## 1. Life



Because Dante's poetic persona looms so large in his writings,
very little can be said about his biography that does not, in some
way, depend upon an interpretations of his continual re-crafting of
that persona. It is generally accepted that Dante was born in 1265 in
Florence. If it is true that he was born under the sign of
Gemini--as reported in *Paradiso*
22.112-120--then his birthday would have been sometime in
May or June of that year. According to the testimony of his own
writings, at the age of nine he met for the first time the
eight-year-old Beatrice Portinari, whom, subsequent to her death in
1290, Dante consistently invoked as the key inspiration for his poetic
vision and personal salvation.



Also according to the testimony of his own writing, Dante believed
himself to be--or at least wished for his readers to believe him
to be--a descendant of the ancient Roman families who founded
Florence. In *Paradiso* 15, for instance, he claims that his
great-great-grandfather Cacciaguida had been knighted by emperor
Conrad and died fighting as a crusader in the Holy Land--a claim
that a recent biographer has noted "might be traced back to
Dante's desire, particularly apparent at the time of the
*Commedia*, to give dignity to a family which, in reality,
could boast no noble roots nor any knights among it, least of all of
imperial investiture" [Santagata (2016), 20].



While it remains difficult to separate myth from fact in
reconstructing Dante's biography, it is nevertheless undoubtedly
true that Dante's philosophical perspective and poetic ambitions
were powerfully shaped by the context of his upbringing in late
thirteenth-century Florence. Between 1285, when he married and began a
family, and 1302, when he was exiled from Florence, he was active in
the cultural and civic life of Florence, served as a soldier, and held
several political offices. Within this context, despite his own
origins in a family possessing only modest wealth, Dante's
participation in Florentine politics played a crucial role in the
development of his philosophical thinking as well as in advancing his
poetic ambitions.



Since the early thirteenth century, two great factions, the Guelfs and
the Ghibellines, had competed for control of Florence. The Guelfs,
with whom Dante was allied, were identified with Florentine political
autonomy, and with the interests of the Papacy in its long struggle
against the centralizing ambitions of the Hohenstaufen emperors, who
were supported by the Ghibellines. After Charles of Anjou, with the
blessing of the Papacy and strong Guelf support, defeated Hohenstaufen
armies at Benevento (1265/6) and Tagliacozzo (1268), the Guelfs became
the dominant force in Florence. By the end of the century, the Guelfs
were themselves riven by faction, grounded largely in family and
economic interests, but also exhibiting differing degrees of loyalty
to the papacy.



In 1301, when conflict erupted between the "Blacks," the
faction most strongly committed to aristocratic and papal interests,
and the wealthier but less illustrious "Whites," Pope
Boniface VIII instigated a partisan settlement which allowed the
Blacks to exile the White leadership, of whom Dante was was a member.
He never returned to Florence, and played no further role in public
life, though he remained passionately interested in Italian politics,
and became virtually the prophet of world empire in the years leading
up to the coronation of Henry VII of Luxembourg as head of the Holy
Roman Empire (1312). The development of Dante's almost messianic
sense of the imperial role is hard to trace, but it was doubtless
affected by his bitterness over what he saw as the autocratic and
treacherous conduct of Pope Boniface, and a growing conviction that
only a strong, central authority could bring peace and stability order
to Italy.



During the next twenty years Dante lived in several Italian cities,
spending at least two long periods at the court of Can Grande della
Scala, lord of Verona. In 1319 he moved from Verona to Ravenna, where
he completed the *Paradiso*, and where he died in 1321.



As a poet, Dante's major theme, from first to last, is the
significance of his love for Beatrice, but he also clearly understood
himself to be a public intellectual strongly committed to raising the
level of vernacular discourse. After his banishment he addressed
himself to Italians generally, and devoted much of his long exile to
transmitting the riches of ancient thought and learning, as these
informed contemporary scholastic culture, to an increasingly
sophisticated lay readership in their own vernacular.



