Passion differs from seriousness by disclosing its object through subjective involvement
Evidence
What characterizes the passionate man is that he sets up the object as an absolute, not, like the serious man, as a thing detached from himself, but as a thing disclosed by his subjectivity. There are transitions between the serious and passion. A goal which was first willed in the name of the serious can become an object of passion; inversely, a passionate attachment can wither into a serious relationship. But real passion asserts the subjectivity of its involvement. In amorous passion particularly, one does not want the beloved being to be admired objectively; one prefers to think her unknown, unrecognized; the lover thinks that his appropriation of her is greater if he is alone in revealing her worth. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 66
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Distinguishes passionate man from serious man, and notes the two can bleed into each other — essential for accurate classification.
- XREF: This distinction between the serious (thing detached from self) and the passionate (thing disclosed by subjectivity) is the key discriminator the reader needs to sort people.
Related
- The passionate man fails where subjectivity, not content, cannot fulfill itself (similarity 0.82)
- The passionate man, though admired from afar, cannot commune and readily turns violent (similarity 0.80)
- Maniacal passion denies others’ freedom and slides into fanaticism and oppression (similarity 0.79)
- The serious man submits his freedom to supposedly unconditioned absolute ends (similarity 0.79)