Stevens Blogpost 11

 In Section II, Chapter II, Adam Smith focuses on passions that are derived from the imagination, which are specific to the unique experiences of individuals. These types of passions, according to Smith, are hard to sympathize with because they are experienced differently for each person. Smith’s primary example of this is type of passion is love. If someone is in love, we may think their feelings are reasonable, but we cannot conceive of their passion in the same way that we can when someone is angry or resentful. As Smith says, “Our imagination not having run in the same channel with that of the lover, we cannot enter into the eagerness of his emotions.” (Smith 28). From the outside, the passion of the lover seems wildly disproportionate to the value of the object of their love.

 

Love seems like an especially important and unique passion that I think deserves a little more attention than Smith gave it. Compared to other passions, love is incredibly rare. Emotions like rage, happiness, and remorse are so common that it is practically impossible to remember the first time you experienced them; but love is different. Everyone that has experienced it can remember their first time falling in love. Experiencing love, I think, makes it much easier to sympathize with others in love, even if you can’t fully understand their relationship.

 

The other unique aspect of love is that it is not a momentary passion. While there are similar fleeting emotions like lust or swooning, love is long-term state. This makes it compatible with other passions in unique ways. It is impossible to be both angry and happy, but it is possible for a someone to be in love and angry (momentarily) at the object of their love, or sad, or happy.

 

In Chapter II, Section I, Smith notes that “nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow feeling with all the emotions of our own breast” (Smith 8). This principle seems especially true, indeed necessary, for love. Unrequited love is painful; mutual love is blissful. This dichotomy seems distinct to love. My experience of anger does not depend on whether the object of my anger is also angry back. However, in either case of love, the same barriers to sympathy Smith outlined exist. An outsider can just as easily wonder “why is she so hung up on him?” as they can “what does he see in her?”. 

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