Book Section
Francesco Giusti
An Interminable Work?
The Openness of Augustine’s Confessions
From opening books to read them, through the continuous effort at opening one’s heart to God, to the eventual disclosure of God’s mysteries to human beings, Augustine seems to trace an implicit conceptualization of openness in his Confessions. The words of Matthew 7. 7–8 underlie Augustine’s engagement with openness up to the very last sentence of the book, which ends with a sequence of verbs in the passive voice that culminates with the desired manifestation of the divine. The entire endeavour of opening oneself up undertaken in the Confessions aims at this final passive openness, which is (always) yet to come as much as human opera are (always) yet to come to completion.
| Title |
An Interminable Work?
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| Subtitle |
The Openness of Augustine’s Confessions
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| Author(s) |
Francesco Giusti
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
From opening books to read them, through the continuous effort at opening one’s heart to God, to the eventual disclosure of God’s mysteries to human beings, Augustine seems to trace an implicit conceptualization of openness in his Confessions. The words of Matthew 7. 7–8 underlie Augustine’s engagement with openness up to the very last sentence of the book, which ends with a sequence of verbs in the passive voice that culminates with the desired manifestation of the divine. The entire endeavour of opening oneself up undertaken in the Confessions aims at this final passive openness, which is (always) yet to come as much as human opera are (always) yet to come to completion.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
19 April 2022
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| Subject |
openness
Augustine
work
love
reading
interpretation
attunement
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
23
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| page end |
43
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| Source |
Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. by Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, Cultural Inquiry, 23 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2022), pp. 23–43
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