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This book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine's outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas's problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin's advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
List of contents
Introduction.- Aristotle's Cardiac Vessel.- Augustine's Law of the Heart: Theives' Honor.- Aquinas's Law of the Heart: Natural Reason.- John Calvin, Heart in Hand.- Harvey, by Hercules! The Hero of the Blood's Circulation.
About the author
Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle is an intellectual and cultural historian specializing in Christian thought from the biblical to the early modern eras. She was early awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in religion.
Summary
This book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
Additional text
“Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey … promise an exhaustive march through the cultural history of the heart by way of the varied thinkers … Boyle aims to creatively juxtapose the natural-scientific study of the cardiac vessel and the multiple valences of the ‘heart’ across two millennia of philosophical reflection.” (Sean Hannan, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, May 18, 2019)
Report
"Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey ... promise an exhaustive march through the cultural history of the heart by way of the varied thinkers ... Boyle aims to creatively juxtapose the natural-scientific study of the cardiac vessel and the multiple valences of the 'heart' across two millennia of philosophical reflection." (Sean Hannan, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, May 18, 2019)
