Passion: An Essay on Personality
Encyclopedia
Passion: An Essay on Personality is a philosophical inquiry into human nature
by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger
. Published in 1986 by the Free Press
, the book explores the individual and his relation to society from the perspective of the root human predicament of the need to establish oneself as a unique individual in the world but at the same time to find commonality and solidarity with others. This exploration is grounded in what Unger calls a modernist image of the human being as one who lives in context but is not bound by context.
Unger’s aim is twofold. First, to level a critique, expansion, and defense of modern thinking about the human and society “so that this practice can better withstand the criticisms that philosophy since Hume
and Kant
has leveled against it.” And second, to develop a prescriptive theory of human identity centered around what Unger calls the passions
—our raw responses to the world that are ambivalent towards reasons but also act in the service of reason. He outlines nine passions that organize and are organized by our dealings with others: lust, despair, hatred, vanity, jealousy, envy, faith, hope, and love. While these emotional states may be seen as raw emotion, their expression is always conditioned by the context within which the individual mobilizes or learns to mobilize them.
The book was critically hailed as successfully grappling with some of the most fundamental and enduring problems of human existence. It has been put into direct dialogue with Kant's moral law, and said to have provided one answer to Hume's Guillotine. Unger's analysis and the program he builds around this revolutionary understanding has also inspired new thinking and approaches to psychiatry.
This perspective is derived from the Christian-Romantic. Unger argues that this tradition has two themes: interpersonal relations with love as the redemptive moment, and that a person's identity is not defined by membership in social ranks and division. This then gives expression to the idea that humans are never at home in the world and that they are constantly striving to remake the world. The modernist development takes up this theme, according to Unger, but emphasizes interpersonal relations over impersonal reality or good so that no institutional settings can limit the possibilities of humanity. We “can assert [our] independence only by perpetual war against the fact of contextually…”
Unger looks closely at existential projects that fail: the heroic ethic (delusional about historic setting, which negates the ethic), and the impersonal absolute ethic (Buddhism
, which tries but cannot divest itself of the world). Both respond the fact of the individual not being the center of the world. However, by doing so they disengage from the world and others. While Confucianism
addresses interdependence, the philosophy elevates it to a level of canonical hierarchy and thus imposes strict constraints.
In part two, Unger attempts to explain how one becomes capable of passion. He charts out a path by which the individual first has desire, which is then augmented with imagination. The imagination reveals an insatiability of the infinite sense of self, which is but then contingent upon the acceptance of others. With this recognition, then, the contingency of the self is revealed. And with this realization of death we come to see that nothing outside of the self can fulfill desire; we want to see the self as transcending all of the fixed social world.
In part three, Unger addresses the passions themselves. As James Glass in Political Psychology writes, "Not only do these passions civilize and humanize experience; their practice transcends social status, framework, and stratification. Existing beyond class and history, they possess an autonomy that resists the disintegrative pull of power and self-interest, the historical and social differences induced by envy, jealousy, pride, and vanity." Unger describes each one in a way that brings out the need-danger antinomy and the context dependent-transcended dichotomy.
Part four charts the task ahead, which Unger says is to find the collective experiences in the personal experiences of love, faith, and hope. We must strive to discover the structures that can realize these passions in the everyday world. All too often visions of the future human and environment exclude from social life the personal connections represented in the passions, choosing instead to focus on the recreation of the material world. Unger’s call, however, is to take full account of the passions so that we many transcend our context and become more godlike.
The book’s appendix is “A Program for Late Twentieth-Century Psychiatry,” an apropos article previously published in the American Journal of Psychiatry
in 1982, whose argument can be summed up as "psychoanalytic theory offers opportunities to replicate, but not to transform, individual and social contexts."
said that the speculative philosophy detracted from the effectiveness of the message, and thought the argument would have been better served with personal example.
J. Allan Hobson, in the pages of the Northwestern University Law Review, capitalized on the inspiration of Unger's thesis to develop a new psychiatric program in "advanc[ing] from a set of slogans to testable hypotheses." He praised Unger for pinpointing the root of the problem--"Psychoanalysis is out of gas, and biological psychiatry is not yet up to speed. As a field in crisis, psychiatry is ripe for change."--but found Unger's theory of personality and program "hopelessly inadequate" because it was too speculative and failed to address biological data. Hobson attempted to develop a theory that would incorporate this biological data.
