The Ties that Bind
Rational policy alone can’t hold communities together, or make them good January–February 2012
Passion is a curious thing. In the modern world, if one speaks of passion, undoubtedly the first thing that comes to mind is erotic entanglement. My undergraduate students understand passion as irremediably tied to sex and intimate relations, and they regard it as irrational, disruptive and profoundly unpolitical. There are some accounts by political thinkers that would back them up on…