This project was Dante's contribution to a long-standing Italian
cultural tradition. His reading in philosophy began, he tells us, with
Cicero and Boethius, whose writings are in large part the record of
their dedication to the task of establishing a Latinate intellectual
culture in Italy. The *Convivio* and the *De vulgari
eloquentia* preserve also the somewhat idealized memory of the
Neapolitan court of Frederick II of Sicily (1195-1250) and his
son Manfred (1232-66), intellectuals in their own right as well
as patrons of poets and philosophers, whom Dante viewed as having
revived the ancient tradition of the statesman-philosopher [Van Cleve,
299-332]. Dante himself probably studied under Brunetto Latini
(1220-94), whose encyclopedic *Livres dou Tresor*
(1262-66), written while Brunetto was a political exile in
France, provided vernacular readers with a compendium of the Liberal
Arts and a digest of Aristotelian ethical and political thought
[Meier; Imbach (1993), 37-47; Davis (1984), 166-97].



But the fullest embodiment of Dante's contribution to the
tradition of Italian vernacular writing is, above all, his *Divine
Comedy*--a work in which we see for the first time a powerful
thinker, solidly grounded in Aristotle, patristic theology, and
thirteenth-century scholastic debate, synthesizing and bringing these
resources to bear on educating his countrymen in their own vernacular
with the intention of inspiring them to pursue the happiness that
rewards the philosopher.


## 2. Early Poetry



Though he evidently did not begin serious study of philosophy until
his mid-twenties, Dante had already been intellectually challenged by
the work of a remarkable group of poets, practitioners of what he
would later recall as the *dolce stil novo*, in whose hands a
lyric poetry modelled on the *canso* of the Provencal
troubadours became a vehicle for serious enquiry into the nature of
love and human psychology. A generation earlier, Guido Guinizzelli
(1230-76) had puzzled contemporaries with poems treating love in
terms of the technicalities of medicine and the cosmology of the
schools, while celebrating in quasi-mystical language his lady's
power to elevate the spirit of her poet-lover (*Al cor gentil
rempaira sempre amore*, 41-44, 47-50):



> 
> 
> *Splende 'n la intelligenzia del cielo
>   
> 
> Deo Criator piu che 'n nostr' occhi 'l sole;
>   
> 
> ella intende suo fattor oltra 'l cielo,
>   
> 
> e 'l ciel volgiando, a Lui obedir tole;
>   
> 
> ...
>   
> 
> cosi dar dovria, al vero,
>   
> 
> la bella donna, poi che 'n gli occhi splende
>   
> 
> del suo gentil, talento
>   
> 
> che mai di lei obedir non si disprende.*
> 
> 
> 
> [God the creator shines in the intelligence of heaven
>   
> 
> more than the sun in our eyes,
>   
> 
> and she understands her maker beyond the heaven
>   
> 
> and, as she turns the heaven, obeys Him
>   
> 
> ...
>   
> 
> So truly should the beautiful lady,
>   
> 
> when she shines on the eyes
>   
> 
> of her noble lover, impart the desire
>   
> 
> that he will never fail in his obedience to her.]
> 
> 
> 



The *bella donna*, exerting on her lover a power derived from
the participation of her understanding in the divine, plays the role
of the celestial *intelligenzia*, who transmits the
influence of the First Mover to the universe at large. The poet is
thus caught up in a circular process through which his understanding,
like theirs, is drawn toward the divine as manifested in the
lady's divinely inspired radiance. For Guinizelli this
exploitation of the idea of celestial hierarchy is perhaps only a
daring poetic conceit. For Dante it will become a means to the
articulation of his deepest intuitions.



Among Dante's contemporaries, however, the single strongest
influence on his early poetry was Guido Cavalcanti, renowned not only
as a poet, but also for his knowledge of natural philosophy. His great
*canzone*, "*Donna mi prega*," which became
the subject of learned Latin commentaries, deals with ideas commonly
associated with the "radical Aristotelianism" or
"Averroism" of his day. The purpose of this astonishing
poem is to describe in precise philosophical terms
("*naturale dimostramento*") the experience of
love.



