Passion and action

Marleen Rozemond

pp. 110-137

in: Errol E. Harris, Salvation from despair, Berlin, Springer, 1973

Abstract

We observed that the passivity of our sensuous awareness was not pure passivity, but that some degree of mental activity was also involved. Similarly, the passivity of the body in registering the effects of external causes is not pure passivity and involves some degree of bodily activity. Not only secondary qualities among our ideas express the nature of our own body as much as, or more than, that of the external bodies which cause those changes in our own of which the ideas are sensations. We also and concomitantly experience emotions which are similarly ideas of the results of interactions between our own and other bodies.