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Human nature
Human nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally....
by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is a philosopher and politician. He has written widely on social, political, legal, and economic theory, much of which has laid the philosophical and theoretical groundwork for reimagining and remaking the social and political order...
. Published in 1986 by the Free Press
Free Press (publisher)
Free Press is a book publishing imprint of Simon and Schuster. It was founded by Jeremiah Kaplan and Charles Liebman in 1947 and was devoted to sociology and religion titles. It was headquartered in Glencoe, Illinois, where it was known as The Free Press of Glencoe...
, the book explores the individual and his relation to society from the perspective of the root human predicament of the need to establish oneself as a unique individual in the world but at the same time to find commonality and solidarity with others. This exploration is grounded in what Unger calls a modernist image of the human being as one who lives in context but is not bound by context.
Unger’s aim is twofold. First, to level a critique, expansion, and defense of modern thinking about the human and society “so that this practice can better withstand the criticisms that philosophy since Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
and Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
has leveled against it.” And second, to develop a prescriptive theory of human identity centered around what Unger calls the passions
Passions (philosophy)
Passion, or the passions, is a philosophical concept. It is different from popular connotations of passion, which are associated with notions of romance, and which is generally seen as a positive emotion. The philosophical notion, in contrast, is identified with an innate or biologically driven...
—our raw responses to the world that are ambivalent towards reasons but also act in the service of reason. He outlines nine passions that organize and are organized by our dealings with others: lust, despair, hatred, vanity, jealousy, envy, faith, hope, and love. While these emotional states may be seen as raw emotion, their expression is always conditioned by the context within which the individual mobilizes or learns to mobilize them.
The book was critically hailed as successfully grappling with some of the most fundamental and enduring problems of human existence. It has been put into direct dialogue with Kant's moral law, and said to have provided one answer to Hume's Guillotine. Unger's analysis and the program he builds around this revolutionary understanding has also inspired new thinking and approaches to psychiatry.
Background
Entering into a long philosophical tradition of inquiry into human nature, Unger begins by categorically rejecting the idea of a natural order to the world or a natural state of human organization. For Unger, there are no natural laws. Rather, he takes to the hilt the modernist thesis that we are shaped by context but not bound by context. As such, we have the power to work both within and beyond any constraints of social or cultural binds.This perspective is derived from the Christian-Romantic. Unger argues that this tradition has two themes: interpersonal relations with love as the redemptive moment, and that a person's identity is not defined by membership in social ranks and division. This then gives expression to the idea that humans are never at home in the world and that they are constantly striving to remake the world. The modernist development takes up this theme, according to Unger, but emphasizes interpersonal relations over impersonal reality or good so that no institutional settings can limit the possibilities of humanity. We “can assert [our] independence only by perpetual war against the fact of contextually…”
Normative force
Is not the modernist thesis is but one system of thought developing out of particular historical circumstances, and thus no better or worse than any other system of thought? Indeed, under what auspices can such a philosophical orientation be turned into a normative prescription? Unger turns the question from one of general principles to one of the enactment of a vision or project of self affirmation. On issue here is not the pure speculation of philosophical inquiry into the nature of human beings and their activities, but rather a transformative project. Thus, the task is to realize this vision and enact a program of self-affirmation, or to find a better one—or fail at self-affirmation. The standards by which we can confirm a project of self affirmation are as follows: socially it is unstable if fails to deal with behavior predispositions or material constraints; existentially it fails if it disregards recurrent features of our experience, e.g. dependence upon others.Unger looks closely at existential projects that fail: the heroic ethic (delusional about historic setting, which negates the ethic), and the impersonal absolute ethic (Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, which tries but cannot divest itself of the world). Both respond the fact of the individual not being the center of the world. However, by doing so they disengage from the world and others. While Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
addresses interdependence, the philosophy elevates it to a level of canonical hierarchy and thus imposes strict constraints.
