Your opinion on Apathy vs. Passion- Which is worse?

I'm trying to figure this one out myself at this time.

I'm leaning toward misdirected apathy; alternate perspectives appreciated.

I'll post my own reply once I have this more squared away in my own mind.

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• apathy
• misdirection
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[essius27]

And here, too, which is worse depends on a variety of factors (for example, on the intensity of the passion, on the gravity of the crime, etc.). It seems that the question you pose ought to justify its formulation. Before we ask which is worse, we ought to ask if the dilemmatic nature of the question is itself warranted. Why should we think that between apathy and passion there is a relation of superiority/inferiority and not, perhaps, a network of relative values dependent on the moral context?

[essius27]

In a specific circumstance, whether and to what extent passion (or, conversely, apathy as passion's negation) is called for depends on the moral object in question. In some cases virtue demands passion. The virtuous person, for instance, will be outraged at injustice (murder, rape, theft, etc.); the unjust person may either be apathetic (which in this case is the nonexhibition of outrage) or may exhibit too much passion.

[essius27]

Neither is absolutely worse than the other, for there are a variety of human passions the misdirection of which is at times more and at times less evil than apathy's misdirections. Further, to answer this question effectively, we have to distinguish apathy as general indifference from apathy as a lack of a specific passion (apatheia < apathes = a + pathos, "without feeling").