For Guido there is an absolute cleavage between the sensory and
intellectual aspects of the response to a loved object. Once the
*phantasma* of the object becomes an abstracted form in the
possible intellect, it is wholly insulated from the *diletto*
of the *anima sensitiva* (21-28). This has seemed to
modern commentators to imply an Averroist view of the intellect as a
separate, universal entity [Corti (1983), 3-37], and the lines
which follow (30-56), where the *vertu* of the
sensitive soul displaces reason and "assumes its
function," presenting to the will an object whose desirability
threatens a fatal disorientation, sustain this impression. Love is
still the aristocratic vocation of the troubadours, and Guido
acknowledges that noble spirits are aroused by it to prove their
merit. But they work in darkness, for the force that moves them
obscures the light of intellectual contemplation (57-68). The
*canzone* is so exclusively an exercise in "natural
philosophy," so centered on biological necessity, that
consciousness itself is wholly excluded from consideration. The
ethical dimension of love consists in the challenge its blind urgency
presents to reason. "Nobility" is a matter of
self-control, and the precarious happiness that such love affords has
no ideal dimension.



Guido's influence on Dante was profound. But the *Vita
nuova*, an anthology of Dante's early poetry interspersed
with a narrative combining commentary on his poetic development with
the history of his devotion to Beatrice during her earthly life,
reveals a growing realization that his own conception of poetry and
love differ fundamentally from Guido's [Ardizzone (2011);
Barolini (1998), esp. pp. 60-63]. Like Guido, Dante accepted
love as being, for better or worse, fundamental to the noble life, and
his early lyrics express a sense like Guido's of the internally
divisive power of desire. But as the *Vita nuova* unfolds there
is a gradual shift of focus: having failed to win his lady's
favor by dramatizing his own sufferings, Dante resolves to devote his
poetry henceforth wholly to praise of her [VN, 18.9]. The result of
this new resolve is a *canzone*, "*Donne
ch'avete intelletto d'amore*" ("Ladies who
have intelligence of love"), which returns to the source of his
inspiration and Guido's in the poetry of Guinizelli, but makes a
wholly new departure. For Guido, the "heavenly" allure of
the lady is a deception perpetrated by the senses, all the more
dangerous as the lover's *gentilezza* responds more fully
to the attraction of her beauty and subjects itself to the
"fierce accident" of passion. Dante, too, sees that the
experience his early, tormented lyrics depict is "an accident
occurring in a substance" [VN 25.1-2], but the
"fiery spirits of love" which strike the eyes of those on
whom his lady bestows her greeting are not just goads to desire
(*Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore*, VN
19.10.37-40):



> 
> 
> *E quando trova alcun che degno sia
>   
> 
> di veder lei. quei prova sua vertute,
>   
> 
> che li avvien, cio che li dona, in salute,
>   
> 
> e si l'umilia ch'ogni offesa oblia.
>   
> 
> Ancor l'ha Dio per maggior grazia dato
>   
> 
> che non po mal finir chi l'ha parlato.*
> 
> 
> 
> [And when she finds someone worthy
>   
> 
> to behold her, he experiences her power,
>   
> 
> for what she gives him turns into salvation,
>   
> 
> and so humbles him that he forgets every offense.
>   
> 
> God has given her an even greater grace:
>   
> 
> that one cannot end in evil who has spoken to her.]
> 
> 
> 



Pursuit of the lady's favor has become a test, not just of
nobility, but of virtue. Her beauty is perfect, the fullest possible
example of nature's power to reveal God's creative love.
The climax of the *Vita nuova* occurs when Dante encounters
Guido's lady, Giovanna, followed by his own
Beatrice--"one marvel," as he says, "following
the other" [VN 24.8]. At once he realizes that Giovanna's
beauty, like the prophecy of the biblical Giovanni, is a precursor,
heralding the "true light" of Beatrice, just as
Guido's poetry of earthly love is finally a foil to his own
celebration of the transcendent love revealed to him in Beatrice.


