Description
In a sweeping 2,400-year genealogy stretching from ancient Greece to modern neuroscience, Anatomy of Being explores Western medicine's tendency to reduce patients to objects rather than encounter patients as whole persons. In this bold, interdisciplinary book, Kimbell Kornu offers a critical history of modern medicine and explores the development of today's "logic of dissection," which reduces patients into parts to be mastered rather than persons to be cared for. Crucially, Kornu uncovers how the dissective gaze was historically driven by the desire to make visible that which is invisible, eventually giving rise to a highly mechanistic medical imagination. Bridging ancient Greek medicine and philosophy, Christological debates in the early Church, the relationship between logic and metaphysics, Renaissance art history, the transformation of natural philosophy, and modern neuroscience, Anatomy of Being tells a sweeping story about how epistemology shaped ethics. Framed by his clinical experience and expertise, Kornu argues that the logic of dissection must remain a tool, rather than the primary way a doctor views a patient's body. He offers an alternative: the "logic of incarnation," rooted in Christ's own embodiment, in which the body and the self are inseparable. To promote true human flourishing, each person must be treated with holistic care.