Reason and Passion
In his wake, Stoics like Epitectus emphasized that "the most important and especially pressing field of study is that which has to do with the stronger emotions...sorrows, lamentations, envies...passions which make it impossible for us even to listen to reason". The Stoic tradition still lay behind Hamlet's plea to "Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core", or Erasmus's lament that "Jupiter has bestowed far more passion than reason – you could calculate the ratio as 24 to one". It was only with the Romantic movement that a valorisation of passion over reason took hold in the Western tradition: "the more Passion there is, the better the Poetry".
The recent concerns of emotional intelligence have been to find a synthesis of the two forces—something that "turns the old understanding of the tension between reason and feeling on its head: it is not that we want to do away with emotion and put reason in its place, as Erasmus had it, but instead find the intelligent balance of the two".
Read more about this topic: Passion (emotion)
Famous quotes containing the words reason and, reason and/or passion:
“When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head- strong,—farewell cool reason and fair discretion.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
““... Not but I’ve every reason not to care
What happens to him if it only takes
Some of the sanctimonious conceit
Out of one of those pious scalawags.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“My passion strengthens daily to quit political turmoil, and retire into the bosom of my family, the only scene of sincere and pure happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)