Plato and Aristotle on Passion

Reason vs Passion: Comparing Aristotle and Plato Introduction It must be well known among all students and scholars of philosophy that both Plato and Aristotle have a high regard for reason. But what is their view on passion? It might be surprising to learn that neither philosopher holds a negative view of passion in and of itself—what both do, however, point out is that passion should be subservient to reason.

Passion that is governed by reason is certainly not a bad thing, for either philosopher, and what is more important is that some passions or emotions should be promoted over others (Urmson; Taylor). The problem that most moderns have when it comes to understanding what passion means is that they are defining the term according to all-or-nothing terms, applying a kind of either/or approach to the issue of whether one should live one’s life by using the head or the heart.

Both Plato and Aristotle supported some degree of combination of usage—i.e., that head and heart should be in alignment in order for happiness to be achieved, and that both head and heart should be oriented towards the good. For moderns, influenced by the philosophy of the Romantic Era, the meaning of passion is associated with unrestrained feeling or with feeling (the heart) being the soul guide and arbiter of action.

Understanding the ways in which Aristotle and Plato understood passion and emotion and how they associated it with reason is important then to understanding the nature of the relationship between reason and passion.

The Conflict What Should Rule, the Head or Heart? The conflict between whether the head or the heart should be the governing voice of action is one that has been particularly of concern in the modern era, as it was the Romantic Age that gave such support to the heart in response to the Enlightenment Age which advocated solely for Reason. It was the French Revolution, after all, that enshrined Reason and deified in a show of total submission to the concept that man need nothing more than logic.

It is not surprising that humanity, sympathy, empathy and compassion were utterly absent during the Reign of Terror that followed. The Revolution showed that when man gives himself over wholly to Reason, neglecting the impulses of the heart, there can be an absolute horror that follows. The bloodletting that transpired during the Reign of Terror in Paris substantially bears this out. At the same time, the Romantic Age went in the opposite direction, essentially deifying feeling and emotion as that which should guide life.

Feelings so long as they were passionately felt, were all that mattered—and this in turn led to its own set of problems and horrors for the individuals who followed this line of thinking. Percy Bysshe Shelley, for example, left a string of deaths in his wake as he pursued the grand feelings and emotions he identified in his poetry.

His wife, Mary Shelley, turned Percy’s pursuit of feeling into the basis of her gothic horror novel Frankenstein, which told of a man consumed by a passion, which in turn begets a monster who destroys the life and work of the man.

In both ages—the Enlightenment Age in which Reason was upheld above all else, and in the Romantic Age in which Passion was upheld above all else as the guiding force for life—unspeakable horrors resulted, indicating that the all-or-nothing approach to whether the head or heart should rule was too extreme. Neither Plato nor Aristotle advocated such an extreme approach to the question of what should rule, the head or the heart, reason or passion.

On the contrary, each in his own way advocated for a balance, or at least an alignment between the two in which both were oriented towards the higher ideal of goodness. Though each philosopher differed in his approach to this balance in terms of how reason should be viewed (as an end in itself or as a tool to be applied to daily life), the essence of their perspectives was that reason should govern passion or that passion, at least, should be oriented towards reason.

Plato The Importance of the Soul To understand Plato’s approach to this question, it is necessary to understand his view of human nature. Plato believed that man had a soul and that the soul was what animated man in his entirety. The soul possessed qualities that were manifested in the man’s approach to life.

The soul had knowledge written upon it, had impulses that could be driven by base desires, and had a spirit that could be described as good or bad depending on how close in proximity it was towards the Good. John Cooper points out Plato’s depiction of the soul by explaining that the soul’s three, basic characteristics: “reason, spirit and appetite” (3).

According to Plato, these three distinct parts may be independent of one another but they are actually meant to act harmoniously—“that is to say, there are desires of reason as well as bodily appetites and impulses of a spirited nature” (Cooper 5). By identifying the aspects of the soul in this way, Plato is not meaning to draw them into competition with one another but rather to show how they are all sides of human life—aspects of the human will and motivating force of life.

