The passionate man, though admired from afar, cannot commune and readily turns violent
Evidence
One admires the pride of a subjectivity which chooses its end without bending itself to any foreign law and the precious brilliance of the object revealed by the force of this assertion. But one also considers the solitude in which this subjectivity encloses itself as injurious. Having withdrawn into an unusual region of the world, seeking not to communicate with other men, this freedom is realized only as a separation. Any conversation, any relationship with the passionate man is impossible. In the eyes of those who desire a communion of freedom, he therefore appears as a stranger, an obstacle. He opposes an opaque resistance to the movement of freedom which wills itself infinite. … He knows that his will emanates only from him, but he can nevertheless attempt to impose it upon others. He authorizes himself to do that by a partial nihilism. Only the object of his passion appears real and full to him. All the rest are insignificant. Why not betray, kill, grow violent? — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 67
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- Maniacal passion denies others’ freedom and slides into fanaticism and oppression (similarity 0.84)
- The passionate man’s project depopulates the world and leaves him unfulfilled (similarity 0.81)
- Passion differs from seriousness by disclosing its object through subjective involvement (similarity 0.80)
- The passionate man fails where subjectivity, not content, cannot fulfill itself (similarity 0.80)