Reason or passion – the secret to a happy life?

“Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man,” proclaimed David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, historian, public intellectual and my idol I keep drawing inspiration from. As the 3rd in my Idol Series, Hume serves as a great example of a life well lived: he was wholly dedicated to his profession and as a person was deeply connected to and appreciated by others. How did he manage this? In my opinion – it was by following the above mantra.Hume’s beliefs were grounded in deep conviction that people are influenced more by feelings than reasons and that we need to get our feelings right to live well. In other words, reason always comes later, to support the original attitude. This view-point is nicely represented in this sentence from his ‘Treatise of Human Nature’:

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

In today’s world, facing the abundance of data, this claim might seem to be a sign of a rebellion, but the opposite is true. Those of us who really want to drive a change – in our organizations, our communities, in our lives – can never succeed only with a ‘reason’. We need to be unreasonable in Hume’s way: we need to be prepared to be our true selves, driven by our feelings and passions, but rectified by reason.There is an abundance of wisdom in Hume’s work. Among other topics, he looked deep into human behaviour in his essay ‘On Suicide’, in which he reminds us:

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. ” 

While exploring the farthest corners of the human soul, he also wrote about #education and the importance of learning.Considering his views on passion, it’s not surprising to learn that he considered education a path to ground our beliefs in experience and impressions and not to create prior arguments based on reason and deduction.

Is Hume relevant in today's world?

Thinking about the AI-powered man and machine era we are entering, with technologies augmenting our human intelligence, Hume might have for us yet another piece of wisdom: the education today needs to help us to see the bigger picture, make us prepared to listen to our feelings and combine them in the best possible way with the rational facts we have and can get from our ‘machines’.Although we are far from being rational in our decisions, there is hope for us all – we can educate our passions, our feelings. It needs the right mix of soft skills such as #sympathy, #empathy, re-assurance, good example, or encouragement – qualities that enjoy their renaissance these days. Once we include these #skills into our toolkits, we start to be more benevolent and patient, and less afraid – and, at such moment, we are ready and able to truly tap into and leverage the power of facts and logic.This is such a powerful reminder for all of us – we are more than our profession. We have multiple roles and passions in our lives and there is none more important than the other. We are and need to be good parents, efficient managers, inspiring leaders, opera lovers, and football fans – all of this and much more.It is this breadth of experiences and different human connections that provide us with the much-needed sources of inspiration, the opportunities to invest and gain energy, and the joy of experimenting and never-ending learning.

Management lesson?

There is also a management lesson in Hume’s work. It is managers' and leaders' responsibility to help teams to find purpose in their work and translate it into individual and team happiness; in everyday joy from the pursuit of the goals and challenges each of us faces. While "Growth and comfort do not coexist,” as our IBM CEO Ginni Rometty says, we have a responsibility to navigate and co-create the purpose for our followers.To live a happy life to its last moments, as Hume did, is not easy. And I do not think we discuss enough of what happiness really is. What should we do to enjoy the vast opportunities for experimentation, building human connections, and learning from each other? Reflecting on my own life, I deeply believe in passion above reason – at least in the situations when our trained minds tell us that there is and can be much more than what others claim to see there.After a businesswoman and a politician, I introduced my third idol today – a philosopher. Although this was not the initial intention, I can see how all three of them would very much enjoy a joint dinner and time together – sharing stories about their own feelings and passions.Whom would YOU like to invite for such a dinner?