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The Virtues of a Passionate Life: Erotic Love and “the Will to Power”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Robert C. Solomon
Robert C. Solomon
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
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Extract

I would like to defend a conception of life that many of us in philosophy practice but few of us preach, and with it a set of virtues that have often been ignored in ethics. In short, I would like to defend what philosopher Sam Keen, among many others, has called the passionate life. It is neither exotic nor unfamiliar. It is a life defined by emotions, by impassioned engagement and belief, by one or more quests, grand projects, embracing affections. It is also sometimes characterized (for example, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust, by Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche) in terms of frenzy, vaulting ambition, essentially insatiable goals, impossible affections. I want to contrast this conception of life with ordinary morality and “being a good person,” although for obvious reasons I do not want to say that one must give up the latter in pursuing the former. This is a mistake that Nietzsche often suggests with his “immor-alist” posturing and warrior metaphors, but I am convinced—on a solid textual basis—that he intended no such result. Nor do I want to dogmatically assert any superiority of a passionate, engaged life over a life that is more calm and routine (“bourgeois” in the standard cant of Bohemian rebellion). On the other hand, I do want to raise the question whether mere proper living, obedience to the law, utilitarian “rational choice” calculations, respect for others' rights and for contracts, and a bit of self-righteousness is all there is to a good life, even if one “fills in” the nonmoral spaces with permissible pleasures and accomplishments. Even a greatly enriched version of Kant, in other words, such as that recently defended by Barbara Herman, unfairly denigrates a kind of life that many of us deem desirable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Winter 1998 , pp. 91 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1998

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References

1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Viking Press, 1954), section V, paragraph 3.Google Scholar

2 Rhees, Rush, ed., Recollections of Wittgenstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 489Google Scholar; see also Drury, M. O'C., “Notes on Conversations,”Google Scholar in ibid., pp. 76–171. See also Eagleton, Terry and Jarman, Derek, Wittgenstein (screenplay) (London: British Film Institute, 1993).Google Scholar

3 For example, see my essay “A More Severe Morality: Nietzsche's Affirmative Ethics,” in my From Hegel to Existentialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Hunt, Lester, Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 1991).Google Scholar

4 I owe this clarification to a good question by George Sher.

5 Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

6 There is, no doubt, some neurophysiological explanation of such behavior, probably in terms of such exotic brain-stem spots as the locus coeruleus and the deficiency or excess of such chemicals as norepinephrine/serotonin. I do not doubt that a good deal of “the passionate life” is chronic rather than cultivated, but the question—if we are not to beg such questions as whether a virtue must be something “under one's control”—is whether the passionate life can be considered virtuous and, if so, what its virtues might be.

7 Some of these themes were anticipated several years ago by Williams, Bernard in “Morality and the Emotions,” in his Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but long before that, of course, by Plato and Aristotle, and then by Nietzsche.

8 Foot, Philippa, “Virtues and Vices,” in her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).Google Scholar This view of Aristotle seems to have far-reaching influence, for example, in David Steward Nivison's comparison of Aristotle and Mencius in his excellent article “Mencius and Motivation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Special Issue on Classical Chinese Philosophy, 09 1979, p. 419.Google Scholar

9 Notably, in Nietzsche, Friedrich, Daybreak, trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

10 Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, ed., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).Google Scholar

11 I owe this clarification to a probing question from John Cooper.

12 Williams, Bernard, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 9.Google Scholar Cf. Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Ross, David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), Book III.Google Scholar William Frankena, no friend of “virtue ethics,” has suggested that the virtues are no more than dispositions to obey rational principles, thus eviscerating the topic as worthy of study in its own right.

13 Ryle, Gilbert, Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949).Google Scholar

14 See, e.g., Green, O. H., “Emotions and Belief,” American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph, no. 6 (1972).Google Scholar

15 Of course, a new and different “character” may be revealed or may emerge from that lapse, as when one falls in love or is overwhelmed emotionally by the birth of a new baby. Nevertheless, the virtue lies in the having of the emotion, not the disposition of character that may follow. (“I didn't know he had it in him.”)

