Aries – Emotional – Heart: IMPETUS

From the integral point of view, for Schiller man is an ideal being and a temporal being, an individual who seeks universality and, at the same time, singularity. Through the formal impulse he constructs rules and ideas that satisfy his vocation for abstraction; from the sensitive impulse, he allows himself to be stimulated by the events of his specific space and time, attending to his desire for singularity. Schiller says: «The sensible impulse demands that there should be variation, that time should have a content; the formal impulse aims at the suppression of time, that there should be no variation.» (Schiller, 1795:21).

Man’s intellectual vocation requires satisfying both impulses. Rather than suggesting two distinct and exclusive modes of being, they show their strength of complementarity. Form and content are the categories that are at the fundamental basis of Schiller’s proposal. There will only be form as long as matter is configured, and there will only be content as long as one belongs to a form.

Neither of these two types of impetus, which constitute the mental life of persons, should be superimposed on the other. But Schiller draws attention to the overvaluation of the formal impulse in the civil and intellectual education of man. The need of the State to universalize the existence of persons, in an attempt to make collective life an integral whole, has led to the privileging of universal forms of life, to the detriment of individualities.

The ideal man in his desire for abstraction and generality easily follows the ideas constructed from the State or from the institutions that have the power to massify ideas. If the ideas of the State or of the institutions are promising for the integral life of people, man’s desire for abstraction is correctly satisfied. But if these ideas, as Schiller shows, deny the harmonious unfolding of people’s sensible life, the result is frustration and existential chaos for individuals and society. In essence, a disturbed character is the result of an imbalance in one of the human intellectual impulses. For Schiller, disturbed character can be seen in both individuals and society. It is therefore urgent to understand where the imbalance of intellectual impulses lies.

I invite everyone to read Matías’ post with the topic of the day

Ímpetu

Finally, I encourage everyone to reflect on the concept of the day. No one else but us can re-signify our own being

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