Is reason the slave of the passions?

The core of the problem is that you seem to buy into the old Platonic view that reason and emotion are somehow in conflict, that passion is the unruly stallion that needs to be kept in check by the cool power of rationality. When Hume advocated reason as “the slave of the passions” he clearly did not mean that it would blindly do their bidding. Hume was not being descriptive but prescriptive—reason not only is “but ought only to be the slave to the passions… and must serve and obey them.”

Source: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk