Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey [Hardcover]

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 ORourke 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 Augustines outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinass problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvins 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.

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)

Marjorie ORourke Boyle is an intellectual and cultural historian specializing in Christian thought from the biblical to the early modern eras. She was early awarded a Gulc)