Reason and passion (whether spiritual or physical) are not to be thought of as conflicting or contradictory because the point for Plato is that they can be mutually reinforcing. In other words, they can and should work together, and when they do just that, the human life achieves a harmonious balance—the type of balance that people are meant to enjoy. Spirit With that said, the opposite can also occur if one let’s feeling dominate or run amok.

Plato gives some energy in describing the meaning of these two aspects of the soul and juxtaposing them with reason in order to show how they are in fact different. Taylor states that “the difference between the treatments of appetite and spirit (thumos) is instructive” (12). Spirit is not defined simply or in a manner that can be viewed as wholly good or wholly bad. It is rather like what like Aristotle describes as the overall character of a person.

For Plato, it is not comprised of so neat a description but rather loosely defined by way of analogy. For instance, Plato gives the example of Odysseus as the rational man who on occasion allows his spirited qualities to take possession of him. Using this example, Plato shows that “spirit is a complex form of motivation whose primitive form is anger, and whose conceptual core is a sense of self?worth which manifests itself in such emotions as pride, shame, and indignation” (Taylor 13).

For spirit to be good, it has to be monitored and measured, for, “like bodily appetites, these emotions too can be recalcitrant to reason, as in the case of Odysseus, whose anger at the outrageous conduct of Penelope’s maidservants with the suitors threatens to carry him away and has to be checked by his better judgment (441b–c)” (Taylor 13).

Spirit must be able to work with one’s “better judgment”—i.e., one’s reason in order to ensure that the Good is always made possible.

The simple fact that spirit is something that can be checked by reason shows that what Plato believed was precisely what has been asserted here: passion is part of the human experience and is not bad in and of itself as it is partly what serves as the motivating force of life—but it must be governed by reason, as reason is like the head.

The head must govern the heart and master its emotions lest the emotions get the rest of the body into trouble, as surely would have been the case had Odysseus allowed his offended pride to take him of him in the heat of the moment. As it was, Odysseus gained mastery of his emotions and then set about concocting a plot to ensnare the suitors and win back his home, as Plato shows.

Passion thus served to motivate him—but reason was used to guide the passion and make it as productive as possible. Without the spirit and appetite qualities of the soul, Odysseus would have been like a disembodied head—all reason and no heart. But mankind has both head and heart, which, of course, is Plato’s point. The heart and the head must work in unison and one should not be trusted without the other.

The Soul’s Relationship with Reason Why are these aspects of the soul central to Plato’s conception of how reason and feeling should go together? The answer is that the soul is the central mystery of humankind. It is the one piece of evidence that distinctly differentiates mankind from all else in creation, and yet it is the least defined or understood aspect of humanity. Few understood and some will not even admit of it.

Yet, without the soul, there can be no discussion of reason or passion or desire, for these qualities emanate from the soul, according to Plato. Understanding passion and reason as aspects of human nature or of biology or of the mind or as random impulses produced willy-nilly is insufficient to grasp the most significant point of life, which is the soul’s desire for union with God—the source of all that is good in the world.

This one point is at the heart of many of Plato’s Dialogues, and in Phaedo in particular Plato gives a great deal of attention to a discussion of the soul, how knowledge is obtained. Plato argues that ideas are written on the soul when it is created and knowledge is simply an act of recollection—seeing what is inherent in the soul. The soul is thus like a great repository of all the information given to man by the Good, which exists for all eternity.

For example, Plato, using the character of Socrates, emphasizes the importance of the soul and its ultimate destination, when he states, as Furlong notes, “for if the soul exists in a previous state, and if, when it comes into life and being, it can only come from death and the state of death, must it not also exist after dying, since it must again come into being (Phaedo, 77 c-d)” (65).

