Kahlil Gibran on Reason and Passion

Kahlil Gibran.

We give you this passage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (pictured):

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing.

Neither reason nor passion should be set free. In moderation one mediates the other. Bound together, they grant peace and oneness to ‘the soul’—or howsoever we call that thing which governs our mental unity.

This is a fascinating idea which reaches genuine philosophical discussion. For example, what does Gibran’s idea mean for us ethically? Should we be rationalists, tied to the moral obligations of reason and legality, or should we be sentimentalists, inspired by our genuine motivations to do the right thing? Perhaps both.

Is that possible?

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