RC 1 NOV 04

Hume makes a point that if I do not respond sympathetically to the pain of another person, no amount of reason will move me to care about her plight. But having said this, we are a long way from understanding the passion of virtue. Feeling, emotion (pathos) has as its central meaning something endured or something that happens to one. It is, if not negative or neutral, then reactive to some event or situation. Aristotle remarks relative to this point that one cannot be blamed for feelings only for actions. Even Aristotle, however, has insisted that emotions themselves must become rational in the well tempered soul, which indicates that reason is not an independent faculty, or at least that emotions somehow partake in and are not simply subject to reason. The point here is that even in its philosophical framing passion (pathos) has an active connotation—a positive energy that is not merely reactive. This suggests, for example, that the essential difference between anger and wrath is one of kind, not degree. The wrath of Achilles with which the Iliad begins is anything but passive, and not merely reactive; passion here is not limited to a sense of offense, but marks a positive and generative force only occasioned by that offense. It is this passion that is the source of the judgment ¯Achilles agathos!; passion is the way in which Achilles proclaims himself, the measure of his character. It is here and in this sense that passion and virtue converge. In the milder culture of later times, virtue is more generally recognized, for example, in the passion for justice. Finally, in its most comprehensive and universal sense, the virtue of humanity is realized in the passion for life. Plato famously distrusted and devalued passion, particularly in its characteristic poetic expression, which he nonetheless credited as a kind of divine madness. But in the Symposium Plato dialectically develops the journey of the philosophical spirit toward the beauty of truth, in which Eros, desire, remains at the root of what moves and provides the energy of that spiritual quest. In this context philein sophian—the love and pursuit of wisdom that defines philosophy for Plato—serves to qualify his earlier rejection of passion and existentially anchor wisdom in pathos. It is passion for the beauty in life that leads to the love of wisdom and the truth of understanding—to the eidos of the Good which in turn is the source both of enlightenment and the virtue of a fully human life. So understood, the quadrivium of excellence in the classical world—wisdom, courage, temperance, justice—owe their existence and force in the life of individual and community to pathos (passion), no less than logos(reason.) Whether one aspires to a greatness of soul (the tragic hero) or only to the excellence of a particular spiritual endowment (the range of humanity), movement only begins in the passion of that commitment. Justice in the state or in the soul of the individual is never realized without such commitment. The road to virtue, to the excellence of character in action, whether for the tragic hero or the stoic everyman, must overcome obstacles, excuses, occasions and all the other roadside distractions that imagination can invent. The world of literature is a collected canon of investigations of the lateral movements of human passion, a comprehensive and dynamic manifold of heroic achievement and ironic failures in the human aspiration to virtue. In its positive form, however, passion attests to that most common and ordinary virtue that defines humanity (as opposed to the immortality of the Gods)—a tenacity of spirit and resolve that affirms the beauty of life in the face of inevitable defeat.

Q.55 Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

a   However tragic the realization of the hero, the anguish of her cry is still an affirmation of virtue.

b  However tragic the realization of the hero, the anguish of her cry is still an affirmation of passion.

c  However tragic the realization of the hero, the anguish of her cry is still an affirmation of reason.

d  However tragic the realization of the hero, the anguish of her cry is still an affirmation of the beauty and sublimity of life. Q.56 Which of the following the author is most likely to agree with? a   Reason is the predictable domain of moral deliberation. b  Reason is the definitive of morals. c  Reason is a slave to the passions. d  Reason has no moral force, and so locates moral life and sense in feelings. Q.57 Which of the following is true according to the passage? a   The virtue of passion is discovered both in action and reflection. b  The virtue of passion is discovered in the character of the tragic figure that can look into the heart of darkness with complete conviction. c  The virtue of passion is discovered in the character of the ironic figure who struggles against impending doom. d  All of the above. Q.58 Which of the following can be inferred from the last lines of the passage? a   The gods have no need to try and fail, to live and die—indeed they have not the capacity to do so. b  The passions of the timeless gods are pale by comparison to those of a creature caught in the ravages of time, in which passion is all that sustains him. c  The gods are without virtue, not because they lack restraint, but because only human beings must risk and suffer and fail in aspiring to become what they can only imagine. d  Gods lack passion and are hence without virtue.