PLATO & PLATONIC

Lists of Opposites for the Virtue "Passion" (part #3)

The intensity of emotions and sensations in passion is directly linked to its ability to allow one to experience pleasure and fulfillment. Likewise, the way in which it heightens experience is directly related to its ability to make one more aware of truth -- of the attributes and virtues of the world, and the nature of beauty. The concern which passion has with appetite, sensation, and truth, make it pursue action and experience, and it is in this way that it becomes generative, creative, and inspirational.

So it is obvious that all the manifestations of passion are closely knit together.

All of these qualities of passion surround its core essence, which is a powerful and emotional attraction of one's inner life-force towards an ideal -- be that ideal another human, an activity, or a cause. I use the word "life-force" because it acknowledges the sexuality of passion; the fierce animal instinctualness of this virtue as it relates towards another being. That physicalism is even sublimated into passion towards "higher" causes, so that saints who speak of their passion for God may refer to Him as a lover. It is this activation of the sleeping animal life-force, and its conjugation with the higher human intellect which idealizes aspects of life, which gives passion its unique power and generativity.

It is vital to clarify this core essence by comparison. Passion is different from lust, because lust is the animal awakening without being joined with the idealization of the soul. Dedication is different from lust because it is merely the act of the will or the soul, without being joined to that physical drive which empowers sex and much of artistry. Passions value, if it is in doubt, is proven by comparison with its opposite, which is apathy. That state where the soul and body are disconnected from one another, both wallowing in a state without ambition or emotion, may be idealized by some mystics -- yet it is the bane of art and the advancement of human society.