Andrea Bizzozero

This article examines the link between the purity of the heart, conscience, knowledge and uisio dei. In Mt. 5:8 the vision and knowledge of God derive from a particular situation of the human heart. The vision-heart pair invites one to reflect on the anthropological structure and the conditions of possibility of the process of knowledge. The main questions here would be: How can one know God? Which faculties does one need in order to know Him? Which are the roles of the mind, the heart and the will in this knowledge? Why Augustine uses Mt. 5:8 to speak about the knowledge of God? At the same time, the expression beati mundicordes invites one to reflect on the qualities of the human condition in order to see-know God. In other words: Which features must the heart have in order to see God? If, on the one hand, it is necessary to know the starting point of this knowledge, on the other hand, it is important to show why it is in human nature to want to see God. This article will analyze the occurrences of the quotation of Mt. 5:8 in Augustine’s works before 411 in order to understand the meaning of the expression beati mundicordes and the conditions of possibility of the uisio dei. This study will investigate the Mt. 5:8 references particularly in De fide et symbolo, De sermone domini in monte, Contra Adimantum, De diuersis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, Contra epistulam Manichaei, De agone, Contra Faustum, Contra Felicem, Sancta uirginitate, ep. 92, ep. 130 and Sermo 88.

Through a reading of Derrida’s Conférence. Sur l’enseignement philosophique, the contribution intends to highlight some characteristic aspects of the philosophical text and of the specific activity of the philosophy teacher. After a presentation of some essential coordinates of Derrida’s activities and reflections on philosophy, as developed by him in the Seventies, the attention will be turned, through a reading of the text of the Conference, to the specific question of the philosophical text and the practical pedagogy of teaching philosophy. During the Conference examined here, Derrida recalls the importance, for philosophy, of considering the text and its definition, so that to the simple alternative of a meta-textual or intra-textual philosophical discourse, he proposes a more radical philosophical pedagogy, capable of opening the philosophical text beyond the determinations established by the onto-encyclopedic perspective. In closing, the urgency, still current, of reflecting on philosophical practice is recalled.