Dante's Deadly Sins E-Book

Raymond Angelo Belliotti

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 411

Beschreibung

Dante's Deadly Sins is a unique study of the moral philosophy behind Dante's master work that considers the Commedia as he intended, namely, as a practical guide to moral betterment. Focusing on Inferno and Purgatorio, Belliotti examines the puzzles and paradoxes of Dante's moral assumptions, his treatment of the 7 deadly sins, and how 10 of his most powerful moral lessons anticipate modern existentialism. * Analyzes the moral philosophy underpinning one of the greatest works of world culture * Summarizes the Inferno and Purgatorio, while underscoring their moral implications * Explains and evaluates Dante's understanding of the 'Seven Deadly Sins' and the ultimate role they play as the basis of human transgression. * Provides a detailed discussion of the philosophical concepts of moral desert and the law of contrapasso, using character case studies within Dante's work * Connects the poem's moral themes to our own contemporary condition

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

The Rationale

The Origin

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Historical Context

The Life of Dante

Later Writings

The Commedia

Dante’s Death

Aims of this Book

Dante as Moral Philosopher

1 INFERNO

Dante’s Mission

The Journey Begins

Vestibule (Ante-Hell): The Indecisive Neutrals

Upper Hell: Sins of Unrestrained Desire (the Wolf)

River Styx, Walls of the City of Dis

Lower Hell: Sins of Malice Leading to Violence (the Lion)

Lower Hell: Sins of Malice Leading to Fraud (the Leopard)

Dante’s Existential Lessons in Hell

2 PURGATORIO

Purgatory in a Nutshell

The Journey Continues

Ante-Purgatory: Late Repentants

Gate of Purgatory

The First Three Terraces: Misdirected Love

The Fourth Terrace: Deficient Love of the Good

The Final Three Terraces: Excessive Love of Secondary Goods

Dante’s Existential Lessons in Purgatory

3 THE NOTION OF DESERT AND THE LAW OF CONTRAPASSO

The Notion of Desert

The Contrapasso

The Problem of Proportionality

First Case Study: Francesca

Second Case Study: Brutus and Cassius

Third Case Study: Epicurus

Dante’s Moral Conception

4 PARADOXES AND PUZZLES

The Paradox of Virgil

Summary of the Paradox of Virgil

The Strange Case of Cato

“The Perfect Stoic”

Dante’s Decision

Dante and Conflict

5 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Historical Background

Superbia (Pride)

Invidia (Envy)

Ira (Wrath)

Acedia (Sloth)

Avaritia (Avarice)

Gula (Gluttony)

Luxuria (Lust)

The Antidote: Righteous Love

The Bridge to Salvation

6 DANTE’S EXISTENTIAL MORAL LESSONS

Dante and Existentialism

Jean-Paul Sartre and Hell

Dante’s Ten Existential Lessons

Individualism and Community

Personal Strategies

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Belliotti, Raymond A., 1948– Dante’s deadly sins : moral philosophy in Hell / Raymond Angelo Belliotti. p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-67105-4 (alk. paper)1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. Divina commedia. 2. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321–Ethics. 3. Deadly sins in literature. 4. Hell in literature. I. Title. PQ4418.B45 2011851´.1–dc22

2011015487

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781118112403; Wiley Online Library 9781118112434; ePub 9781118112410; mobi 9781118112427

For Marcia

Che tra bella e buona non so qual fosse più

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Raymond Angelo Belliotti is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He received his undergraduate degree from Union College in 1970, after which he was conscripted into the United States Army, where he served three years in military intelligence units during the Vietnamese War. Upon his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Miami, where he earned his Master of Arts degree in 1976 and his Doctorate in 1977. After teaching stints at Florida International University and Virginia Commonwealth University, he entered Harvard University as a law student and teaching fellow. After receiving a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School, he practiced law in New York City with the firm of Barrett Smith Schapiro Simon & Armstrong. In 1984 he joined the faculty at Fredonia.

Belliotti is the author of ten other books: Justifying Law (1992); Good Sex (1993); Seeking Identity (1995); Stalking Nietzsche (1998); What is the Meaning of Human Life? (2001); Happiness is Overrated (2004); The Philosophy of Baseball (2006); Watching Baseball Seeing Philosophy (2008); Niccolò Machiavelli (2008); and Roman Philosophy and the Good Life (2009). Good Sex was later translated into Korean and published in Asia. What is the Meaning of Human Life? was nominated for the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy’s Book of the Year Award. He has also published 70 articles and 25 reviews in the areas of ethics, jurisprudence, sexual morality, medicine, politics, education, feminism, sports, Marxism, and legal ethics. These essays have appeared in scholarly journals based in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. Belliotti has also made numerous presentations at philosophical conferences, including the Eighteenth World Congress of Philosophy in England, and he has been honored as a featured lecturer on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner.

While at SUNY, Fredonia, he has served extensively on campus committees as the Chairperson of the Department of Philosophy, as the Chairperson of the University Senate, and as Director of General Education. Belliotti also served as United University Professions local Vice President for Academics. For six years he was faculty advisor to two student clubs: The Philosophical Society and Il Circolo Italiano. Belliotti has been the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the William T. Hagan Young Scholar/Artist Award, the Kasling Lecture Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship, and the SUNY Foundation Research & Scholarship Recognition Award. He is also a member of the New York State “Speakers in the Humanities” Program.

PREFACE

Almost seven hundred years of research and scholarship have focused on Dante Alighieri’s (1265–1321) Commedia. With the exception of Shakespeare, no single writer has been subject to as much analysis and critical commentary. Dante’s evocative images of the afterlife, clever rendering of philosophy expressed poetically, and vivid portrayals of Christian theology fire the imaginations of religious believers and nonbelievers alike. The enduring influence of Dante is undeniable and his place in the canon of Western literature is secure. Indeed, students of the humanities would be hard-pressed to consider themselves educated if they had never confronted the great Florentine poet.

But why publish another book on Dante? Has not everything of importance already been said? Do we risk straining reasonable interpretation and distorting Dante’s meaning if we continue to trade on his brilliance?

The Rationale

Yes, hundreds of books have been written about Dante’s Commedia. However, to the best of my knowledge, none has taken the approach to be found in the present work. Most books on Dante explain his vision and its connection to Christian theology; or unravel the literary or poetic dimensions of his work and its significance; or relate Dante to his literary and philosophy precursors and successors; and a few even explain the derivation of his moral theory from earlier religious thinkers and from the doctrines of Christianity. But I have not come upon a single book that teases out the practical, secular moral implications of the Inferno and Purgatorio.

My book summarizes the Inferno and Purgatorio while underscoring their moral implications – particularly the law of contrapasso. I then discuss the notion of moral desert and how it relates to the law of contrapasso, while adding case studies to deepen our understanding of that relationship. But Dante’s treatments of certain historical figures in the Commedia produce moral puzzles and paradoxes that must be addressed. Whether Dante’s moral system is consistent or not is called into question by these examples. The work also explains, analyzes, and evaluates Dante’s understanding of the “Seven Deadly Sins” and the role they play as final causes of much wrongdoing. Finally, I explain how, in the Inferno and the Purgatorio, Dante the author offers Dante the pilgrim (the main character of the Commedia) ten moral lessons that anticipate the wisdom of modern existentialism. Indeed, deep similarities in general framework exist between the deeply religious Dante and the relentlessly secular existentialists.

The Origin

A problem first confronted by Plato fueled my interest in Dante as a moral philosopher. I have taught Plato to undergraduates for years. In the Republic, Plato talks – not in his own name, through the mouth of his teacher Socrates, as usual – about the perfectly unjust person: an imaginary miscreant who commits numerous evil acts but is never detected and who seemingly gains from his misdeeds. The perfectly unjust person enjoys a stellar, undeserved reputation and stalks the world triumphantly, seemingly buoyed by his ill-garnered material glitter and personal glory. Plato warns that appearances are deceiving. In his view, despite the external façade, the perfectly unjust man is internally diseased. His soul is out of balance and inharmonious. The perfectly unjust man thinks he has gained from his evil-doing, but in fact he is unhealthy. Much as a person could believe himself to be physically healthy while he was in fact in the early stages of a terminal illness, so, too, the perfectly unjust man is fooled into thinking that he has benefited from his treachery while in fact he has perpetrated the greatest harm upon himself (greatest, that is, by comparison to the effects, themselves considerable, of his evil on others). For Plato, our internal condition, like our overall physical health, is an objective condition about which our subjective judgments could be mistaken.

