Second Response to Diego Lavado Jordan Morgan, St. Francis Xavier University

Second Response to Diego Lavado Jordan Morgan, St. Francis Xavier University

In his paper, Diego Lovado investigates Hegel’s two agencies and shows that their synthesis, with the context of the necessary contradiction in our times, allows us to realize our birthright, namely, [the exercise] of freedom through our passion and self-governance. I wish to express some concern about one of these agencies, namely, the passions.

My main concern pertains to how Hegel and Lovado define the “passions,” and just how significant the passions are to Hegel’s worldview. There appears to be an apparent oversight in the paper. How can Hegel seriously claim “that nothing can be achieved without passion”? Moreover, are the passions an agent themselves, or 1 is it simply part of the agent?

It is particularly unclear what exactly Hegel means when he refers to the passions? Are the passions merely basic emotions like anger, sadness or happiness? Or does his notion of the passions have more profound and complex characteristics? I ask this since there is a significant emphasis on the passions as agents or part of one of the two agencies. As Lovado mentions in the paper, Hegel believes “that nothing can be achieved without passion.” This appears to be a rather extreme position. Indeed, one might claim that the passions are opposed to reason and obstacles to right reason; in fact, many might argue that one can achieve as much without passions as an individual with them. Moreover, one might achieve more extraordinary things without passions; by relying solely on their reason.

Furthermore, it appears as though there is a sort of causal efficacy or power attributed to the passions by Hegel (or the author). Consider the author’s remarks that passion “decides determinant moments in world history that rule the course of our lives”2 and that it “should be understood as the substance that makes changes happen in history.”3 Passions seem to be agents themselves. They (apparently) “decide” and “make changes happen.” This is clearly homuncular. Passions do not strictly speaking do anything. People decide and make changes happen in history. And people have passions. Sometimes they act according to their passions, and

Lovado, Introduction.1

sometimes they do not. But, to talk as if passions are doing the acting makes a mess of human agency.

I believe that the lack of adequate attention to the passions themselves introduces confusion and ambiguity in what is otherwise an exciting and novel contribution to our understanding of Hegel. Ultimately, this is a call for further elaboration and clarification of “passion” in Lovado’s essay “On Our Birthright: An Exploration of Hegel’s Two Agencies.”