passion is defined according to Aristotle, like the fact of suffering, the fact of being mute and restrained by those who escape our will. But be careful, it does not mean that she is condemnable from a moral point of view. On the contrary, passion is neutral because it is purely passive. Just as we do not blame someone whose body is ill, we do not blame the one who is under the impression of a passion. This is not our fault, passion is there, and we are the first victims. In the Anikomak ethics, passion presents itself as a movement that modifies behavior. Passions such as anger or love provoke deep changes in the body and also in the mind. In short, when he is passionate, the human being is under influence, almost alienated. But it is precisely for these reasons and this influence that passion can be precious in rhetoric and in the oratory art. And yes, the art of convincing and persuading does not seek anything else but to influence. A speech is successful when it is possible to alter the movements of the soul of the one who receives them. Leave suffering as much as using passion to useful purposes. The speech of the greatest orators does not seek to be rational, but rather to trouble the soul, to impact it, even sometimes to manipulate it. We do not have in mind some political leaders who know for the best and for the worst perfectly using this function of passion in the oratory. The bell sound is sensitively the same with the Epicureans and the Stoics. These two great schools of antiquity look at the passion in the wrong eye. For Epicure, passion prevents the pain of the body, known as apony, and the pain of the mind, known as ataraxia, which, in the whole, defines happiness. And yes, it is difficult to be peaceful when we are passionate about money, chocolate or our last encounter in Tinder. Because if at Epicure, the goal of life itself is pleasure, this one must not be entrenched by the agitation of passions. And in the end, we can easily see the nuance between the two. The balance of pleasure on one side and the evolvement passion that emerges from the other. The happy man is the one who has to make the part, among the pleasures, of those who are subject to detaining the agitation of passions and of those whose salvation can, on the contrary, contribute to reaching the tranquility of the soul. The philosopher enumerates so the desires, whose doctrine encourages him to turn away. In his letter to the Renaissance, he writes, "Among the desires, the ones are natural and necessary, the others are natural and unnecessary, the others are neither natural nor necessary, but the effect of the dark opinion." Passion is therefore to fear at Epicure, since it does not allow this just balance, since it tends towards its desires neither natural nor necessary. And above all, if we observe the effect of passion on us, we will quickly realize that it can be a source of unpleasant sensations. At Epicure, it is better to turn your back on him. The stoicians, as for them, give an image even more negative, even more black and more radical, of passions. For them, passions are a disorder of the directorial part of the soul, the seat of reason. Passion is not the opposite of reason, but even worse, a perverted reason, a reason that has deteriorated, which has become irrational, which has lost its mastery. I am already panicking. Epicure talks about it in his interviews. He writes, "Passion comes only from the fact of being frustrated in his desires or meeting what we are trying to avoid. This is what brings troubles, agitations, misfortunes, calamities, chagrin, lamentation, malignity, which makes the jealous old man, passion that even prevents, to lend his ear to reason." The tableau is dark, isn't it? The stoicians define passions as animic commotion, animic perturbations. It is useless to speak Latin to grasp it. Passion is a disease of the soul that disturbs the relationship of the soul to the natural order, that is to say, the understanding of the universe. In short, the stoicians still have it, they are eager for the one who seeks remorse. So let's admit that this little turn in antiquity does not give much desire to give to our passions. What is it in modern times? Are you going to find an argument that values this fire that drives us? We must wait for the 17th century, particularly our dear Spinoza, so that the black sister entwining the notion is a little clearer. In the summer, published in 1677, the passions are natural phenomena, obeying necessary laws that we should rather understand and study instead of condemning them. The passion in Spinoza is interpreted in terms of passivity. In short, in his house, it is an inadequate idea, a confused idea that is opposed to action, which it is always an adequate idea. To simplify, action is entirely determined by the nature of the one who is the author. We are voluntary, whereas passion is the result of the action of external things on the one who undergoes it. On the one hand, we are masters, on the other, we are slaves. It is difficult to admit, but my passion for the trampoline is not the fruit of my will, it is rather the action of the trampoline on me. Not easy, isn't it? But those who Spinoza affirms at the same time are that passion is not an absence in itself. Unlike the philosopher of antiquity, he does not condemn it. It is only a force that moves, and you simply have to know it. To see it clearer, he proposes a classification of passions, a kind of employment mode to better live them. In Spinoza, there are three fundamental passions. The conatus, which is the desire to persevere in his being, the joy, and finally, the sadness. And at the end of the day, what Spinoza explains to us is that these passions are normal. So it is absurd to fight against passion in itself. It would be like fighting against the force of life, which is the conatus. Fighting against passion is fighting against the passionate subject, and therefore leading his fight for life against himself. Fighting against the conatus, against the joy, against the sadness, comes back to fight against life in the name of life itself. Passion is normal. In all animated bodies, there is passion. Seizing is already a little free and accepted. Are you sure? Anyway, very different, we find the same explanatory steps at Descartes. In 1649, René Descartes published his last book, "Le traité des passions de l'âme", which takes up the distinction between passion and action, calling the passion what the subject expresses and action what it does rather to others. Until then, nothing very different. But Descartes provides an explanation that is both psychological and physiological. Passion for him is always passion of the soul, that is to say that they are modifications, internal changes of the soul, caused by the impulses of the body. In fact, the following operation, the passions are exited in the soul, without intervening in the will, nor any action of the soul, by the way. Descartes considers passion as a kind of surprise of the soul by the body, a tumult of physical origin to which the will is made of faults. So the mechanism is quite simple to understand. The animal spirits, namely the