Jose Mart­: One of the Founding Stones of Cuban Psychology

Opinion

On January 28, 1853, exactly 166 years ago, in the Villa de San Cristóbal de la Habana, a traveling star is housed in the body and in the spirit of a beautiful child, which posterity would know as José Martí Pérez (1853-1895), "Immense Cuban who [in the words of Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler, historian of Havana], wrote how much he touched his sensibility." So much so, that the thriving insular psychological science, cultivated in educational, religious and journalistic praxis by the venerable father Félix Varela Morales (1788-1853), and enriched —from the pedagogical-editorial side by Mr. Enrique José Varona Pera (1849 -1933) - did not go unnoticed, in any way, for a thinker of the exceptional size of the Apostle.

When the most universal of Cubans began to venture into the fields of poetry, literature and journalism, Psychology had broken its filial link with Philosophy (scio mater) and had become, in its own right, the science of spirit (this is what the Master calls it).

In order to understand why Martí identifies Psychology with the science of the spirit, it would be necessary to specify the fact that this discipline of the neural and social sciences studies the laws, categories and principles on which the psychic and spiritual life of homo sapiens is structured.

On the other hand, Spirituality is the set of actions that man performs and that give full meaning to his earthly Jesus DB. José Martí: One of the Founding Stones of Cuban Psychology. Psychol Psychology Res Int J 2019, 4(5): 000223.

Opinion

existence, and is directly related to the world of values, fundamental pillars of universal culture and driving force of the integral development of the human being.

With respect to the unity of body, mind and spirit, proclaimed by Martí, the laureate poet and essayist Cintio Vitier (1921-2009) emphasizes that “in all his [poetic] - literary and journalistic work is that continuous reference to the fact that the needs of the body and the soul, the values of reason and hope, are compensated, articulated and balanced.

In the socio-historical era in which the founder of the newspaper Patria ventures into the field of the science of the spirit, and Psychology had already begun to build a system of laws, categories and principles on which that branch of human knowledge would rest.

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