Master Passions: Emotion, Narrative, and the Development of Culture - Hardcover

Mihnea Moldoveanu

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262134055 ISBN 13: 9780262134057

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2002

Synopsis

At the heart of the human experience lies anxiety caused by the realization that the world is unknown, forever eluding our control. And out of this anxiety arise the master passions of ambition and envy, which we repress to mask their power over our lives. Discussion of the role of the emotions in our lives is not new, but Mihnea Moldoveanu and Nitin Nohria go much further, showing how these passions shape not only our individual lives but our social and organizational culture as well. The master passions are not pretty, and so we cover them with the more socially acceptable faces of reason and morality. Moldoveanu and Nohria guide the reader in revealing the real impetus behind such actions as firing a friend, leaving a lover, or even pillaging your own people. Below the rational explanation, they show, often lies a willingness to hurt or even destroy others to fuel our own ambitions or quench the fires of envy. The authors offer intriguing thought experiments and examples from their own lives as they expose the power of the master passions. Deftly weaving ideas from psychology (Sigmund Freud), sociology (Max Weber), literature (William Shakespeare, Albert Camus), and philosophy (David Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche) with the personal, they build a strong argument that society would be much healthier if we faced the deception and self-deception that pervade our lives.

About this title

About the Authors

Mihnea Moldoveanu is Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Nitin Nohria is Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration and Chair of the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School.

Reviews

We of the Western world tend to believe that reason, principles, and laws govern our decisions and actions. The authors of this scholarly work argue that the less obvious form of control is the master passions, which originate in anxiety and are expressed in ambition and envy. Moldoveanu (Rotman Sch. of Management, Univ. of Toronto) and Nohria (Harvard Business Sch.) here explore the effects of passion-induced behaviors in inter- and intrapersonal and institutional relationships. Enriching their own observations, experiments, and examples of passion's grip on our minds, the authors include many excerpted writings from a variety of philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, politicians, economists, poets, and novelists, from Socrates to 20th-century thinkers. Throughout, Moldoveanu and Nohria compare the natural science and social science approaches to behavior prediction and the inquiry process, explaining their own focus on "person hood," the "I" in us all, and the nature of introspective inquiry in the process of constructing explanations of behavior. This is a challenging work that should be appreciated by an educated audience; suitable for academic and large public libraries. Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262134055
• ISBN 13: 9780262134057
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 269