Passion is the Gale Response

Eustace’s book, Passion is the Gale, is an interesting and seemingly original work. Eustace, an NYU professor, tackles the tricky subject of “emotions history”. Her examinations made myself as a historian more mindful of emotions and the role they play throughout history, no matter the era or the event. Eustace very clearly separated emotions from reason in her introduction, along with the beginning of her portrayal of political thinker, Thomas Paine. Eustace uses Paine and his work, Common Sense, as an agreed upon turning point for the understanding of reason and emotions. However, Eustace’s examination predates Paine, and she states on page 3 that Paine’s proclamations were actually twenty years too late. Eustace goes on to state that it was emotion, and not just reason (as Paine coins “the Age of Reason”) that influenced the structure of British-American power and politics. Therefore, Eustace uses Paine less as a major player in the development of an American political life and more as a multi-faceted piece to a larger picture.

Even though Eustace downplays the degree of Paine’s contributions to politics, she still is able to use him as support for her arguments surrounding Pope. Both Pope and Paine shared new age ideas of passion being an unavoidable factor in all of politics. On page 5, Eustace remarks that “…when commentators like Pope and Paine insisted that the propensity for passion was universal- inevitable, invariable, and even desirable in all people- they paved the way for a new understanding of the fundamental commonalities of human nature…” (page 5). Here, Eustace suggests that Paine’s contributions to American politics were not as black and white as some historians may presume today. Not only a theorist of politics, Paine also understood the human element behind social life (which inevitably leaked into political lives). In short, Eustace suggests that Paine’s philosophy which was embraced by revolutionary Americans held emotional implications, and that they were not purely straightforward. Emotion and passion would be behind the policy making and the overall decision making processes of late 18^th century America.

The relationship between passion and reason is therefore a fluid one, whereas passion can override reason and reason can override passion. Eustace uses passion as a sub-description of “emotion”, but pits reason against emotion. In her introduction, Eustace points out that there was a preconceived notion of reason and emotion being in constant conflict. But, with writers and thinkers such as Paine and Pope, the two conflicting feelings could actually live in a system where one drives another in any given situation. Eustace’s entire book and her thesis are based off of a nuanced look at the relationship of reason and passion, showing that emotion was not just a feeling in the realm of family in friends, but a feeling which seeped into all aspects of life. Politics in the late 18^th century were therefore included in this humanized realm of passion and emotion.

One question I found myself resorting to constantly while reading was whether or not Eustace’s thesis could hold true for other revolutions and other events of history at different times and at different places. The notion of emotions history seems to make a lot of sense, but can it be a framework as a lens itself?