Dante incurred great intellectual risks in expressing himself in concrete terms comprehensible to uneducated minds, but these risks had to be taken, for 'this is the way you have to speak to human minds': 'Cosi parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno.' Dante thus expressed himself by way of a concrete imagery in order for the complicated ideas he sought to convey to be understood by untutored minds. Concrete communication and comprehension was thus the beginning of a process of tutoring equipping untutored minds to come to apprehend the highest truths of the Greatest Love. Dante’s intellectualism was thus tempered by his concern to reach a relatively uneducated audience, simultaneously writing and tutoring with an elevation and beauty worthy of the subject matter and mindful of the educative purpose. The specialized vocabulary of scholastic philosophy thus alternates in The Comedy with a very bold use of picture-language. Dante’s intention is to move people and to keep them moving, inciting their desire for truth and knowledge and thereby encourage them to become truth-seekers, moved directly by the Love that pervades the universe and moves all.
As for God, I am not remotely shy of referring to God. I am rather sceptical of those who seek to suppress ‘the torment of God’ by false statements and rationalisations of certain knowledge.
The danger in making Dante comprehensible in ‘godless and prophetless’ times is that we will be presented with a Dante who is comprehensible in modern terms, but not a Dante on his own terms. The danger, then, is that there will be a lot of coverage of the language, politics, and humanism of Dante in 2021, a presentation of Dante’s love that makes sense in contemporary terms, but makes a nonsense of Dante’s eminently rational and spiritual view. There is a need to underline the spiritual insights which Dante felt compelled by heaven to convey to the great public. There is nothing to be gained and plenty to be lost by assimilating Dante to the naturalism and materialism of his only rivals in the peerless poet-philosopher stakes: Lucretius and Goethe. You can appreciate all three, and you can identify a shared purpose in all three. But Dante is different, and profoundly and radically so. Dante writes at length on nature, but his notion of coming to being is openly and adamantly theistic. Downplay that and you have made a nonsense of Dante. Your place is with either of the other two poet philosophers. Dante is challenging because he forces us to make the hard choices on this. His mode of argumentation is clear, sharp, and precise. Dante is not a naturalist, his philosophy is not impersonal, and he doesn’t accept the finality of life. He holds views which have long been repudiated by the liveliest and most scientifically informed minds of the age. There is little point in compromising and clouding Dante’s message in order to evade the criticisms of those modern minds. Modernity is not in a healthy enough condition to be blinkered and critical here, either. Dante is to be valued precisely because he is ‘outdated,’ precisely because his values and principles are very different to those that prevail in this crisis-torn age.
I've been contemplating how to present Dante to a 'godless and prophetless' age (Weber), and was thinking of emphasising his humanism. But that effectively betrays the man to the age that most stands in need of his spiritual guidance. The danger lies in making Dante understandable by sacrificing his concern for bringing people to the highest truths to the things that people already understand. People are thirsting and hungering for the things they, living ‘after virtue’ in their untutored state, have yet to see, grasp, contemplation, comprehend.
‘Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever'
In one of the most remarkable passages in a poem studded with remarkable passages, Beatrice declares:
La divina bontà , che da sé sperne ogne livore, ardendo in sé, sfavilla sì che dispiega le bellezze etterne.
Ciò che da lei sanza mezzo distilla non ha poi fine, perché non si move la sua imprenta quand’ ella sigilla.
The Godly Goodness that has banished every envy from Its own Self, burns in Itself; and sparkling so, It shows eternal beauties.
All that derives directly from this Goodness is everlasting, since the seal of Goodness impresses an imprint that never alters.
Par. 7: 64-9
The essential principle states that all those things which God creates with His own hands shall never cease to be. Hence the existence of 'beauties' that are 'eternal' ('bellezze etterne').
This explains why I, in conformity with Dante’s express intent, affirm the comedic view of life against the tragic. It follows from this principle that all those things which do not proceed sanza mezzo from God are mortal and are doomed to pass away. That’s the view of Lucretius and Goethe. If that is your view, then they are the poet-philosophers for you. There is no fudging this division, it is fundamental. It is this that either makes Dante fantastical and delusional, compared to those who stick firmly to the evidence of the senses, or elevates him to the status of supreme poet for delivering truths that are beyond sensual intelligence and imagination. If one holds that there is no God, and that all things are subject to natural causation, then it follows that all things pass away. Life is a story of death and extinction in a meaningless and purposeless existence which will one day be non-existent. If there is meaning and purpose, then these things will end with all life. Human beings are condemned to exist on a destinationless voyage; the only point to the game of life is to stay in the game, in full knowledge of the fact that the day will come when all things – individuals and species – will cease to be. Enjoy life whilst you have it, is the injunction. Which translates in practice into enjoy life if you have the power to do so. Nietzsche’s ‘weak and botched’ need not apply, they are condemned as social and biological evolution’s casualties. We gain an insight here into why Rousseau condemned atheism as the ‘philosophy of the comfortable.’ Maybe Dante, in exile, cut off from the political and civil life he valued so highly, looked upon beatitude in the afterlife as the only happiness left to him. Maybe his spirituality was merely compensation and consolation. If this is so – and I hold it to be far more – then he has plenty of company among those whose life fall short of the Earthly paradise. That paradise is possible. Dante affirmed it in his day, as we still search for it in our day. That it is such a long time in coming – and that we continue to pursue it by way of values and principles which contradict prevailing institutions and practices – suggests a transcendent force and hope at work.
