Experimental Passions
We are sailing straight over and away from morality; we are crushing and perhaps destroying the remnants of our own morality by daring to travel there. Never before have intrepid voyagers and adventurers opened up a more profound world of insight
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §23
Strong emotions are an inescapable part of being human. But they can be a minefield, a complex web of internal experiences that we have to navigate.
These internal experiences - emotional, psychological, personal - are often important factors in how we behave towards other people. So it is unsurprising that philosophers and psychologists spend a lot of time studying them.
I think we have become used to thinking about these strong emotions in binary ways. Love, kindness, compassion, sympathy, empathy, joy are good. Hatred, disgust, contempt, envy, greed, lust - these are bad.
Nietzsche does something different and interesting with these emotions, what ancient philosophy would call …
