How to treat passions? A brief recap of the conversation and its significance in contemporary society

Enes Özcan
HSE University, Moscow, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

TERRA ECONOMICUS, 2024, Vol. 22 (no. 1),

p. 50-61
DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2024-22-1-50-61

How to understand human behavior and what to do with passions have been long-standing questions through an old philosophical conversation. (1) In Ancient and Medieval philosophy, the answer had focused on public good and how to suppress human passions by the public authority to direct human behavior toward the public good. (2) Later, as this suppression of passions idea lost its credibility, mainly Renaissance philosophy and Mercantilist literature developed ideas of embracing and harnessing them toward the public good via the public authority. (3) However, as this idea of transforming passions through an authority was also found to be faint, the idea of countervailing harmful passions by beneficial passions, mainly material self-interest, was developed roughly by Renaissance and Early Modern philosophers. This idea and doctrine of countervailing passions has also attracted many criticisms, some of which are mentioned in this article. In this paper, the historical evolution of the conversation of ideas on “how to treat human passions” will be briefly explained alongside the socioeconomic conditions of the time, which is useful to understand the attitudes toward passions. For this purpose, the three parts are organized into three historical periods. In each part, some criticisms toward the ideas of that period will also be mentioned in order to demonstrate the flow of conversation. Finally, this conversation on passions will be discussed in line with our contemporary social experiences, and it will be argued that the Ancient and the Stoic idea of moderation of passions still has significance.

Citation: Özcan E. (2024). How to treat passions? A brief recap of the conversation and its significance in contemporary society. Terra Economicus 22(1), 50–61. DOI: 10.18522/2073-6606-2024-22-1-50-61

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Keywords: passions; self-interest; intellectual history; history of economic thought; the Montesquieu-Steuart doctrine; morality; values

JEL codes: B10; B20, N00

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Publisher: Southern Federal University
Founder: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606