16 Here I would include not only the great Scottish moralists, notably David Hume and Adam Smith (who placed far more emphasis on emotions than their colleagues Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury), but also Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in his educational works (e.g., Emile) also stressed the importance of the natural sentiments as opposed to those “unnatural” and “corrupt” calculations often called reason. An interesting contrast might be made here between this familiar “Western” view and classical Chinese thought. Thus, Confucian scholar Tu Wei-Ming distinguishes cultivated human sentiments from mere “natural” feelings, thereby reversing the Scots' emphasis on the naturalness of the moral sentiments. See Wei-Ming, Tu, Centrality and Commonality (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989).Google Scholar

17 If love is a virtue, for instance, there may yet be instances in which love is folly, although one would balk at the idea that love could sometimes be vicious. (There are such passions, of course, yet perhaps they should not be called “love,” but rather something like “obsession.” Heathcliff's mutually destructive passion for Catherine in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights would seem be like this, for instance. We may well insist that love is a virtue even when it is foolish or destructive, however, just as we insist on calling justice a virtue even when the results are disastrous, or as we insist that honesty is a virtue, even when the outcome is much worse than it would be with a simple “white” lie. I owe this clarification to a good question by Robert Audi.

18 Confucius, in emphasizing what we would call “the unity of theory and practice,” repeatedly stresses the “virtuosity” of the virtuous person (jen-ze). It is no coincidence that this is also a familiar term in music, and, given Confucius's sense of the centrality of music in life, “virtuosity” is not a mistranslation.

19 Nehamas, Alexander, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

20 The heavy and, I would say, unwarranted emphasis on “the Will to Power” comes largely from Martin Heidegger, who had little or no respect for the texts he used so freely. In the American and Anglophone scene, Walter Kaufmann also gave the notion considerable attention in his Nietzsche (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953)Google Scholar, the book that made Nietzsche at least respectable in a still bitterly anti-Nazi, positivistic philosophical world. The primary texts for such interpretations, however, are to be found in Nietzsche's unpublished notes, which ought to be treated with considerable suspicion. The concept itself smacks too much of that Schopenhauerian willfulness that Nietzsche struggled through much of his career to shrug off. To be sure, Nietzsche utilizes the metaphors of strength, health, and power throughout his ethical works, and he does use the assertion of power to correct certain obvious flaws in hedonism and to answer certain psychological mysteries about extreme forms of religious behavior, particularly asceticism. I believe, however, that it is a serious mistake in interpretation to conceive of the Will to Power—or anything much like it—as the germ from which Nietzsche's entire philosophy grows. For an ingenious attempt to “reconstruct” just such a “system,” see Richardson, John, Nietzsche's System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Regarding doubts about the overuse and abuse of Nietzsche's book (put together by others) called The Will to Power, see Magnus, Bernd, “Author, Writer, Text: The Will to Power,” International Studies in Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 2 (1990), pp. 49–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 phrase, Kant's “schmelzender Theilnehmung” (Grundlegung, Werke, Band IV, p. 399Google Scholar, Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Ellington, James W. [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1981])Google Scholar is translated as “melting compassion” by H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 67Google Scholar, and as “tender sympathy” by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959)Google Scholar and by Ellington, , p. 12Google Scholar, from whom the rest of the quotation is borrowed. Neither translation adequately captures Kant's demeaning irony. “Melting” is much better than “tender” for “schmelzender,” but neither “compassion” nor “sympathy” will do for “Theilnehmung,” which is more like “participation” (and less like “Mitleid,” usually translated as “compassion” or “pity”).

22 Hume, David, Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

23 James R. Heichelbech has carried out an interesting exploration of the role of feelings in Kant's ethics in his dissertation, “Emotion in Kant's Moral Theory” (Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, Boulder, 1996).Google Scholar

24 Feinberg, Joel, “Sentiment and Sentimentality in Practical Ethics,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 03 26, 1982.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 19.