## 3. Philosophical Influences



The philosophical content of the *Vita nuova* is minimal, a
skeletal version of contemporary faculty psychology and a few brief
references to metaphysics. But while finding his orientation as a
poet, Dante was also engaged in the study of philosophy and, according
to his own testimony in the *Convivio*, "started going to
where she [philosophy] was truly revealed, in the schools of the
religious orders and at the disputations of the philosophers"
[*Conv*. 2.12.7]. Dante does not provide any additional details
that reveal specifically where he studied philosophy, but in Florence
in the early 1290s, there were three schools of religious orders at
which he may have studied: that of the Dominicans at Santa Maria
Novella; that of the Franciscans at Santa Croce; and that of the
Augustinians at Santo Spirito. Unfortunately, there are no reliable
historical records concerning the course of study that may have been
available to Dante at Santo Spirito. However, there is reliable
information about the resources that would have been available to a
lay student at Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce.



Although the Dominicans at Santa Maria Novella did not allow laymen to
pursue studies of philosophy specifically, Dante would have been
permitted to attend theology classes, and in these there would almost
certainly have been at least indirect exposure to Aristotelian
philosophy [Santagata (2016), 83]. Most intriguingly, Dante may have
had the opportunity to attend lectures of Remigio dei Girolami (d.
1319), who had studied theology at the University of Paris during the
tenure of Thomas Aquinas there [Panella; Davis (1984), 198-223].
Remigio, like Dante, was a White Guelf, and, also like Dante, Remigio
read widely in classical literature and was fond of drawing lessons in
political and ethical conduct from his reading. For both Remigio and
Dante, moreover, Thomas was primarily the author of the *Summa
contra Gentiles* and the commentary on the *Ethics*,
concerned, like Aristotle himself, to demonstrate the capacities of
human reason as a means to truth.



The most prestigious *studia* in Florence in the 1290s,
however, was surely Santa Croce, which, as a *Studium
generale*, ranked only behind the three *Studia
principalia* of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge in terms of
importance [Santagata (2016), 83]. As Santagata notes in his recent
biography of Dante,



> 
> 
> Two great intellectuals who were readers at Santa Croce between 1287
> and 1289--Pietro di Giovanni Olivi from Provence, and the younger
> Ubertino da Casale--played a major role in the history of the
> Franciscan movement and, more generally, in the Church. Dante could
> not have attended their lectures since both had left Florence before
> 1290, but it is always possible that he had heard some of
> Ubertino's sermons. Dante never mentions Olivi, but in many
> respects his vision of the history of the Church seems to coincide
> with that of the Provencal theologian in its Franciscan and spiritual
> interpretation. As for Ubertino, a leading champion of the Franciscan
> "spiritual" movement, namely of those who advocated a
> return to the rigor of Francis's rule against the permissive
> interpretation of the so-called "conventuals" led by the
> minister general, Matteo d'Acquasparta, Dante would have
> Bonaventura da Bagnoregio say in *Paradiso* [12.124-126]
> that they both betrayed the rule: Matteo because he "is too
> loose" through permissiveness, Ubertino because he "is too
> narrow" through excessive rigor. [Santagata (2016), 84]
> 
> 
> 



Beyond these possibilities in Florence, Dante's testimony in
*Convivio* 2.12.7 that he had attended the "disputations
of the philosophers" may hint at some degree of exposure to the
study of philosophy in Bologna in this period of his life.
Unfortunately, there is a gap of a little more than two years in the
record of Dante's life between September 1291 and March 1294,
and it is only possible to speculate on whether Dante was able to
avail himself of the possibilities of studying philosophical subjects
that would not have been accessible to him in the more constrained
landscape of the monastic libraries and *studiae* of
Florence.