I don’t believe in the tragic view of the finality of life. At the same time, I accept that to claim otherwise is to advance principles which the non-religious will claim to be unproven and unprovable and hence worthless as arguments. If victory goes to the argument which makes the least assumptions, then I readily concede victory. But where there is nothing, there is nothing to be won, and no rights worthy of being fought over. And yet people keep fighting as if there really is something essential at stake, not least a human dignity that stems from likeness to God. Thoughts that there is nothing, no purpose, no design, no objectively meaningful, purposeful existence incites constant and irresolvable conflicts in an inherently and irredeemably political world cut off from true ends. Such thinking is a cul-de-sac, ending only in tragedy, either in resigned acceptance of a hopeless condition or a shrill and histrionic assertion of significance as unconscious protest against the facts of insignificance. At some point of exhaustion, those involved in the game stop running and shouting and ask what the point is. When they realise that there is none, they cease playing.
If Lucretius, Averroes, and all the materialists and naturalists of all kinds are correct, then there would be no basis in fact for any part of Dante’s story of a journey through the afterlife. There would be little point in paying attention to or celebrating Dante, since the whole point of his beautiful poetry would have been rendered null and void. Those who express an interest in Dante must, in one form or another, be groping towards God. The only issue is how Dante is to be presented in first reading. I’m inclined to emphasise the humanism in such a way that makes clear that what seems, in the first instance, to be reasoning about the powers and pleasures of poetry, questions of politics, and potentialities of human nature leads proceeds inexorably to the contemplation and even, in time, recognition of God. Dante presents a compelling version of the phrase that ‘freedom is the appreciation of necessity.’ Dante’s view stands diametrically opposed to the philosophical materialists who confront human beings with necessity and determinism. Dante’s freedom is both the subjective appreciation of an objective good and reality and a voluntary rational submission to God’s plan of justice. Affirming free-will against determinism, Dante highlights the freedom and will that are central to a genuine appreciation.
It is clear that Dante’s general principle is one instance of the law which he holds governs all causality - agens agit sibi simile. Since God is eternal, then all those effects of which God is the sole cause will participate in eternity to the extent that their nature as created beings permits. Regardless of the uncertainties of proof – indeed the absence and impossibility of proof - human beings think and act as if living under the aspect of eternity. Few submit to a resigned acceptance of their insignificance in the overall scheme of things. Naturalists cleaving to the tragic view may denounce this as a delusion, an instance of destructive anthropocentric self-importance, but it is an enduring and inspiring one, denoting a transcendent hope and spirit in pursuit of a happy ending. Whilst such participating beings are unlike God in having a beginning (they are 'nuovi amor', 'cose nove'); they are like God in being without end. It is precisely this claim which distinguishes Dante from his only rivals in the peerless poet-philosopher stakes.
Dante looks back beyond the dominant Aristotelianism of his day to the Platonizing theologians of the school of Chartres in the twelfth century and to their commentaries on Plato's Timaeus as well as to Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae. His thesis also bears striking similarities to the axiom central to the thought of the Arab Neoplatonist, Avicenna: 'Whatever comes directly from an immutable being must itself be immutable' (a stabili inquantum stabile non est nisi stabile).
Agree or disagree, these are distinctive claims and distinguish Dante as a poet-philosopher. To present Dante in terms of his achievements and commitments in language, poetry, politics, and humanism in order to make him comprehensible to a humanist age is both to betray his true thought and, indeed, betray what Dante considered to be the sources of a true humanism.
Love is the 'force that unites': Amor est virtus unitiva. But what is love? Dante insists to the end that love follows the intellect. He affirms human beings as truth-seekers, accenting the connection between reason, freedom, and will to the very end of The Comedy.
What makes the issue a complicated one is that Dante was indeed a humanist of the highest order. Whatever the philosophical and theological complexities of Dante’s view of the nature of being and coming to be, the proof of his beliefs lie in the poetry and the evidence contained therein of certain themes that move him. So much so that people may well be inclined to remain with the poetry, the language, and the literature. In doing so, they make the mistake of focusing of the means by which Dante conveyed his message at the expense of the ends established by that message.
The divine gift of being in the emanation of creative love from the One; the answering love of this gift by the Many; the diversification of the divine energy as it descends from heaven to heaven; the degrees on the Scale of Being that make possible the harmony of all the different 'voices' in the cosmos; the underlying purpose discovered in every aspect of Universal Nature.
There is no doubting Dante’s poetic skill. Difficult concepts are conveyed through metaphor in such a way that they capture the imagination of people even when they are only very imperfectly understood. Technical philosophical words abound in The Comedy, but Dante avoids the more prosaic terms in favour of those that are luminous, suggestive, and satisfying to the ear. Technicians may well call this shallow. In truth, it indicates great insight and intelligence on the part of Dante the teacher, guide, and leader. He is bringing his audience to truths they need to know to satisfy their spiritual thirst and hunger, but which in their untutored state they would struggle to comprehend and digest.
Dante affirms law and order, transcendent principle, and cosmological concordance as a condition of a well-tempered practice and relation. He presents a musical model which brings discordant voices to unity and harmony.
Can you hear what I hear? The aim of my presentation will be open eyes, ears, and hearts to the musico-moral ecology of the universe.
Dante is just so different that the only way to write on Dante is to present that difference clearly, but compellingly, persuasively, not pedantically.
I shall, for instance, emphasise water and liquid light in Dante. Dante establishes a hierarchy of being, but it needs to be understood that inequality is not the same thing as inequitable. Even the lowest beings can rejoice in the order that assigns them their lowly degree, for this is the will of God, encompassing all things as one. Nothing desires to be higher than it is. All things, created or generated, move in conformity with God's will, finding the peace they seek there and there alone, like rivers flowing into the ocean.
And in His will is our peace.
It is to that sea that all things move,
Both what His will creates
And that which nature makes.’
Dante Par: 3: 85-7