By LEONARDO BOFF*
Desire is not just any impulse. It is an inner fire that energizes and mobilizes the entire psychic life.
The great observer and connoisseur of the intricacies of the human psyche, Carl G. Jung, once said that the longest journey was not to the moon or to some star. It was to the heart itself. Angels and demons live there, tendencies that can lead to madness and death, as well as energies that lead to ecstasy and communion with the Whole. How can we reach it and listen to its indications?
There is a question that has never been resolved among thinkers on the human condition: what is the basic structure of the human being? There are many schools of interpreters. It is not the place to summarize them.
Getting straight to the point, I would say that, for me, it is not the reason as is commonly claimed. This is not the first reason that emerges in the process of anthropogenesis. The brain neocortex, in its current configuration, which is responsible for rationality, emerged only one million years ago. Much earlier, the reptilian brain, which is responsible for our instinctive movements, emerged 313 million years ago. Much later, the limbic brain, which is responsible for sensitivity, affection and care, emerged with mammals 210 million years ago.
Therefore, the current reason is late and takes root in the anterior brain, especially in the limbic brain, which is the bearer of the tenderness and love that thrive within us. We are rational mammals rather than rational animals.
Western thought is logocentric. It has given centrality to reason. It has placed affection under suspicion, on the pretext that it harms the objectivity of knowledge. Kantian pure reason does not exist. Reason, because it is embodied, is always impregnated with interest (Jürgen Habermas), emotion and passion, and is therefore imbued by the limbic brain.
To know is always to enter, with all that we are, into communion with reality. From this encounter comes knowledge. The French word for knowing is etymologically rich: know – being born together, subject and object.
More than ideas and worldviews, it is passions, strong feelings, powerful ideas, seminal experiences and love or hate that move us and set us on our way. They lift us up, make us face dangers and even risk our own lives.
What first reacts in us is cordial, sensitive and emotional intelligence. This was demonstrated by Daniel Goleman in his well-known book Emotional intelligence (1995). Seconds after emotion, reason enters. What happens is that in the West, reason has been absolutized as the only valid way of coming into contact with reality. Something has occurred that has become exacerbated and lost its just measure: rationalism, which means the totalitarianism of reason.
It has even produced in some human sectors a kind of lobotomy, that is, a complete insensitivity towards others who are different and towards the suffering of humans and Mother Earth. This is what we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip, an open-air genocide of thousands of children murdered at the behest of an insensitive and heartless Israeli Prime Minister.
In modern times, affection, feeling and passion (pathos) are regaining centrality. This step is imperative today, because only with reason (Logos) we are not aware of the serious crises that life, humanity and the Earth are going through. Intellectual reason needs to integrate emotional intelligence, without which we will not build a social reality with a human face. It is only through affection that we reach out to others. It is affection and love that make us truly human.
One fact, however, is worth highlighting due to its relevance and the great ancestry it enjoys: it is the “structure of desire” that marks the human psyche. Starting from Aristotle, passing through Saint Augustine and the medieval ones such as Saint Bonaventure (who calls Saint Francis come desideriorum, a man of desires), culminating in Sigmund Freud and René Girard in more recent times, all affirm the centrality of the desiring structure of the human being.
Desire is not just any impulse. It is an inner fire that energizes and mobilizes all psychic life. By its nature, desire knows no limits. For we do not want just this or that, we want everything, even eternity, as Friedrich Nietzsche observed. This unstoppable impulse gives an insatiable and infinite character to the human project.
Desire makes existence dramatic and sometimes tragic. But it also brings unparalleled happiness when fulfilled. On the other hand, it produces serious disappointment when a human being identifies a finite reality as the object that fulfills his infinite impulse. It could be a loved one, a long-awaited profession, a property, or a trip.
It doesn't take long for those desired and finite realities to seem unsatisfactory and only increase the inner emptiness, as big as God. How can we get out of this impasse by trying to equate the infinity of desire with the finiteness of all reality? Fluttering from one finite object to another means never finding rest.
The human being must seriously ask himself the question: what is the true and obscure object adequate to his desire? I dare to answer: this is Being and not the entity, it is the Whole and not the part, it is the Infinite and not the finite, it is God and not the world, however good it may be. Our thirst for infinity is the echo of an obscure Infinite that calls us. Who is it?
After much wandering, the human being is led to experience the restless color of Saint Augustine, the tireless man of desire and the indefatigable pilgrim of the Infinite. In his autobiography, The Confessions testifies with moving feeling: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new. Late have I loved you. You have touched me and I burn with desire for your peace. My restless heart does not rest until it rests in you” (Book X, n. 27).
Here we have the path of desire that seeks and finds its real and obscure object, always desired, in sleep and in wakefulness: the Infinite. Only the Infinite is adequate to the infinite desire of the human being. Only then does the longest journey end and the Sabbath of human and divine rest begin. It is the dynamic rest and serene peace, fruits of the longest and most tormented journey towards one's own heart.
*Leonardo Boff He is a philosopher, theologian and writer. Author, among other books, of Reflections of an old theologian: Theologian and thinker (Voices). [https://amzn.to/3BQta0I]
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