Plato highlighted the immortality of the soul in order to show that man was not meant just for this finite earth but rather for something greater and beyond this world. The Soul Points the Way to the Good—the Source and Object of Reason For Plato, the soul was of the same essence as that of God—not equal to God but of some spiritual and intellectual quality similar in quality or aspect to that essence of God.

The soul being from God naturally desired to be like God or with God, and as it had the instructions from God written upon it, as Plato argues, the soul was inclined to know these instructions, recollect itself in knowledge, and pursue the good that God had designed it to be part of. The soul’s defining features—reason, spirit and appetite—were thus the impetus behind the soul’s craving for knowledge, action, and orientation to the good or the transcendental ideals.

Plato points to the Good, the transcendental idea, but of course it is Aristotle who gives the most attention to the concepts of “being” and “the one” in his Metaphysics. Aristotle Practical Wisdom: A Habit of Being Aristotle used the ideals to define his ethical theory and to explain the relationship between reason and passion, giving the two much more utility in practical terms than Plato had done in his teachings.

For Plato, the use of one’s reason as an instrument for directing the passions to their good end was the way to happiness—but in most cases, simply using reason to discuss these ideas was a sufficient pursuit in and of itself. Plato’s passion, in short, was in ideas. Aristotle understood passion more pragmatically and saw passion as a part of daily life—a quality underlying the manner in which people construct their habits.

For Aristotle, habits could consist of actions that were either good or bad in and of themselves—i.e., that either led one to happiness or created an obstacle for one so that happiness was never achieved. The more virtuous that one’s habits were, the more aligned with the one and the good—the ideals—the greater the individual would experience happiness. The less aligned with these ideals, the worse off the person would be.

Reasoned Virtue: the Way to Happiness Happiness was associated with virtue, which was in itself a concept defined as action governed by reason, reason being the conformity of the mind with the principles linked to the one and the good. These principles, according to Aristotle, could be both intuited and learned and thus an individual who applied his intellect to understanding these principles (knowledge) and then applied them to his life so that they could be lived would be considered as a person moving towards happiness.

In any event, reason was the rule and passion was the motivation—the impulse that directed the individual to want happiness in the first place. Reason was required to show how happiness could be attained as without the use of it people would pursue dead end paths to what they believed would give them happiness but ultimately would not because the pathways were not linked to the ideals of the one and the good.

As Hardie points out, Aristotle described practical wisdom “both as discerning means to an end determined by moral virtue (EN 1145 a5-6) and as involving a true understanding of an end (EN 1142 b31-3)” (213).

For passion to be truly governed by reason, moral virtue was needed for discerning the appropriate path forward and the individual also had to have a sense of the goal: without knowledge of the objective or purpose of an action and the underlying passion, the individual could no more so to be using reason than a person who randomly set about flinging himself into any and all manners of activity without any regard for what the point was or what was meant to be accomplished.

The purpose and the process both had to be understood, and this was where reason came into play. What was the purpose of life? What was the process by which that purpose could be accomplished? These were the two primary questions motivating Aristotle in his sense of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom—i.e., lived wisdom (aka using one’s reason to direct one’s life)—was the focal point of his philosophy.

Passion Aristotle further addressed the issue of passion in terms of character in Nicomachean Ethics. Urmson shows that various interpreters of Aristotle “tend to under emphasize or misinterpret two points about excellence of character which Aristotle makes very clearly, but the significance of which he does not fully explain” (224).

The two points that Aristotle makes about character are these: “excellence of character is concerned with both emotions (pathe, passions) and actions…[and with] likes and dislikes (hedonai and lupai, traditionally translated as ‘pleasures and pains’) (Urmson 224).

Aristotle thus recognized the role that passion plays in the daily life of human activity and did not view it as something that was to be altogether eradicated; on the contrary, one could no more rid oneself of one’s passions as one could of one’s head without suffering a loss of humanity completely.