26 Ibid., p. 42.

27 Shaffer, Jerome, “An Assessment of Emotion,” American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 2 (04 1983)Google Scholar, reprinted in Myers, G. E. and Irani, K. D., Emotion (New York: Haven, 1976).Google Scholar All page references are to the reprint.

28 Ibid., pp. 202–3.

29 Ibid., p. 220.

30 There has been a lively debate in psychology on this issue, focusing in particular on what is called the “startle response.” In recent years, even those theorists who once defended this “hardwired” reaction as an emotion have backed off and changed their minds— e.g., Paul Ekrnan, who once took surprise to be a “basic emotion” (Ekman, , The Nature of Emotion [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994]Google Scholar). In philosophy, see Robinson, Jenefer, “Startle,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 92, no. 2 (02 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Parts of this and the following section have been adapted from my essay “The Virtue of Love,” p. 16ff.Google Scholar

32 Schopenhauer, Arthur, World as Will and Idea, trans. Haldane, R. B. and Kemp, J., 2d ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1962).Google Scholar

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34 Gert, Bernard, The Moral Rules (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).Google Scholar

35 The shift of attention from action and character to feelings can be argued to have occurred in Europe in the eighteenth century, in the works of Rousseau, most obviously, but also in the work of the moral-sentiment theorists. There is an ancient argument against the passions, raised by Julia Annas, that holds that passion leads to excess. But what is meant by “excess,” and is it not the desirability of such “excess” that is brought into question here? If “excess” means bad behavior, then there are plenty of arguments, in utilitarianism and in virtue ethics, to condemn such behavior. But if “excess” refers to the passions themselves, the ancient argument begs the question. My argument is that being passionate is, in a qualified sense, good in itself. And if that is so, then an “excess” of passion is impossible in just the same way that an excess of any virtue is impossible, according to Aristotle.

36 This is not to deny, however, that love might take inappropriate objects. Plato anticipates this possibility when he insists that love (eros) cannot be merely desire but must be desire for the Good. I take it, in a pedestrian illustration, that this means that one cannot love a person for features that are evil. This conflicts with some current popular wisdom, for instance, in the far too many movies in which one morally perverted character supposedly “loves” another precisely because of his or her moral perversions. I owe this clarification to a difficult question from Robert Audi.

37 Sankowski, Edward, “Love and Moral Obligation,” Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 2 (Spring 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Sankowski, , “Responsibility of Persons for Their Emotions,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 7 (1977), pp. 829–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Danto, Arthur, “Basic Actions,” in his Analytical Philosophy of Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

39 Nietzsche takes this view to the extreme by arguing that not only are virtues particular— that is, they have particular objects—but they are also particular in kind, that is, they are unique to the virtuous person.

40 See, e.g., Williams, Bernard, “Morality and the Emotions” (supra note 7).Google Scholar

41 Rorty, , ed., Explaining Emotions (supra note 10).Google Scholar

42 This is not an a priori argument, and it is subject to obvious empirical counterexamples, for example, the soaring divorce rate. But the fact that love often ends does not undermine the thesis that love is an emotional process that is (or can be) intensified and “deepened” with protracted intimacy, familiarity, knowledge and understanding, and shared experiences. The most poetic description of this process is the French Romantic Stendhal's description of “crystallization,” as the beloved accrues more and more charms and virtues; see Stendhal, (Beyle, Marie-Henri), On Love, trans. Scott-Moncrieff, C. K. (New York: Liveright, 1947), pp. 28–34.Google Scholar

43 Kant, Immanuel, Lectures on Ethics (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 164.Google Scholar

44 Sartre rather messes up this neat claim by insisting that, nevertheless, in sex we try to turn the other into a sexual subject—indeed, even into a purely sexual object—but, necessarily, we are unsuccessful; see Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956)Google Scholar, Part III, “Concrete Relations with Others.”

