All Those Useless Passions: On Sartre, Love, the Present, and the Sacred. Saturday 8 November 2025

My presentation at the in-person annual Existential Conference NCVO Regents Wharf, 8 All Saints St, London N1 9RL. To register, email sea.conference.organisers@gmail.com Here is the abstract:

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes the human being as a “useless passion”, a passion that goes nowhere and is ontologically impossible. This passion that we are, he adds, is the very “reverse of the passion of Christ”. It has no reason for being, given that reason can only be granted by being itself, the “ens causa sui which religions call God”. This passion that is the human being has no justification for existence. Starting from this premise, I will draw connections between “uselessness” and the sacred. Could one of the uses of these useless passions be Sartrean choice – the courage that beckons us and our clients towards freedom, responsibility, and self-determination? Drawing on Sartre and partly on  Anna Karenina we will explore the following questions: Could choice constitute the antidote to the complicit passivity of the present? What are the implications of applying creatively the above themes to the challenges and struggles of the present, personally, relationally, and socially.

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Difference & Multiplicity Book launch Friday 28 November 2025

Free entry but booking essential. To reserve a place and for full details click on the eventbrite logo below

AFFECT THERAPY SYMPOSIUM, THESSALONIKI, GREECE, AUTUMN 2026.

More details about the Symposium coming up soon. If interested, write me a note via the contact page in the website to register your interest. WATCH THIS SPACE!!

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Feedback from participants

 The Zen and the Ethics of Joy workshop, held in June, was very popular with around 50 people attending. Here, two participants reflect on the event. “When Dr Manu asked us to turn to our neighbour and describe the emotion we find most difficult or overwhelming, my initial reaction was a mild but rising panic. How could I root around the undergrowth of my heart space and then honestly share with somebody I’d never met? What had I signed up for? This, however, was the beauty of the workshop. To notice in ourselves and others the ways in which we seek to repress, reshape, and control our own emotions, but also how these very emotions are a shared and fundamental aspect of being human. I am so humbled to have taken part.” (Jemimah)

“I really liked that Manu Bazzano’s workshop began in silence with us listening to a beautiful piece of music and a simple guided meditation. I found the exercises working with different challenging emotions to be very powerful and I was moved by the willingness of participants to speak with deep authenticity. I discovered the extent of my own healing journey over the past five years when we were asked to do an exercise that would once have had me fleeing for safety – an unexpected touch from someone I had only just met. Whilst I did not particularly enjoy this exercise, that was not the point and I could see the parallels to unexpected events that will inevitably occur in our lives.” (Sola)

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