To convince students that Plato’s convictions may have some merit is a hard sell. After all, the perfectly unjust person may never experience any negative effects of the internal disease that Plato alleges. The person who suffers from the early stages of a terminal physical disease will soon enough change his judgment that he is healthy. Once he is confronted by the inevitable effects of the disease, reality will be unavoidable. Not so with the perfectly unjust person. Yes, he may confront a Platonic scolding, but so what? If the perpetrator of evil has no interest in conforming to moral conventions and obeying societal norms; if his own desires are fulfilled and he experiences satisfaction at that fulfillment; and if he glistens with external validation as he is widely celebrated by his peers, then in what sense is the perfectly unjust person internally damaged or diseased? In what way will the impurity of his soul bear practical consequences? If the perfectly unjust person lacks an antecedent desire to be a moral paragon, then how will he suffer from his corrupt lifestyle?

One way Plato might answer is by invoking his rich, but highly improbable, metaphysical vision, which is yoked to a speculative account of the afterlife: only pure, harmonious souls will rise to the world of Forms and enjoy an eternity suffused with Truth, Knowledge, Beauty, and the Good. Impure souls will be rejected and, perhaps, will transmigrate to another body, in another round of rebirth. If so, then the perfectly unjust person, even if not unmasked during his life, will meet his just deserts upon death. Within this vision, the cosmos is rational and just after all.

Despite the determined efforts of many contemporary philosophy instructors, Plato was never fully convinced about the nature of the afterlife, or even the world of Forms. Especially in his later dialogues, he recognizes philosophical problems surrounding his metaphysical speculations and images of the afterlife. Moreover, Plato would uphold his doctrines about the perfectly unjust person even if no afterlife awaited us. Even if the annihilation thesis is correct and personal immortality is a fantasy, Plato would insist that virtue is its own reward and vice is its own punishment. And that is the doctrine that often fails to convince readers.

Yes, Plato does argue that the perfectly unjust person lacks freedom because he is a slave to his boundless desires; he is without friends because he will use anyone to further his own purposes; he is impoverished because his insatiable desires consume his resources; and he is fearful because his ruse may be exposed and those whom he has wronged may discover his treachery and seek revenge. Thus, Plato concludes, the perfectly unjust person must be judged unsuccessful and unhappy. But those who hear these arguments often suspect that Plato has changed the image of the perfectly unjust person. We began with a person who committed sweeping misdeeds and seemingly benefited lavishly, but we end with a fearful, craven soul – a type of petty reprobate. Plato seems to embrace his conclusion that the perfectly unjust person is the most miserable of human beings only by sleight of hand. Must all wrongdoers end so pathetically? If so, then the notion of a perfectly unjust person – as someone who seemingly gains from his conniving – is flawed from the outset. Readers may well suspect that Plato has not proven his case. Yet we hope that Plato is correct.

Having taught Plato for decades, I assumed no new light could be shed on this matter. Then I returned to Dante. His Inferno and Purgatorio glow with unsettling images of sinners who become their sins. Dante illustrates vividly how sins reflect and sustain unworthy characters. He does this not only with words, but also with the haunting visions those words inspire. He, like Plato, conjures, with metaphysical precision, a transcendent world – one based this time on Christian theology. But I am convinced that Dante, like Plato, would continue to insist that virtue is its own reward and sin is its own punishment, independently of his beliefs in personal immorality and in the nature of the afterlife.

That our choices and deeds reflect and reinforce our characters in profound ways is a common theme in secular twentieth-century existentialism. Of course, secular existentialists discard belief in personal immorality and the afterlife. I began to wonder what implications for moral philosophy would result if I read Dante’s work while suspending his firm commitments to the metaphysics of Christian theology. What other similarities to existentialism might be present? Could Dante, the consummate religious believer, and the secular existentialists, the relentless debunkers of the transcendental world, agree on a broad framework for crafting worthwhile lives? If so, would not such a framework vivify our efforts at forging our characters admirably?

Such is the genesis of this book. My firm conclusion is that, whether we believe in Christian theory or not, Dante and existential philosophy have much to teach us about living a robustly meaningful and valuable human life.