Wherever it may have been that Dante acquired his familiarity with
philosophy and theology, his writings offer ample evidence of wide
ranging interests, if not deep expertise about each and every subject
that is touched on in them. In particular, Dante cites a dozen works
of Aristotle, apparently at first hand, and displays a particularly
intimate knowledge of the *Ethics*, largely derived, no doubt,
from Thomas Aquinas. But his Aristotelianism was nourished by other
sources as well. Bruno Nardi has argued persuasively that his attitude
toward the study of philosophy also owes a great deal to the more
eclectic Albert the Great [Nardi (1967); 63-72; (1992),
28-29; Vasoli (1995b); Gilson (2004)]. In Albert, in particular,
Dante would have encountered a wide-ranging encyclopedism that
included original work, experimental and theoretical, in natural
science, and treated Aristotelian natural philosophy and psychology in
the light of Islamic philosophers (notably Avicenna and Averroes) and
Greco-Arab neo-Platonic sources such as the *Liber de Causis*,
as well as the Christian neo-Platonist tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius.
Albert aimed to discover Aristotle's own meaning, with the help
of Greek and Arab commentators who led him into disagreement with
other *Latini*, including at certain points his pupil Thomas,
and he asserts more than once that philosophy and theology are
separate spheres of knowledge. It is tempting to imagine that this
willingness to pursue philosophy on its own terms appealed to Dante,
whose *Convivio* and *Monarchia* also sought to
distinguish philosophical and religious knowledge without simply
subordinating the former to the latter.



Albert's view of the procession of the universe from the
"substantial light" of the divine intellect through the
operation of a hierarchy of lesser intelligences is also clearly
perceptible in Dante's treatment of the cosmic
*intelligenze* or *sostanze separate* in the
*Convivio* [*Conv*. 2.4-5; Nardi (1992),
47-62]. It shows up again in his treatment of the growth of the
human embryo, which seems to imply, not a sequence of animations by
nutritive, sensitive and intellective powers, as for Thomas, but the
continuous operation of a single *virtus formativa*, whose
operation Albert compares to that of the *prima intelligentia*
in the soul [*De intellectu & intelligibili* 2.2], and
which is responsible not only for the development of the human
creature but for effecting its union with an essentially external
*anima intellectiva* [Boyde (1981), 270-79; Nardi (1960),
9-68; (1967), 67-70].



Albert is thus a likely conduit for seemingly Averroist elements in
Dante's thought. He regards intellectual activity as the
operation of the *intellectus agens*, through which the human
soul is illumined by the divine Intelligence. Each soul possesses its
own intellect, but this intellect is a "reflection"
(*resultatio*) of the light of the primal mind, which thus, in
effect, becomes itself the true agent intellect. Albert explicitly
rejects the Averroist view of the active intellect as itself a
celestial intelligence, a single, separate substance which actualizes
in the passive intellect phantasms supplied by individual human minds.
But he nevertheless also argues that only an intellect universal in
nature can produce an understanding of universal forms. The intellect
and the soul of which it is a function thus partake of the character
of the separate intelligences. Soul is not the actualizing essence of
the human creature, as in Thomas, but is related to body through the
mediation of its organic faculties. In itself, through its agent
intellect, the soul is drawn to contemplate the intelligences which
order the universe at large, is informed by them with the transcendent
knowledge they manifest, and finally "stands" in the
divine intellect. In this way, certain men are enabled to fulfill the
innate human desire for understanding and attain a natural beatitude,
"substantiated and formed in the divine being" [Albert,
*De intellectu & intelligibili* 2.2-12; Nardi (1960),
145-50].



