Abstract
This paper presents a reflection on the human passions from a cultural-historical perspective, based on the contributions of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky with some of the propositions developed by Baruch Spinoza and Mikhail Bakhtin. The analysis is based on Irene Frain's book about letters exchanged between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren, that give visibility to the ethical-political developments of passion. Our argument explores the passion in its historical and cultural policy dimension and its impact on experiential setting of the drama. The conclusion goes in the direction of an epistemological shift in the treatment of passion that would allow us to question two of the dichotomies that have marked the psychological thinking; the separation between the social and the personal; and the spin-off reason and emotion. Finally, we signal that the study of the passions must be driven beyond passionate passivity. In our view, passion can mobilize creative processes.
Keywords:
passion; Psichology of drama; politics; Vigotski; Espinosa; Bakhtin