Passions and Drives
We must constantly give birth to our thoughts out of our pain and maternally endow them with all blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and disaster. Life means constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame, and also all that wounds us.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Preface §3
Are your passions a problem?
Some popular philosophies seem to think so.
Stoicism is about control - if you don’t control your passions, you can’t control your happiness.
Buddhism is about desire - if you can get rid of desire, then you will be happy.
Scientific thinking also has this avoidance of our emotional lives: if we think rationally - that is, unemotionally - we can get to the truth. And, somehow, the truth will satisfy us, or bring us serenity, or even happiness.
I think this is a problem.
One: human life is full of passions - strong emotions - both good and bad. We love, we hate, we feel joy and despair, we despise people and …
