In the middle

No, I won´t talk about Aristotelic virtue and its psychogeographical location in the middle of human complexities. I´d rather like to talk about another dynamism present in our experience. This dimension has more to with the soul than with any other reality. Nieztsche considered man as a funambulist, walking on a rope, keeping balance in the risky thin line between two safe realms. Heinz Kohut saw man´s psychological safety oscilating between the realization of future plans and the ideal contained in them, the inspiring form sleeping in their heart. Even John Mc Laughlin found an spiritual source in this itinerant movement of the soul in his Between nothingness and eternity.

The fragility of the human condition can be easily seen in these symbolic models of the soul. That who stands between two poles risks falling in the road, tearing his soul or simply isolating one pole from the other.

Riskyness is also present in another pair of poles in which our soul rests in its longing dynamics. The first pole I have talked about in my manifesto is the elusive character of the human world. A simple look at our life makes us aware of the passing condition of many many events. We just fail to appropriate all we´d wish to. Our will to power has to recoil when faced with the infinite richness we are aware of.

The other pole is closer to the eternal side of the human soul. I think it was Schelling, the romantic philosopher, who understood this possibility. For Schelling "the ability a man (or woman) has to experience his ignorance and identify a specific lack within himself provides the context and the means to overcome those limits. For instance, if he were endowed with no mathematical potentials at all, he could not even recognize his own incompleteness".  It is the infinitude in the finite.

Comments

[Rocky]

That is really deep. it kind of reminds of the inner searching that Voctor Frankl was doing when he wrote Mans Search Meaning. It is the innermost sense of who we are and what is important to us.

[Felix Gerena]

Thanks for your answer, Rocky. Yes, I´ve been doubting whether to write in this more sophisticated style or not. Perhaps I should apologize with my readers for not being clear enough. But the fact is I have enjoyed a lot writing it, and a blog has sometimes to serve for the pleasure of the owner, too.

Yes, both Heideggerian elusiveness and Schellingian eternity are inner experiences, reflecting the eloquence of the soul.

[Rocky]

Don't apologize for writing what makes you feel good. We could all use a little deep think and inner reflection.

[Steve Sherlock]

Yes, going deep once in a while is good. I marked this posting to come back to it as I did not have the time to go deep when I first read it. Not sure if I have sufficient time to explore it fully so that may be rationale for a longer post later.

A couple of connections can be made at least: (1) Much Western thought treats life as an either/or, black/white, up/down... Where Eastern thought tends to play more in the space between the two. Ying/yang are always pictured together, inter-twined, not easily divided. I like the concept of the play in between, it truly is a balance in this case.

(2) We can be overwhelmed by the physical input from our five senses. Our ability to make "sense" of this input enables us to go about our daily lives. This "sense" is our own creation and we sometimes do not realize that it is uniquely our creation and is not "reality".

Hence the importance of sharing our ideas, of developing a common language, of gaining some re-assurance that we (individually) are not alone, that there is some sense to the scary real world, that we can do better together than alone.

Thanks for allowing me to go deep here.

[Felix Gerena]

Steve, Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts with us. ;)

Both Heidegger and Schelling, the thinkers I´ve recalled in this post were inspired in one way or another by eastern conceptions and symbolic language. It is certainly the poet in our soul that shapes the worlds we live in.