La via dell’interiorità

La Psicologia di A. Rosmini, la fenomenologia e le neuroscienze

Abstract

Existential analysis takes as starting point the world-of-life and discovers the integral reality of the person who is the metaphysical unit of soul and living body.  Re-proposing the question of consciousness means recognizing the importance of the inner dimension, which is defined by the term “soul”, in which the metaphysical question arises about the meaning of life and existence.

Following the path of interiority, the original meaning of the soul, the self-consciousness that presupposes the dimension of the unconscious, is clarified. The anthropological question aims to develop a hermeneutic of existence: the human being is the synthetic unit of objective ideal being and the fundamental bodily feeling. This unity manifests itself in intellectual perception.

While neuroscientific discoveries define the material and biological conditions of the human being, the phenomenological analysis of consciousness, which is not exhausted in transcendental subjectivity, can indicate the constitutive relationship of the human mind with the truth of being. Neuroscience, phenomenology and metaphysics can find a space for mutual integration, against any reductionism, through the gaze on the integral truth of the person who is love.

The ontological synthesism of the three forms (ideal, real and moral), which Rosmini talks about, is an indication of the foundation of the ethics of care: care of oneself and one’s soul, care of one’s neighbor, care of being. In the final analysis, care is the integral form of being. Rosmini strives to decipher the metaphysical mystery of the person understood as a relational substance or subsisting relationship, whose essence consists in love and whose ultimate goal lies in the union of love with others and with God.

Metaphysical inobjectification (or the original presence of the ideal, objective, indeterminate being in the human mind) and moral inobjectification (or “the experience” of a person that is reflected in the inner experience of another consciousness) are both expression of a dynamic conception of being and human being, that is relationship. Such a perspective is expressed on a phenomenological level in empathy.

According to the neuroscientific discoveries, empathy has a plausible explanation in mirror neurons that are a constituent part of human existence, like other biological structures and functions. However, material and biological conditions, while necessary, are not sufficient. 

The mutual integration between anthropological dimensions responds to the challenge of complexity and, at the same time, proposes the need to walk the path of interiority to address the question of meaning. This seems to justify the comparison between Rosmini’s psychology and metaphysics of love – also attentive to the psychological investigations – and today’s development of neuroscience and contemporary phenomenology, with particular reference to Husserl and Edith Stein.