Closing the gap between reason and emotion

All passions have the same end—personal dignity and self-esteem. But each passion, though tied by its own logic to all the others, tends to become obsessed with its own objects and outlook. Each follows what it takes to be an optimal strategy; but from a more inclusive view it is evident these individual strategies conflict and interfere with each other. These are strategies that are virtually always disastrous (like running backward in football). It is the business of rationality to eliminate or modify them, to organize the passions in a co-ordinated effort, joining them together toward a common goal (which means, however, that some of them will have to spend most of their time on the bench). Moreover, it is possible that even a co-ordinated strategy will be less than optimal, even disastrous. Thus, I shall argue that rationality is the search of the passions for optimal strategy for achieving self-esteem. What is called wisdom is the attainment of this optimal strategy, the “harmony of the soul” that was so celebrated by the Greeks, harnessed from the enthusiasm and chaos so encouraged by the Romantics. It is what Aristotle called eudaimonia, “living well,” surely not devoid of passion, but not devoid of reason either. Indeed, it is only when this insidious distinction begins to disintegrate that the ideal of “self-esteem,” “wisdom,” and classical “harmony of the soul” will begin to make any sense for us.

---Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotion (1977)