There is something in man that is decisive in every way. That something is nuclear, and it is, because, in some way, it defines us, better, it describes us. I do not believe in definitions. They all seem unfair to me. I rather note descriptions or I reject them. To define is to live in the limits. That decisive something in man is outside of any definition, it surpasses it because it does not live in the limits. It is the human heart. If there is something infinite in man, it is his own heart.
He who possesses a man's heart possesses that man. We are talking about the innermost part of man. The heart of man does not is manifestative. It has manifestations, as is logical, but he himself is not in the sphere of manifestation, precisely because he is the first thing. Heart is synonymous with person. My heart is my person, my act of being, my personal being, my personal core. It is something more than center. We are in the sphere of being, in the sphere of act. We are not in the essence of the person, which is manifestive, all of it. Essence and act of being in man are not identified. This identification is proper to divinity. To be man implies a duality, a duality that enriches. The essence is definable because it lives in the limits. Being is not. That is why it is not easy to write or speak of the personal being, of his heart.
Dietrich von Hildebran devotes an entire book to talk about the heart. It is a brilliant book. Ordo amorisis sharper and more penetrating than Hildebrand. At Ordo amoris Scheler refers to the ordo amoris as "the core of man as a spiritual being". Very fine... but diffuse at the same time. Diffuse because he is trying to say virtue, ordo amoris In Augustinian terms, it is acting and being at the same time... However, acting follows being. That is to say, acting is the manifestation of what is not manifest, that is to say, of the intimacy of man. The intimacy, the heart, the nucleus can be manifested, but it itself is not manifestation. It is soaked with being, drunk with being.
"Our heart is too coarse" says Pascal. That's right... it is too intimate, it is unfathomable. It has no limits because it is capable of love. It is convenient to distinguish between loving and love. The first is personal, the second is essential. And the essence is not personal. To love is the person. The essence works love, but it is not an act. That is why love is limited, love has no limits. Love is in the sphere of works, of ethics, of the manifest. But I am not my love but my loving, because I am much more than my works. And this much more is the spirit. The spirit has no limits. The soul does. Soul and spirit are not synonymous. Man is not only nature, but also person. Person and nature, anthropology and metaphysics are not synonymous. And the person cannot be inferior to the world. Person is another way of being. But it is a way of being so superior to the way of being of the world that it cannot be equated with the world.
The person is superior to the world, and therefore has transcendental value. This surplus being of the person with respect to the world makes him infinitely superior to the world. This is the reason why it is very convenient to develop a transcendental anthropology. Leonardo Polo has been the pioneer of this anthropology, and for the reasons that we have exposed, he is much more certain than Hildebrand and Scheler, for he clarifies the distinction of essence and the act of personal being as none had done before.
If the person has transcendental value and the personal nucleus is the heart, its intimacy, then it can be said that the heart is the person itself, the act of being personal. The heart is the each one. And the each one with all its richness, with all its essence. Because the essence enriches, makes it richer, but the richness was already there, it is first. That is why the essence does not have the last word, it is not the each one... but the personal being, the heart of each one.
