The heart of as a anthropological and cultural phenomenon

Abstract

This article analyzes the image of the heart in the history and culture of the heart as a metonymy of feeling and understanding. The heart as the center of the microcosm, which forms the essence of human aspirations. The heart is one of the basic images, archetypes, even, of world culture. It is an allegory of the center, cause and source of all existence: biological, social, mechanical. Heart surgery as an object is a relatively young category. However, in this aspect lies scientific discovery: heart transplantation, a heart-lung machine, an artificial heart. The religious-mystical paradigm of the heart also involves that which talks to the spirit world and the Divine vessel whose change is connected with revelation and repentance. Being perceived as a source of empathy, diligence and the center of life, the idea of the heart as reflected in physiology, medicine, philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, theology, anthropology, sociology and transhumanism everywhere remain, in fact, a matter of dispute on the nature and original values of the individual and of human nature in general. For example, accurate and detailed sketches of the heart in the atlas of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, constitute one of the pillars of the anthropocentric paradigm still dominant in the secular consciousness. Cardiac surgery and heart transplants have become new stages in the development of the relations to the heart as a living body. The possibility of intervention in its work, and even complete replacement of its “faulty mechanism” on the one hand reinforce the utilitarian view of medicine on the heart, as in any other organ, and on the other, create a host of new ethical, technical and religious problems, in particular related to donation. Refs 16.