Slave of the Passions

Wouldn't THAT be a nice title for your first novel?

Anyway, Grice considers some metaphors regarding 'akrasia', in WoW, p. 48.

"Consider such adjectives", Grice writes,

"as
(a) loose
(b) unfettered
(c) unbridled

vis a vis phrases such as 'slave of passions' or 'the slave of duty', in G&S]

"in relation to a possible application to the noun 'life' [or 'day' as I prefer -- cfr. "A day in the life"]" -- yielding"

(a') a loose life
(b') an unfettered life
(c') an unbridled life

Grice comments:

"I assume that such an application of (a), (b) or (c) to 'life' [or 'day'] would be NON-DERIVATIVE, or 'literal'."

"And I assume that 'a loose liver' would NOT involve a non-derivative SENSE if uttered censoriously to describe a particular man"

[Grice could be sexist even when he shouldn't].

"It seems to me that, in the absence of any further SENSE for either word -- i.e. either of (a), (b) or (c) and 'life' --one migt expect to be able to

MEAN more or less the same [thing] by [at least] (a') and (b')."

"However], the fact that, as things are, (a') is tied to

(a'') DISSIPATION whereas
(b') seems to be QUITE GENERAL in meaning, suggest that perhaps (a) does, and [cfr. 'but'. JLS] (b) does not, have a DERIVATIVE SENSE in this area."

"As for (c'), which one might perhaps have expected, prima facie, to mean much the same [thing] as (b'), the phrase is slightly uncomfortable, because (b) seems to be _tied_ [as per expression meaning, or 'conventional' implicature? I do hope a slave of passion can on occasion untie himself! JLS]

to such words as

'passion' [(cfr. Wilson 1991)]
'temper', 'lust' and so on)"

So the oddity, if I have followed this is that "an unbridled life" is a "passionate life", and if it's unbridled -- for whose life is totally _bridled_?

Thus, the phrase 'slave of the passions' is oxymoronic (or is it). And if it is, it is genially ironically and echoically and mentionally meant _not_ to be?

JLS