Le philosophe et les passions

Literature and Philosophy

by Michel Meyer

The subject of the passions has always haunted Western philosophy and, more often than not, aroused harsh judgments. For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes. In this book, noted European philosopher Michel Meyer offers a wide-ranging exegesis, the first of its kind, that systematically retraces the history of philosophic conceptions of the passions in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Spinoza, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, and Freud. The great ruptures that led to passion's condemnation as sin, and to its romantic exultation as the truth of existence, are meticulously registered and the logic governing them astutely explicated. Meyer thus provides new insight into an age-old Does passion torture people because it blinds them, or, on the contrary, does it permit them to apprehend who and what we really are?

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Michel Meyer enseigne à l'Université libre de Bruxelles et à l'Université de Mons. On lui doit plusieurs ouvrages publiés aux PUF, dont Le comique et le tragique (2003), La rhétorique (« Que sais-je ? », 2004), Le philosophe et les passions (2007). Ils font suite à Questionnement et historicité (2000), maître-livre de la problématologie.

Reviews

[Robert Barsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meyer's work on questioning and argumentation make him one of the leading philosophers in Europe. This book, which I translated, is filled with extraordinary insights about the history of how philosophers considered "passion", in particular in its relationship to reason. Filled with ideas about how Christianity has affected crucial philosophical concepts, the evolution of our thinking about passion, and the value of considering passion's mysterious powers, this really is a superb work.