45 Goldman, Alan, “Plain Sex,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 6, no. 3 (Spring 1977).Google Scholar

46 Ibid. Alan Soble discusses the ontology of love at tedious length in his The Structure of Love (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

47 Milton, John, “On Marriage and Divorce,” in The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love, ed. Higgins, Kathleen M. and Solomon, Robert C. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1990), pp. 79–84.Google Scholar

48 See my About Love (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), ch. 2.Google Scholar

49 The term “intensity” is overly one-dimensional and quantitative and is often confused with (and then measured by) physiological arousal. But the most powerful passions may be “calm” (Hume's term) while the most petty irritations can become “violent” (also Hume's term). See Hume, DavidTreatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 276.Google Scholar

50 This is defended in detail in my About Love, pp. 194ff.Google Scholar

51 In the Tao Te Ching, distinctions are made between those who love life and live it fully, those who love life and fail to live it fully, and those who love life too much, and thereby overemphasize death. Lao-tzu might interestingly be compared to Epicurus in this regard. Lao-tzu, , Tao Te Ching, trans. Addis, Stephen and Lombardo, Stanley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993).Google Scholar

52 In The Secret Life of Dogs, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas reflects on a familiar finding of comparative neuroscience: that while the brains of dogs are homeostatically “wired,” allowing them the peaceful restfulness and Zen-like stare that those of us who live with them have come to know and love, the brains of primates are “wired” in the sense that the term has taken on in the counterculture, “wired” as in overstimulated, “wired” as in perpetually restless, “wired” as in – human. Freud was wrong when he suggested the homeostaric model for the human psyche (although he would have been right about dogs). Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, The Secret Life of Dogs (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993).Google Scholar

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55 The phrase comes from a letter from Nietzsche to Paul Rée. See my “A More Severe Morality” (supra note 3).

56 E.g.: “The only critique of a philosophy that … proves something, mainly trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities: all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words” (Nietzsche, Friedrich, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, R. J. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], section 8, p. 187).Google Scholar

57 Magnus, Bernd, Stewart, Stanley, and Mileur, Jean-Pierre, Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature (New York: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar; Nehamas, , Nietzsche: Life as Literature (supra note 19).Google Scholar My own argument is elaborated in my “Nietzsche Ad Hominem: Perspectivism, Personality, and Ressentiment Revisited,” in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Magnus, Bernd and Higgins, Kathleen M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 As has been noted, the phrase “become what you are” comes from Pindar. (The quotations are from Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann, Walter [New York: Random House, 1968], paragraph 270, p. 219.)Google Scholar

59 Nietzsche, , Daybreak (supra note 9), 548.Google Scholar

60 In fact, the übermensch only appears at the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and plays virtually no role in Nietzsche's philosophy.

61 Notably in Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Kaufmann, W. (New York: Random House, 1968)Google Scholar, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” esp. sections 49–50.Google Scholar

62 Homer, , The Iliad, xv, 348–51Google Scholar; Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, ch. 8, 1116.Google Scholar Ross points out that the quotation more likely resembles Agamemnon than Hector (Ross, , trans., Nicomachean Ethics, p. 68Google Scholar), but cf. Aristotle (NE 1117), where he writes that “passion is sometimes reckoned as courage; … for passion above all things is eager to rush on danger. … Hence Homer's ‘put strength into his passion.’” Aristotle goes on to say that men who act from passion are not truly brave but more akin to beasts. They do not act “for honor's sake nor as the rule directs” (ibid.). Nevertheless, he adds, “they have something akin to courage” (1117a5).

63 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, ch. 5.Google Scholar

64 This was William Frankena's purported resolution in the last edition of his Ethics (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1991).

65 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, ch. 5.Google Scholar

66 I owe a good explanation of this to Fred Miller, who has questioned me on this; a lengthy reply is forthcoming: “On the Passivity of the Passions,” in Solomon, Robert C., A Theory of the Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar A partial but overstated reply is in my article “Emotions and Choice,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 28, no. 1 (09 1973)Google Scholar, reprinted in Rorty, , ed., Explaining Emotions (supra note 10).Google Scholar But see also Sankov/ski, , “Responsibility of Persons for Their Emotions” (supra note 37).Google Scholar