The Rationality of Passion

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”.

-Hume, Treatise on Human Nature

We generally talk about passion and reason as two separate things, even as opposites sometimes as if the acknowledge of one would mean the denial of the other. The famous philosopher Hume said that reason is a slave of the passions and to only think rational as its has always believed to be the right way to think, was in fact a “special kind of madness”1.

I agree with Hume, your passions, the things that feed your drive shouldn’t be ignored, they should be listened as anything that excites you in any way paints the roadmap to the place you where meant to be. We try to make everything rational but reason depends on passion.

Knowing your passions is an art, it’s a skill that should be mastered and requires practice. Start everyday listening to anything that catches your attention and analyze why this is, there might be a bigger reason for why you subconsciously like some things than you would have ever known, follow these things and dive deeper into them. They say the worst thing in life is being good at the wrong thing because it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, even if it seems rational if you’re not passionate about it.