That this fulfillment is attained through natural understanding, with
no recourse to the theology of grace and revelation, marks a crucial
difference between Albert and Thomas, who devotes several chapters of
the *Summa contra gentiles* to a forceful refutation of the
notion that final happiness as defined by Aristotle is possible in
this life [SCG 3.37-48]. For Thomas the desire to know is one
and the same at all levels, and philosophy, seeking the causes of
things, is ultimately "ordered entirely to the knowing of
God" [SCG 3.25.9] Dante's own position on this question is
difficult to define precisely. The poet of the *Paradiso* is at
one with Thomas on the value of philosophy as consisting finally in
its power to prepare the mind for faith [*Par*. 4.118-32;
29.13-45], but he shares Albert's fascination with natural
understanding, and in earlier writings his willingness to grant
philosophy a "beatitude" of its own hints at a latent
dualism in his thought [Foster (1965), 51-71; (1977),
193-208; de Libera (1991), 333-36]. How far this reflects
his responsiveness to neo-Platonism as mediated by Albert or in such
works as the *Liber de causis* is hard to determine. Nardi, who
argued successfully for seeing Dante as an eclectic thinker [Diomedi
(2005), 1-23], stressed the importance of the *Liber de
Causis*. But the Platonizing strain in Dante's thinking
surely involves more than simply the influence of Albert or interest
in the *Liber de Causis*, and other scholars have noted
Dante's likely indebtedness to the encyclopedism of
twelfth-century thinkers like Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille,
poet-philosophers whose world view, inherited from late-antique
Neoplatonism, was defined by the Liberal Arts and the cosmology of
Plato's *Timaeus* [Vasoli (1995a, 2008); Garin (1976),
64-70; Stabile (2007), 173-93]. In Bernardus'
*Cosmographia* and Alan's *Anticlaudianus*, the
unfolding of the secrets of nature by the enquiring mind generates an
allegory of intellectual pilgrimage toward truth. Dante's
experience of philosophy, though defined in more dynamic and
sophisticated terms, is a version of the same journey. The experience
of love becomes a means to self-realization, and an awareness of the
hierarchy of forces operative in the universe at large, which makes
possible an *ascensus mentis ad sapientiam*, to that
"*amoroso uso della sapienza*" that enables the
human mind to participate in the divine.



On the other hand, recent studies have argued that Nardi, in his zeal
to free Dante from the constraints of the orthodox Thomism that
scholars like Pierre Mandonnet and Giovanni Busnelli claimed to find
in him, exaggerates the neo-Platonist strain in his thinking
[Maieru (2004), 128-35; Stabile (2007), 359-70;
Iannucci (1997); Moevs (2005), 17-35]. Moreover, Dante was
surely also aware of and influenced in some manner by a
"radical" Aristotelianism centered in Bologna, where
masters influenced by Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia were
affirming the autonomy of human reason and its capacity to attain
happiness through its own powers [Corti (1981), 9-31; Vanni
Rovighi]. Indeed, a number of textual and biographical clues have also
been interpreted as pointing toward a more heterodox dimension in
Dante's thinking. In short, the question of the influence of
Latin Averroism on Dante's philosophical views has remained an
active subject of debate among Dante scholars [see esp., Fortin
(2002); Ardizzone (2014 and 2016); Ziolkowski (2014a); Stone (2006)].
Still, many of these thinkers were also following paths first taken by
Albert, and it is possible that Albert's influence, together
with that of Thomas, is sufficient to account for many of the most
distinctive features of Dante's use of philosophy [Imbach
(1996b), 399-413].


## 4. The *Convivio*



The fullest expository expression of Dante's philosophical
thought is the *Convivio*, in which commentary on a series of
his own *canzoni* is the occasion for the expression of a range
of ideas on ethics, politics, and metaphysics, as well as for extended
discussion of philosophy itself. Originally, Dante conceived of the
work as a "banquet" involving "fourteen
courses"--that is, fourteen treatises commenting on
*canzoni* on the "themes of love and virtue"
(*Conv.* 1.1.14). However, the work, which was probably,
written around 1304-1307, was abandoned with only four of its
treatises completed. In these surviving treatises, Dante describes the
genesis of his love of philosophy, and reflects on the ability of
philosophical understanding to mediate religious truth, tracing the
desire for knowledge from its origin as an inherent trait of human
nature to the point at which the love of wisdom expresses itself
directly as love of God.



