SOURCE: Abecassis, Jack. “The Fragility of Philosophy: Passions, Ancient and Modern.” MLN 110, no. 4 (September 1995): 918-42.

In the following essay, Abecassis compares Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire with Le Philosophe et les Passions by Michel Meyer, contending each examines the concept of passion in moral philosophy. Abecassis observes that Nussbaum's is a polemical book full of brilliant and insightful analysis.

Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous, que ce serait être fou, par un autre tour de folie, de n'être pas fou.

Pascal, Pensées, B 414

The sophia in philo-sophia is the antonym of pathos. Thus philosophers are, for the most part, the enemies of the phil-pathé, the tragedians. If, as Epictetus defines it, “tragedy is uniquely the narration in tragic verse of passions experienced by men fascinated by external objects,”¹ philosophy seems by its very self-definition to be the overcoming of passion by Reason. Indeed, from its...