2009/09/02 by Andrew Tallon · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195170214.003.0007
Abstract This essay explores philosophical and theological frameworks for the development in Christianity of notions of “head” religion and “heart” religion. Such notions are the product of a complex and sustained historical interplay of ideas about the soul, body, matter, spirit, thinking, acting, and feeling. While not exclusively the province of Christianity, ideologies of head and heart in religion nevertheless have developed distinctive forms within the Christian cultures of the West, changing over time and leading, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to an engagement with scientific theories of emotion. In discussing head and heart, this essay focuses on Apollo, the Greek god of reason, and Dionysius, son of Zeus and Bacchus. The essay also looks at representative key historical figures and their theories, namely, Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine as well as Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Edmund Husserl.