Emotions
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
What should we do with our desires: affirm them, sort them, or detach from them?
Desire is at once what sets us in motion and what torments us: to extinguish it is to extinguish life, to follow it unchecked is to forfeit peace. To take a position is to say where the drive that makes us live ends and where the servitude that wears us out begins.
Should we examine our inner life, or fulfill ourselves first and foremost through action?
Turning inward sheds light on who we are, but can slide into rumination far from the world; throwing oneself into action accomplishes much, but risks dodging the question of who is acting, and for what. To take a position is to say where the self is truly found: in the return to oneself, or in what one does.
Are emotions an obstacle to thought or a source of knowledge?
Should we distrust what we feel, a disturbance that clouds judgement, hear in it a fine perception of what matters, or learn to train it? To take a position is to say how much credit to give our emotions when they contradict cold reason, and whether wisdom lies in silencing them, following them, or shaping them.