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Metabletics is, apparently, a key concept in the school of J. H. van den Berg. begins by remarking that, in his book Metabletics of the Human Body (1959), Jan Hendrik showed how the perception of the heart has changed in the course of Western history. Leaving on one side my complete ignorance of this concept of metabletics, I have been fascinated by André de Koning's paper, which I recommend highly to those interested in the parallel histories of the concepts of heart in anatomy, physiology and medicine on the one hand, and in philosophy, religion and the phenomenology of the self on the other.
De Koning shows that, whereas Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood barely 360 years ago revolutionised the medical sciences, his work had little impact on philosophical, theological and embryonic psychological concepts because these had already come to rely on the image of the heart as a driving body within a body without which human beings could not survive even for an instant. This formulation from ancient myth was written about by Ibn Tufail, a Spanish Moor from Granada who was born about A.D. 1100. Tufail's step forward was in perceiving that the image of God, as creator and as creativity, belonged essentially to Tufail himself, the knower, the known and the knowing: in perceiving, that is, that otherness is a function of the self.
Following his account of Ibn Tufail's work and that of some other Islamic philosophers, de Koning goes on to discuss the nature of symbol and symbolism. Although he refers to Jung's work, this passage lacks clarity and I find his references to Lacan tedious and unhelpful. Analytical psychologists who have enjoyed paper, ‘What is a symbol supposed to be?’ (1957) will have the advantage over de Koning when it comes to conceptualising symbol and symbolism. However, such advantages of understanding simply make the rest of de Koning's paper all the more worthwhile. His account reveals an impressive psychological grasp i