Maniacal passion denies others’ freedom and slides into fanaticism and oppression

Evidence

Not intending his freedom for men, the passionate man does not recognize them as freedoms either. He will not hesitate to treat them as things. If the object of his passion concerns the world in general, this tyranny becomes fanaticism. In all fanatical movements there exists an element of the serious. The values invented by certain men in a passion of hatred, fear, or faith are thought and willed by others as given realities. But there is no serious fanaticism which does not have a passional base, since all adhesion to the serious world is brought about by repressed tendencies and complexes. Thus, maniacal passion represents a damnation for the one who chooses it, and for other men it is one of the forms of separation which disunites freedoms. It leads to struggle and oppression. A man who seeks being far from other men, seeks it against them at the same time that he loses himself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 67

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Crucial evidence for the reader’s tracking question: refusing to intend freedom for others leads to treating them as things — the negative side of ‘willing my freedom requires willing yours.’
• QUESTION: Beauvoir claims every serious fanaticism has a passional base via ‘repressed tendencies and complexes’ — is she smuggling in psychoanalytic doctrine here?

Related

• The passionate man, though admired from afar, cannot commune and readily turns violent (similarity 0.84)
• Passion differs from seriousness by disclosing its object through subjective involvement (similarity 0.79)
• The passionate man’s project depopulates the world and leaves him unfulfilled (similarity 0.78)