Is "passionate love" detrimental to freedom? Michel de Montaigne (who abhorred quoting in place of thinking, so I won't quote him) thought it was.

This strikes me as a yin/yang situation. It would seem that the right to engage in passionate love (or be passionately in love) would go to the essence of freedom. Yet in fairness it has to be recognized that once the passions take over, a person can become a slave to his passions and is no longer free. But if a particular individual is not free in that sense, how does that affect freedom as a whole? (Unless there are contagious "group passions"....)

What about passionate love of freedom? Might that be destructive of it? I'm distrustful of passions, but sometimes I worry that I'm too passionate in my distrust of the passions. In fairness, I'm probably envious of those who have them.

Passionate love has never been my shtick, so I'm probably blind to whether it's destructive of freedom. If you don't feel something, it's hard to get terribly worked up about whether it's destructive. Might those who are susceptible fear it more?

None of this is rational, of course....