thinnest parts of the blood, direct themselves from the heart to the brain and spread in the nerves. The soul, being truly attached to the whole body, is, of course, the impact. And yes, the next time you play your money in the casino, you will be able to say that it is the fault of the animal spirits that navigate in your blood and that reach your soul. The most important thing to remember in Descartes is that passion is judged good as long as it has the soul to want what is useful to it. And here we are, on our way. In Spinoza, we normalize passion, in Descartes, we engage in seeing what it has to do with good. If you develop a passion for celery juice, no panic, even if you undergo it, even if this passion comes from the outside and it is not the fruit of your action but rather something that has crossed your way, you will not have to fear it. Finally, a good news in this podcast, isn't it? But, but, but, don't rejoice too much, because no exploration of passion without evoking our dear Emmanuel Kant. In the vertigo of love, of the trampoline, of the celery juice or of the casino, Emmanuel Kant knew no doubt much. His life was not, frankly speaking, in the passionate tumult. These days were all identical, only devoted to meditation and teaching. No event, nor loving orders, could ruin this purely intellectual existence. The day of the philosopher was entirely turned towards reason and its use. The merit of the sequential thought is therefore that it is not content to oppose reason and passion, although, by valuing one to condemn the other, what the philosopher reveals to us are their respective mechanisms. On the one hand, Kant defines reason as everything that does not come from experience, but rather from reflection. Therefore, reason is a kind of spark, a power of analysis, of retreat, of deduction. Reason is what allows us to acquire knowledge and act in a measured way. On the other hand, passion, it, is a feeling that no reason nor any action can master. It is a disposition of the mind on which reason has no hold, like a kind of wild territory. At Kant, passion is not a simple emotion, but it is a real disease, a disease of the soul, and the term is voluntarily very strong. Passion gathers the mind, which then expresses itself through an insatiable agitation. In his anthropology, Kant franchises an additional step. Even more so than defining passion, it reveals above all the risks that we face in ascending. He affirms, for example, that passion is dangerous because it irresistibly leads to the fulfillment of morally condemnable acts. And yes, if passion prevents any reflection, it also makes us make bad choices. When we are in love, we are no longer able to listen to our deep reason and certainly not our parents, our friends who would like to advise us. We are no longer able to compare, judge, measure, choose, face, question. We are taken to the heart of this storm, contemplating the minutes that separate us from being loved. Fragile as soon as the other is absent and can't eat this fire. When we are passionate, we are haped by the crowd. And it's the same, well beyond the love-loving passion. In all passions, we are able to deposit the necessary tools to the exercise of morality. Because in Kant's philosophy, morality is precisely the reason. So without reason, no morality. Being moral is such a way that our action can be established universally. In sum, before executing something, we must wonder if our act would be good for all of us. And to ask for it, you understood the principle, it is necessary to be able to put into action its reason. And not only to listen to its heart beating in the sound of the passions. The reason and morality are therefore linked. Losing the reason is also renouncing morality. Being passionate is therefore being immoral. We must really finish this way. What to do, what to say of these passions that push us to wake up in the morning, of these passions that anchor our determination in the living. What to say about the passion that allows us to move mountains, to reverse the table and maybe even to change a little this world. For Nietzsche, the sound is a little different. Because at Nietzsche, the affirmative passions, like health or even sexual love, are not to be feared. On the contrary, they manifest the will of power of man, free from metaphysical values. Nietzsche reveals the fact that each individual has in him an energy that acts like a motor. We always push a little further. This is what he precisely calls the will of power. He writes, "Life is in my eyes, an instinct of belief, of duration, of accumulation of strength, of power. There, where the will of power makes mistakes, there are complaints." And this is exactly this power that expresses itself, for example, in the happy passions on which the active nihilism rests, thanks to which we are going to build unedited values. Passion, passion removes us from the mossy detachment, from the sinister rain, passions attest to the fact that we are alive. Passion, when we mainly rely on a positive passion, we learn to surpass ourselves. It's in our attachment to go beyond our fears, to our habits, to our comforts, that we liberate the power of life that is in us. It is only in this way that we intensify the joys of existence and that we abandon those that weaken us. When we are passionate, we give up on laziness, on indifference, on fear. We make fun of life. So, even though sometimes we face trouble zones, it is worth it. Maybe the challenge is not to choose your clan between reason and passion, but to choose these passions, those that increase us, those that raise us, those that increase our soul, rather than to beat it, rather than to consume it. But maybe we can also inspire each of the guests of the day. Maybe we can put passion in our speeches with Aristotle, maybe we can balance them with the Epicureans, understand them with Spinoza and cards, eliminate them, in any case, the most negative, the most dangerous, with Kant. And finally, choose the best with Nietzsche. As often, everything is a story of nuances. And before you let yourself go through your passions, here are a few words from my dear Anne Dufour-Montel, who, I believe, makes a tribute to passion in his praise of risk. "We want intensity without risk," wrote she. "It's impossible. Intensity is the jump in the void, the unpunished part, what has not yet been written, and which, yet, in us, is waiting for, precisely that. Passion is a disposition that has been born in us since childhood, that we can grow or decrease, but totally alter. Never. Let us listen to our dangers, let us listen to our risks, they are not a caprice, they are not a caricature of Western investigation of sensations. On the contrary, our risks, our passionate risks, are the path that allows us to find our coherence. So, I wish you bright passions, never again. Thank you for your listening. Do not forget that here, there is no question of lessons, but just of a proposition, of a hypothesis that you belong to, to confirm or not. We meet again in 15 days. In the meantime, do not forget to read, to dare, and to remember that there is nothing more sexy than philosophy.