Dante's Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion PDF
Preview Dante's Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion
01_Grego_00FM.qxd 7/2/06 8:12 PM Page i Dante’s Pluralism and the Islamic Philosophy of Religion This page intentionally left blank 01_Grego_00FM.qxd 7/2/06 8:12 PM Page iii DANTE’S PLURALISM AND THE ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Gregory B. Stone 01_Grego_00FM.qxd 8/2/06 12:00 PM Page iv DANTE’SPLURALISMANDTHEISLAMICPHILOSOPHYOFRELIGION © Gregory B. Stone, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–7130–7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stone, Gregory B., 1961– Dante’s pluralism and the Islamic philosophy of religion / Gregory B. Stone. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7130–7 (alk. paper) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. Divina commedia—Sources. 2. Eschatology, Islamic, in literature. I. Title. PQ4394S76 2006 851(cid:2).1—dc22 2005049547 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. 01_Grego_00FM.qxd 7/2/06 8:12 PM Page v Human perfection is achieved only in social life and this in turn is achieved only through moral virtue: thus it is necessary that humans be good, although it is not necessary that they know the truth. Averroes This page intentionally left blank 01_Grego_00FM.qxd 8/2/06 11:51 AM Page vii CONTENTS Introduction: A Comedyfor Non-Christians 1 Part I Virgil’s Happiness (Dante, Al-Farabi, Philosophy) 59 Part II The Right Path (Dante’s Universalism) 173 Notes 283 Works Cited 311 Index 319 This page intentionally left blank 02_Grego_Intro.qxd 7/2/06 8:12 PM Page 1 INTRODUCTION: A COMEDY FOR NON-CHRISTIANS The poem that Dante called Comedy was first entitled The Divine Comedy more than two centuries after the poet’s death, on the title page of an edition printed in Venice in 1555. The adjective “divine” was added by the Venetian publisher more as a way to praise the poem’s seem- ingly superhuman artistry than as an indicator of its content and concern. But the title The Divine Comedy, which we have come to mistake for the original, determines for us a certain horizon of expectations: we think that Dante must be primarily interested in disclosing the facts concerning God and divine things, that his poem in its essence involves the presentation of religious—specifically, Christian—truth. We might do well to stop calling Dante’s poem The Divine Comedy, if only to help hold open the question concerning its religiosity. There is no doubt but that the Comedy is chock-full of Christian vocabulary, biblical allusions, and Scholastic theology. But this does not mean that Dante’s aim, the guiding orientation of his project, is necessarily Christian. Dante is very frequently referred to as “the great Catholic poet”—as if he were the official spokesperson of the medieval Catholic Church. But we should bear in mind that that same church banned as heretical Dante’s Monarchy, his chief book of political philosophy and the ideological blueprint of the Comedy. As one scholar recently has remarked: “There is an obvious irony in the reputation of Dante because in recent times he has so often been regarded as a pillar of Catholic orthodoxy. In the last decade of his life and the first decade after it no one would have thought of him that way.”1In 1329, just a few years after Dante’s death, a certain Cardinal Poujet, nephew of the pope, ordered all copies of Monarchyto be burned, and the title appears on the Vatican’s “Index of Prohibited Books” in 1554. These efforts by the church to suppress Dante’s thinking did not prevent the work from being widely circulated, although in the form of anonymous and falsely titled manuscripts that were, at times,
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