Passions and Ego

Self-love as engine and unmasker

• La Rochefoucauld (larochefoucauld) — amour-propre is the engine of everything: the greatest of all flatterers, it governs virtue and love alike. Grounding: samolyubie-dvigatel-vsego, amour-propre, lyubov-i-samolyubie.
• Pascal (pascal) — amour-propre and diversion are the machinery of flight from the truth about oneself; passion occupies the place from which thought has been driven out. Grounding: amour-propre, divertissement, begstvo-ot-sebya.
• Adler (adler) — ambition and the hunger for recognition compensate for a starting deficit: striving upward is no vice in itself; the question is where it is aimed. Grounding: stremlenie-k-prevoskhodstvu, kompensatsiya-i-sverkhkompensatsiya.

Desire consecrated and put to work

• Wattles (wattles) — the desire for riches is God seeking expression: not to be suppressed but shaped into a clear mental image. Grounding: zhelanie-est-bog-ishchushchiy-vyrazheniya, chetkiy-mentalny-obraz.
• Hill (hill) — desire is the starting point of all achievement; the energy of passion is transmuted into attainment. Grounding: zhelanie-nachalo-vsego, transmutation-of-energy.
• Nietzsche (nietzsche) — the passions are not to be extirpated but spiritualized: cruelty and instinct are material for knowledge and growth, turned first of all upon oneself. Grounding: instinkt-i-razum, zhestokost-i-poznanie.

Passions disciplined and cut away

• Epictetus (epictetus) — the discipline of desire and aversion: desire only what is in your power, or you will be a slave to externals. Grounding: zhelanie-i-izbeganie, distsiplina-zhelaniya, bezrazlichie-k-vneshnemu.
• Ignatius Loyola (ignatius) — disordered attachment distorts choice: against it stand agere contra and the scales at equilibrium. Grounding: besporyadochnaya-privyazannost, agere-contra, bezrazlichie.
• Schopenhauer (schopenhauer) — striving is insatiable: the stronger the will, the greater the suffering; wisdom is to moderate and to limit. Grounding: futilnost-stremleniya, ogranichenie-i-schaste.
• Confucius (confucius) — subdue yourself and return to ritual: form is the bridle of passion, measure in all things. Grounding: ren, li, zhongyong.

Axis of dispute: Wattles and Hill against Epictetus and Schopenhauer — desire as
engine against desire as slavery; Nietzsche against Ignatius — the
spiritualization of passion against its excision; La Rochefoucauld against them
all — every one of these camps is driven by the same amour-propre.