Selbstlose Leidenschaften

Emotions, feelings, affects and passions are central to human life. Without passions, we cannot live in a humane way, but passions can also hinder and destroy human relationships. It is important, therefore, that our passions are shaped by cultural forms but also that we control these cultural formations critically because they can become destructive. To allow our cultural forms to repress passions is as much detrimental to living a humane life as to live passions in a selfish way. Ingolf U. Dalferth's thesis is not that we must repress our passions but that we must avoid living them selfishly, and that we must not cultivate our selfishness but our passions.