The point was not to eradicate passion but rather to rule it—and in doing so one could appropriately form one’s character so that one could more efficiently pursue the one and the good and live life in accordance with these virtuous ideals. Comparison How Plato and Aristotle Reconcile Passion and Reason Both philosophers were well aware that men had elements of reason and elements of passion within them. They saw this through direct observation, through discussion, through reflection, and through self-knowledge.

They understood that passion could move men in one way while reason might move them in another. They also understood that passion and reason could be united in such a way that one could be moved towards the Good out of a passionate desire to be joined with the Good.

For Plato, passion and reason were bound up in the soul and that is one reason why Plato’s Socrates exhibits a great deal of passion for dialoguing and discussing (often in humorous discussions) the nature of goodness, truth, purpose, and so on. Passion and reason are alive and well in Plato’s philosophy but the philosopher is often content to wrestle with ideas, because he recognizes that in this wrestle can be discerned the desire to be true, to know truth, and to be with truth.

Passion for reason is not a bad passion but rather the best passion to possess, as it advances one’s acquisition of knowledge of the Good and knowledge of the Self. Differing Views on Reason However, in terms of practical application, he and Aristotle are somewhat distinct: Aristotle rejects the idea that simply discussing ideas in a rational way is a sufficient use of reason.

Reason is not an end in itself; the purpose of reason is to allow the person to apply concepts (knowledge) to one’s life so that the feelings, emotions, spirit, passion (the heart) might have the direction needed in order to achieve the overall purpose and objective of life (acknowledged by the head), which, according to Aristotle is to be happy. A man can likewise act in a manner that might be perceived as being good even though within his own heart he wishes to indulge bad passions.

Such a man is conflicted and not happy or at peace because his reason and passions are out of alignment: only the exterior will is aligned with the knowledge of how one should act well; the interior will is grinding its teeth and holding out for as long as possible till that time when it might indulge in self-centered or self-destructive passions that offer a moment of pleasure but ultimately yield no real or substantial fruit for oneself.

Emotion and Motivation Aristotle also embraces the idea that emotion is a part of action: “When Aristotle says that excellence of character is concerned with emotions and actions he does not mean that it has two distinct fields. He means that (temporarily neglecting the complicated cases of self-control and lack of it) an action can be regarded as manifesting and embodying some emotion” (Urmson 224).

What Plato defines as “spirit”—the most primitive form of which is “anger” (Taylor 13), Aristotle defines as the “likes and dislikes” of the emotional life and identifies them within a range of manifestations: “desire, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, longing, emulation, pity” (Urmson 224). Why is this distinction important to note? The idea here is that Aristotle does not see emotion or passion as distinct from action.

Unity Plato on the other hand sees spirit, appetite and reason as three distinct qualities or aspects of the soul—i.e., they are part of the soul but not necessarily integrated with action which might be predicated on reason alone, as Plato appears to suggest in The Republic—reason being the sole pursuit of the philosopher-king who seeks the good for his subjects.

For Aristotle, reason, emotion, passion—all of these elements are integrated more or less to some degree in everything that is done, in every action committed. As Urmson notes, “whenever one acts in a way that displays character, Aristotle believes, one will be manifesting one or another of these and similar emotions” (224). The important distinction that Aristotle makes is that there is a difference, still, between the good man and the man who merely engages in self-control. The Good Man vs.

The Man of False Virtue Reason Rightly and Wrongly Applied According to Aristotle, the good man acts rightly because his emotions are in alignment with the one and the good—i.e., “the action of the good man is a natural manifestation of his emotion and he therefore acts in accordance with his likes and dislikes” (Urmson 224). In other words, he likes what is good and wants to act that way; he dislikes what is bad and wishes to avoid bad behavior in his daily life.

His actions are guided by his knowledge of good and bad, and his likes and dislikes have been made to conform to his knowledge. His character, in short, has been shaped by his reason. The self-controlled man, on the other hand, “makes himself act contrary to his emotions and therefore contrary to his likes and dislikes” (Urmson 224). He is merely controlling his will in an external manner, though interiorly he may still like bad and dislike what is good.

