What Have We Here, A Thesis!

A Senior Thesis for Thomas Aquinas College. Submitted on March 14, 2010, and defended on April 14, 2010. And yes, passed of course.

Thesis:
A Philosophical Analysis of the Heart as Presented by Scriptural and Patristic Literature

Precis:

In the Septuagint, Jeremiah 17:5 says, “The heart is deep beyond all things, and it is the man. Even so, who can know him?” With this passage and generally in the Scriptures, the heart is understood as that which makes up who man is by moving and affecting the whole man in all his aspects. When looking at Aristotle’s understanding of man, it is rather the soul which makes up man, with the intellect and the rational appetite as especially moving and affecting the whole man. Initially these two views seem to ascribe different entities to man in defining him—one with a sort of physical organ which is the source of bodily life, the other with an immaterial form. Certain attributes of the heart that are spoken of in the Scriptures, in particular, do not seem to match attributes of the soul for Aristotle. However, in spite of these apparent differences, with help from the understanding of the Fathers of the Church, I propose in my thesis that there is rather a clear relationship between these two views, where the Scriptures bring out two senses of the heart that correlate to two ways that the rational appetite moves the soul and the whole man, with the real good as the final cause of the rational appetite’s willing and desiring, and the apparent good as the immediate cause from which the rational appetite desires and moves man to act.

A Philosophical Analysis of the Heart – Thesis by Jon Greig (PDF)