Philosophy itself is the "love of wisdom," and
Dante's central metaphor for representing it is the poetic
celebration of a noble lady, a *donna gentile*, an act that,
like Guinizelli, he sees as involving the influence of cosmic powers.
His poetry, comes into being out of love and virtue [*Conv*.
1.1.14] because his nature is responsive to the influence of the
"movers" of the universe, the intelligences, whose loving
understanding determines "the most noble form of heaven"
[2.5.19] as they in turn respond to "the love of the Holy
Spirit" [2.5.14]. Their cosmic activity is a continual
translation of understanding into love and natural process, and it is
this which causes Dante to sing [*Conv.* 2, Canzone,
1-9]:



> 
> 
> *Voi che 'ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,
>   
> 
> udite il ragionar ch'e nel mio core,
>   
> 
> ch'io nol so dire altrui, si mi par novo.
>   
> 
> El ciel che segue lo vostro valore,
>   
> 
> gentili creature che voi sete,
>   
> 
> mi tragge ne lo stato ov'io mi trovo.
>   
> 
> Onde 'l parlar de la vita ch'io provo,
>   
> 
> par che si drizzi degnamente a vui:
>   
> 
> pero vi priego che lo mi 'ntendiate.*
> 
> 
> 
> [All you who, knowing, make the Third Sphere move,
>   
> 
> hear what is in my heart, this strange discourse
>   
> 
> I can't tell others for it feels so new.
>   
> 
> The Sphere that follows on your virtue's force--
>   
> 
> noble, gracious creatures that you prove--
>   
> 
> draws me in this state I have just come to;
>   
> 
> Do words about what I am going through
>   
> 
> seem not unworthily to you addressed:
>   
> 
> and this I pray you, that you hear my part.]
> 
> 
> 



The intellective power or *intendimento* of the intelligences
moves Dante to an utterance which only these same powers can fully
understand. Thus there is a continuum, a process of
*circulazione* which begins in the mind of God and descends
through the work of the *intelligenze* to draw Dante's
nature into that praise of the *donna gentile* which
constitutes the fulfillment of his own nature, the highest expression
of which his desire and intellect are capable [2.6.5; Diomedi
(1999)].



Of the four books or *trattati* of the *Convivio*, the
first is largely a defense of Dante's decision to write his
prose commentaries, as well as the poems they expound, in the Tuscan
vernacular rather than in Latin. The second book provides a
delineation of the Ptolemaic universe which the *intelligenze*
govern, capped by a description of the Empyrean Heaven
[2.3.8-12]:



> 
> 
> ...outside of all these spheres, Catholics posit the Empyrean
> heaven, that is to say, the heaven of flame or the luminous heaven;
> and they assert that it is motionless by having within itself, with
> respect to each of its parts, all that its matter wants. This is the
> reason for the extremely rapid movement of the Prime Mover: through
> the exceedingly fervent desire of each part of the ninth heaven (which
> is right next to that one) to be united with each part of that most
> divine and tranquil heaven, it revolves within it with so much desire
> that its speed is practically incomprehensible. And tranquil and
> peaceful is the place of that supreme Deity which alone completely
> sees itself. This is the place of the blessed spirits, according to
> the Holy Church, which cannot tell lies; and Aristotle also seems to
> hold this view, to anyone who follows what he is saying, in the first
> book of *On Heaven and Earth*. This heaven is the overarching
> edifice of the universe, in which all the universe is enclosed, and
> outside of which nothing exists; and it is not in any place but was
> formed alone in the First Mind, which the Greeks call Protonoe. This
> is the magnificence of which the Psalmist spoke, when he says to God:
> "Elevated above the heavens is your magnificence."
> 
> 
> 