For whatever reason, such a man may imitate the actions of a good man and thus be assumed to be a good man on the outside, while on the inside harboring a passion for what is bad and simply waiting for the time in which might indulge this passion and enjoy himself in this manner.

Aristotle would argue that such a man is not and cannot be truly happy because his life does not consist of real virtue but rather of a kind of false manifestation of virtue in which bad passions are hidden below the surface and ready to be indulged at the earliest or most convenient moment. As Aristotle states, “even if happiness is not god sent but comes to be present through virtue and a certain learning or practice, it is among the most divine things” (17).

What this means of course is that the more that one aligns one’s likes and dislikes with what reason dictates are good and bad actions, the more that one will be able to manifest happiness in life. Reason vs. Passion? The Two Must Co-Exist In terms of reason vs. passion, therefore, the issue is not of ridding oneself of passion but rather of turning one’s passion for bad into a passion for the Good.

Aristotle puts it this way in the Nicomachean Ethics: “For the prize of virtue or its end appears to be best and to be something divine and blessed. It would also be something common to many people, for it is possible for it to be available, through a certain learning and care, to all who have not been rendered defective in point of virtue” (17).

Reason is best manifested and illustrated in a life of virtue and one’s life need not be spent acting as a philosopher-king (which can only be possible for a specific sort of person in a specific type of environment).

Reason as the Greatest Pursuit Plato argues on the other hand, especially in the Allegory of the Cave, that man’s use of reason must be the greatest pursuit—it is reason that compels the cave dweller to turn around and see the truth of reality, to leave the cave of ignorance and darkness and climb upwards towards the source of truth and knowledge. Reason is the main pursuit of life, for Plato.

For Aristotle, happiness is the main pursuit—and happiness is achieved by application of an informed intelligence to one’s actions and emotions. For Plato, one’s passion should be focused towards using one’s reason. For Aristotle, one’s reason should be focused towards guiding the passions.

Reason as a Guiding Force Plato also arrives at this same point in his own circuitous manner, coming full circle in many of his Dialogues to show that reason when rightly pursued and applied will manifest itself in one’s life—but Plato’s main point appears to be again and again that knowledge itself (i.e., knowledge of oneself and of the Good) is the highest pursuit.

Aristotle does not agree on this point: knowledge can be obtained and one can still be unhappy, especially if one does not apply that knowledge to one’s life in a way that leads to the cultivation of virtuous habits. Plato wants every person to recognize the greatness that is philosophy, the use of the mind, and the pursuit of knowledge—but Aristotle recognizes that not every person has this capacity or compulsion.

Nonetheless, Aristotle believes that anyone can obtain happiness so long as the passions are educated and the character of the individual is formed in such a way that what is desired by the emotions is the daily pursuit of that which is good. Reason Guiding Emotion to Love Virtue Virtuous habits are what allow one to find happiness, according to Aristotle. Virtuous habits are actions that place passion under the rule of reason.

Plato would not object to this argument, but he would not be content to leave it alone either, as his passion is to use reason to assess statements unendingly. Nonetheless, at heart, both recognize the importance of reason in the matter of reason vs. passion.

Indeed, the only substantial difference between the two is that one finds reason (knowledge) to be a lifelong aim in and of itself, and the other finds reason to be a tool that must be sharpened through learning and reflection so that it can be appropriately applied to the control and guidance of the emotions—the likes and dislikes of the body and mind—the shaping of the character.

However, to say that Plato would disagree with such an assertion would be to miss the essence of his teaching on the matter as well. In short, both would recognize the primacy of reason over passion; the manner in and extent to which reason should be applied is where they differ. Plato loves reason in and of itself—though he would certainly not be in league with the Rationalists of the Enlightenment Era, for Plato sees that a right spirit is essential to the right use of reasoning.