Towards a psychology of empowerment
Although the Christian-Romantic tradition puts the individual at the center of the world and gives him the tools of liberation of self and environment, it faces a similar problem as the world's religious and philosophical traditions that fail to provide a lasting answer to the predicament of human existence. This failure is the constant danger that after liberation, the self will return to its customary affairs and routine practices. Rather than moving onwards to greater feats of humanity and godlike existence, the individual will allow everyday affairs take over. This surrender to habit is directly linked to the defeat of the imagination. Thus metaphysical revolution is needed through a psychology of empowerment and an analysis of social conditions upon which this empowerment relies. Unger’s project begins here.Contents
Passion begins with a long introductory foray into the Western philosophical tradition of human nature before moving onto a four part meditation of human experience and expression. In part one, he sets out to define passion as the noninstrumental dealings that we have with others; they organize and are organized around the need and danger that is at the heart of our relations with others. This definition is developed out of the argument that the individual is in constant conflict in the world: at once attempting to assert the self as individual and establish difference, but at same time to gain acceptance by others. We are thus defined by the mutual need and reliance upon each other, and the mutual fear of each other in acceptance or rejection. Passion is at the heart of this reciprocal and infinite terror and longing for each other.In part two, Unger attempts to explain how one becomes capable of passion. He charts out a path by which the individual first has desire, which is then augmented with imagination. The imagination reveals an insatiability of the infinite sense of self, which is but then contingent upon the acceptance of others. With this recognition, then, the contingency of the self is revealed. And with this realization of death we come to see that nothing outside of the self can fulfill desire; we want to see the self as transcending all of the fixed social world.
In part three, Unger addresses the passions themselves. As James Glass in Political Psychology writes, "Not only do these passions civilize and humanize experience; their practice transcends social status, framework, and stratification. Existing beyond class and history, they possess an autonomy that resists the disintegrative pull of power and self-interest, the historical and social differences induced by envy, jealousy, pride, and vanity." Unger describes each one in a way that brings out the need-danger antinomy and the context dependent-transcended dichotomy.
- Lust and despair are proto-social destructive forces that must be tamed for civil order to ensue.
- Hatred, vanity, jealousy, and envy underscore failures to accept one another's presence in the world.
- Faith, hope, and love resolve conflicts that seemed insoluble and break through barriers.
Part four charts the task ahead, which Unger says is to find the collective experiences in the personal experiences of love, faith, and hope. We must strive to discover the structures that can realize these passions in the everyday world. All too often visions of the future human and environment exclude from social life the personal connections represented in the passions, choosing instead to focus on the recreation of the material world. Unger’s call, however, is to take full account of the passions so that we many transcend our context and become more godlike.
The book’s appendix is “A Program for Late Twentieth-Century Psychiatry,” an apropos article previously published in the American Journal of Psychiatry
American Journal of Psychiatry
The American Journal of Psychiatry is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of psychiatry and the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The first volume was issued in 1844, at which time it was known as the American Journal of Insanity...
in 1982, whose argument can be summed up as "psychoanalytic theory offers opportunities to replicate, but not to transform, individual and social contexts."
Reception
The book has been met with critical but high acclaim in both legal and philosophical circles. In his Times review, Jerome Neu, celebrated the book as "some of the most brilliant writing of this kind since Hegel." Other reviewers have similarly praised it for its "heretical presence both in contemporary social science and philosophy, a point of view that refuses both the "scorched earth campaign of radical skepticism" and the limitations of a social and political theory that roots meaning in transcendental or metaphysical absolutes." Yet reviewers have also expressed reservations over "Unger's style, his normative reflections, his erudition and elusiveness." The Michigan Law Review asked for a more concrete articulation of Unger's idea, claiming that he left both his idea of the individual and program for psychiatry too ambiguous. "That Unger's best society would be a place of playfulness and laughter is, however, only implicit in Passion, and Unger's failure to describe the mirthfulness of the world of love exemplifies the speculative tone that marks the central failure of the work as a whole." Similarly, James Boyle in the Harvard Law ReviewHarvard Law Review
The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the Review is the most cited law review and has the second-highest impact factor in the category "law" after the...
said that the speculative philosophy detracted from the effectiveness of the message, and thought the argument would have been better served with personal example.
J. Allan Hobson, in the pages of the Northwestern University Law Review, capitalized on the inspiration of Unger's thesis to develop a new psychiatric program in "advanc[ing] from a set of slogans to testable hypotheses." He praised Unger for pinpointing the root of the problem--"Psychoanalysis is out of gas, and biological psychiatry is not yet up to speed. As a field in crisis, psychiatry is ripe for change."--but found Unger's theory of personality and program "hopelessly inadequate" because it was too speculative and failed to address biological data. Hobson attempted to develop a theory that would incorporate this biological data.
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