David Hume once asserted that “reason is the slave of passions.” I think he is right. Nietschze’s Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy of intellect and pleasure, of self-restraint and disinhibition, of prudence and folly, is not a binary choice, nor a uni-dimensional spectrum. These may reinforce. Reasoning begins with curiosity, and ends with boring blandness. Curiosity is the eros of the mind.

Want to pressure-test this hypothesis? Whenevr you face writer’s block, figure out what makes you angry and use that as fuel to arrive to calm, incisive, well-reasoned writing.