Passion as the Motivating Factor Such is precisely why Aristotle will argue in the Nicomachean Ethics (1104b 3ff) “that a criterion of the nature of the state [of being good or bad] is the liking, enjoyment, or pleasure with which an act is performed or the dislike, distress, or distaste with which it is done. If, say, one abstains from some bodily indulgence, liking and wanting to abstain, that shows that one has a character of a certain sort” (Urmson 224).

A person who has an excellent character will be able to take pleasure in emotions that are worthy of being called good, or as Urmson puts it, “if a man has excellence of character he likes acting in a proper way, feeling emotions which he can manifest with pleasure, since there is no internal struggle” (224).

The extent to which an individual can behave well and enjoy it and take satisfaction in it and not desire an alternate or opposite type of passion will indicate the extent to which right reason and passion are aligned and the extent to which good character has been formed.

Shall Humans Listen to Their Hearts/Heads? Tempering the Heart and Educating the Head The key to answering the question of whether humans shall listen to their hearts or their heads is found in Aristotle’s concept of temperance (Urmson) and in Plato’s concept of rationality (Taylor). Plato’s concept of rationality, it must be remembered, is tied to his concept of the soul—which has as its qualities reason, appetite and spirit.

These three concepts are united in man, but the head must be educated as to how they should be harmonized so that no single quality exerts a tyrannical influence over the other. Plato is wholly for reason but not to the neglect of the other aspects of the soul. The head must be educated in other words—this is the essence of Plato’s teaching.

Aristotle’s concept of temperance is tied to his concept of likes and dislikes—i.e., the life of the emotions, or passion. For Plato, reason is what matters most and what one should dedicate one’s life to if he wants to reach the Good; for Aristotle, what matters most is the ability to balance one’s emotions and lead the life of virtue. The emotions must be tempered and balanced.

For both it is really just a matter of placing the heart and the head in unison, of them being aligned. However, there is also the matter of the emotions being purified—of emotions that are unclean being purged. For example, this is the essence of what Aristotle is saying when he discusses the importance and value of tragedy. The Use of Tragedy in Educating the Heart Tragedy was a dramatic art form that the Greeks used to tell stories.

The greatest playwrights of the Golden Age of Greek theater were Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides. Of these four, Aristotle believed that Sophocles had written the most perfect tragedy in Oedipus Rex. What made this tragedy so perfect was the fact that it effectively did its job as a tragedy more so than any other play. What is the function of tragedy? The function is to produce catharsis in the audience—the feelings of pity and fear, which help to purify the emotions.

Pity is associated with empathy and sympathy—the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and feel what they are feeling, identify with their sorrow and suffering. Fear is associated with the awareness that what befell the other person could very well befall oneself.

It is linked with the concept of knowledge in that one who is fearful—i.e., mindful—is one who will not rush too quickly into making judgments or pursuing a course of action that is harmful to oneself or to others. It is associated with temperance—tempering the emotions. Catharsis as a Cleansing Act Catharsis assists in the act of temperance by purifying or cleansing the emotions.

In this sense, Aristotle is showing that the heart is very important in how people live their lives: it acts as the voice or motivator—it is the underlying force that drives one. However, Aristotle is not supporting unrestrained passion by acknowledging the role of the heart in decision making. He is saying, on the contrary that the heart must be educated—and one of the ways it is educated or cleansed is through the cathartic experience.

Plato essentially maintains the same line of reasoning, but communicates it in a different way. The heart is part of human nature and therefore must be acknowledged. However, it has the potential of overriding one’s use of reason if not restrained. Determining the extent to which one should exercise restraint is part of the right use of reason. Plato is adamant on this point, especially in Phaedo.

The Example of Odysseus Returning to the story of Odysseus, who is upset at finding so many suitors in his house upon finally returning home, Plato shows that spirit is “distinct from the intellect, yet so closely allied to it as to be liable to be taken for an aspect of it, since when appetite conflicts with intellect, spirit always sides with the latter” (Taylor 13). What this means is that while spirit is not to be viewed as the same thing as that which animates the mind,.