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KMID : 0857920210240020183
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Yonsei Journal of Medical History
2021 Volume.24 No. 2 p.183 ~ p.211
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De motu cordis of Thomas Aquinas
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Chung Hyun-Sok
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Abstract
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The epistle De Motu Cordis ad magistrum Philipum de Castro Caeli is an original work of Thomas Aquinas. As the title shows, it is written to a certain Master Philip, a professor of medicine at the University of Naples in the 1270s.
In this work, Aquinas on the natural character of the cardiac movement, the relation between the heart and passion(or emotion), and the similitude between celestial and cardiac movement on the basis of Aristotelian natural philosophy. For example, while criticizing Alfredus de Sareshel, who suggested that the heart’s movement is involuntary and originates from an external agent separated from living organisms, Aquinas insisted on the natural character of the movement in question by appealing to Aristotle’s explanations on movens intrinsecum or causa intrinseca. On the other hand, while following in grosso modo Aristotle’s cardio-centric understanding, Aquinas significantly modified it on issues like the role of the brain in emotions and passions and the relation between heart and soul. In this regard, we can find a medieval variant or modification of Aristotle’s theory in Aquinas’s arguments on the heart. However, we cannot but admit that his arguments are far from the scientific exactitude required for contemporary medicine or biology. Nevertheless, we can say that it is still one of the valuable sources for historians who envisage illuminating the interrelationship between medicine and philosophy or between biology and philosophy in the intellectual milieu of the 13th century.
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KEYWORD
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Thomas Aquinas, Heart, Passion, Emotion, Soul, Substantial form
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