In that vein, Electronic Arts recently released a computer game loosely based on Dante’s Inferno. The manufacturer exploits the brand recognition of Dante’s work to differentiate its product from the dozens of blood-and-gore competitors. The main protagonist is not the poet Dante, but a warrior bearing his name. A crusader freshly off a stirring victory over the Grim Reaper himself, Dante rides back to Tuscany bearing his vanquished foe’s scythe over his shoulder. Although the warrior had been assured that he would incur no mortal sins in service of advancing the church’s interests in the Holy Land, Dante learns that his soul is in danger because of his participation in military atrocities. Expecting a grand reception at home, Dante is stunned to discover that his villa has been razed and his well-endowed wife, Beatrice, has been slaughtered. The ghost of Beatrice beseeches Dante to rescue her from Hell. This quest is the point of the game: Dante must descend into a Hell whose computer graphics become increasingly powerful and daunting as the journey proceeds, and he must confront countless monsters, demons, and horrors in order to rescue Beatrice and redeem his own soul. Armed with the trusty scythe and having access to the powers of the holy cross bestowed by Beatrice, Dante begins his sacred mission.

A touch of moral angst vivifies the contest: players must choose either to punish or to absolve the souls of defeated enemies, different probabilities of gain being attached to each decision. Moreover, Virgil the poet provides occasional literary authenticity and welcome relief from the incessant mayhem as he recites lines from the classic Inferno. Of course, the game exudes colorful graphics and rousing sound: screaming sinners; King Minos rendering verdicts on miscreants appearing before him; a giant skull spitting out the corpses of the damned; flaming rectal sphincters; wild monsters, to be expropriated and used to slay enemies; and the like.

Purists will recoil at what they take to be a crass, materialistic exploitation of canonical literature; they will insist that the computer game falls below even the level of a classic comic book’s rendering of Dante’s work. Imagine portraying Dante as an ancient version of contemporary movie action heroes such as Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger! Populists will rejoin that the computer game may stir interest in the Florentine poet and lead users to consult the original text. Moreover, even if it does not have that effect, the computer game, like the poem, evokes haunting images of Hell, which may incline users to moral reassessment. Finally, even if the game produces neither effect, its worth as entertainment is justification enough for its production.

In my judgment, the crucial observation is that the work and name of Dante Alighieri are still of such robust contemporary relevance that a game manufacturer perceived correctly that they could be exploited for commercial gain. That invoking the imagery of Dante, however imprecisely, would help sell a product speaks volumes about the enduring appeal of the Florentine poet, even among those who remember him dimly, or only through scattered popular references.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Numerous people contributed to this work directly or indirectly. As always, my family comes first. My wife, Marcia, is my Beatrice. Fortunately, unlike Dante, my greatest love is not merely an idealized fantasy, but my one true innamorata. My children, Angelo and Vittoria, are the sangu du me sangu and my greatest legacy. It warms my spirit to think that this book will long outlive its author and that my words will be available to torment my children when I am no longer here.

Thanks also to my colleague, Dale Tuggy, who generously and wisely advised me on a host of theological matters. Jeff Dean, acquisitions editor, steadfastly supported this project and was an ongoing source of sound advice and good cheer. Manuela Tecusan expertly and enthusiastically edited the manuscript. The finished product is almost as much hers as it is mine.

Finally, I thank the publishers of Rowman & Littlefield and Lexington Books for their permission to reprint and adapt material from my books, Happiness is Overrated and Roman Philosophy and the Good Life.

INTRODUCTION

The Historical Context

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence. His mother died when Dante was a child. His father remarried and died when Dante was about 18 years old. The Alighieri family was noble in terms of titles, lineage, and tradition. For example, Dante’s great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, was knighted by Emperor Conrad III. However, by the time of Dante’s arrival, the family’s fortunes had regressed.

The Alighieri family was politically identified with the guelfo (Guelf party), who were composed of artisans and lesser nobility, and aligned with the papacy. Their major opponents were the ghibellino (Ghibelline party), composed of feudal aristocrats aligned with the Holy Roman emperor. As time and events proceeded, these compositions and alignments were less distinguishable. Local loyalties, rivalries, and private maneuvering loomed larger than party platforms and traditional ideologies.

In 1244 the Florentine Ghibellines invited the leaders of the seven major guilds to join the city councils. (Guilds were voluntary, self-defining institutions authorized to receive dues from members, establish and monitor professional and business activities, supervise contracts members entered into with outside agencies, and discipline members for violations of professional ethics.) This overture was innovative in that the rival parties had previously been composed only of nobles and aristocrats. The pilot program was soon abandoned, but the seeds of popular political involvement had been sown.