Dante’s Philosophical Life: Politics and Human Wisdom in "Purgatorio"

295 Pages·2018·2.25 MB·English

by  Paul Stern

Dante’s Philosophical Life
Dante’s Philosophical Life
Politics and Human Wisdom
in Purgatorio
Paul Stern
Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control
Number: 2017056086
ISBN 978-0-8122-5011-4
To Lisa
And if this is so, we will say that those among the living who have and will have available to
them the things stated are blessed—but blessed human beings.
—Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1101a19–21
Hence choice is either intellect marked by a certain longing or longing marked by thinking
and a starting point of this sort is a human being.
—Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1139b4–6
The prudence of a king is that unequaled seeing at which the arrow of my intention strikes.
—Dante, Paradiso XIII. 104–5
CONTENTS
Chapter 1. Politics, Poetry, and Philosophy in Purgatorio
Chapter 2. “What Good Would Climbing Do?”: The Rationale and Impetus for
the Pursuit of Self-Knowledge
(Cantos I–IX)
Chapter 3. “To a Better Nature You Lie Subject”: The Political Character of
Humanity and Nature
(Cantos X–XVII)
Chapter 4. Disrobing the Siren: The Zealous Pursuit of Clarity
(Cantos XVII–XIX)
Chapter 5. “When Love Breathes Within Me”: The Desirability of Desire
(Cantos XIX–XXVII)
Chapter 6. “The Nest for Human Nature”: Earthly Paradise and the “Happiness
in This Life”
(Cantos XXVIII–XXXIII)
Chapter 7. Dante’s Human Wisdom
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
Politics, Poetry,
and Philosophy in Purgatorio
I came to Dante’s Commedia already well into my career.1 Preparing to teach it
in a first-year course, I, like many readers, was captivated by the poem’s sheer
imaginative power. As a student of classical political philosophy, I was also
impressed—and puzzled—by how frequently Dante uses this power for a
political end. In particular, I wondered why politics should have such
prominence in a poem about the Christian afterlife, especially a conception of it
that chimes so clearly and insistently with a classical understanding. This
wonder motivates my study. Its primary aim is not to explicate Dante’s political
views, a task ably accomplished by others.2 Rather, it seeks to account for the
philosophic importance of politics in the poem, to explain why in an intellectual
milieu shaped by Christianity and Neoplatonism, a religion and a philosophic
school united in their diminishment of politics, the political realm should occupy
such a significant place in the Commedia’s vision. My thesis is that the poem’s
political surface provides the key to its depths. More specifically, I argue that the
prominence and meaning Dante accords politics are crucial to the vindication of
rational inquiry into the human good, which, I also argue, is his poem’s intent.
American Dante scholarship of the past fifty years maintains a different
view. With a few notable exceptions, this scholarship understands the poem’s
intent as religious.3 Charles Singleton supplies this reading’s principle: “Dante
sees as poet and realizes as poet what is already conceptually elaborated and
established in Christian doctrine.”4 For Singleton, the poem’s purpose as
versified Christian doctrine is plain.
Yet, precisely the Christian character that makes Singleton’s characterization
credible renders anomalous the meaning and prominence the poem gives to
politics. The Commedia repeatedly highlights a political life significantly more
robust than “Christian doctrine” is at all likely to endorse. A few examples