The role of the Empyrean in thirteenth-century thought is equivocal.
Some thinkers attempt to explain it scientifically, as a comprehensive
cosmic principle, while for Thomas and Albert any such realm must be
spiritual in nature and can bear no natural relation to the
astronomical universe--though both at times seem to grant it a
certain influence on the natural order [Nardi (1967), 196-214;
Vasoli (1995a), 94-102]. Dante's account reflects these
uncertainties. He begins by citing "the Catholics," or
orthodox belief, as authority for his account of this "abode of
the supreme deity," but then goes on to treat the Empyrean as a
created thing, "formed in the Primal Mind," and as the
motionless cause of motion in the physical universe. If God dwells in
this place, the Empyrean resides equally in Him, and the universe at
large is encompassed, causally and locally, by the Empyrean. Dante
deploys the Aristotelian physics of desire to explain the relationship
of the Empyrean to the lesser heavens, yet it is at the same time
beyond space, a wholly spiritual realm where blessed spirits
participate in the divine mind. Dante seems to emphasize this double
status by mingling theological and philosophical language, and
invoking Aristotle and the neo-Platonists side by side with the poet
of the Psalms. In the *Paradiso* the problems raised here will
be implicitly resolved by a brilliant recourse to the
"metaphysics of light;" when Dante and Beatrice, emerging
from the "greatest body," the crystalline sphere or Primum
Mobile, pass on "*al ciel ch'e pura luce, / Luce
intellettual piena d'amore*" [*Par*.
30.39-40], we know that we are at the precise point at which the
*bonum diffusivum sui* that is God's love transforms
itself to cosmic energy, "the love that moves the sun and the
other stars." But poetry is perhaps the only means of defining
this threshold [Bonaventure, *Sent*. 2. d. 2, a. 2, q. 1, c. 4;
Thomas, *Quodl*. 6, q. 11, a. unicus 19].



Similar ambiguities appear in Dante's discussion of the
*intelligenze* themselves. Since in governing the several
heavens the intelligences engage in a kind of civil life, they must
enjoy an active as well as a contemplative existence. But the latter
is of a higher order than the former, and no single intelligence can
partake of both. Influenced perhaps by Thomas's commentary,
Dante imputes to Aristotle in the *Ethics* the view that such
divine beings must know only a contemplative life [2.4.13; cp.
Aristotle, NE 10.8, 1178b; Thomas, *Exp. Eth.* 10, lect. 12,
2125]. Dante's attempt to resolve the issue is oddly
unpersuasive. He argues that the circular motion of the heavens, by
which the world is governed, is really a function of the contemplative
activity of the intelligences [2.4.13]. Here, as in the case of the
Empyrean which they inhabit, we can see Aristotle's celestial
movers undergoing a neo-Platonizing transformation, but Dante ends
this stage of his discussion by noting that the truth concerning the
Intelligences cannot be fully grasped by our earthly understanding
[2.4.16-17].



The second book concludes with an extended allegory in which the
concentric "heavens" or planetary spheres are identified
with the seven Liberal Arts, the "starry sphere" with
physics and metaphysics, the *Primum mobile* with moral
philosophy, and the Empyrean beyond with theology. This synthesis of
the natural and the intellectual universe expresses an ideal of
education which harks back to the late-antique sources of
twelfth-century Platonism, but which Dante has imbued with new life.
His emphasis on the ordering function of moral wisdom, and on the
happiness attainable through intellectual contemplation, reflects an
engagement with the philosophical tradition, and a commitment to
philosophy as such, which belong to the later thirteenth century. The
final chapter of Book Two affirms the beauty that consists in seeing
the causes of those "wonders" that, as the opening of the
*Metaphysics* declares, draw us to philosophy.



The third book is perhaps the most important for the student of
Dante's knowledge and use of philosophy. Its central theme is
praise of philosophy's power, as "l'*amoroso uso
della sapienza*," "the loving use of wisdom," to
impart the highest happiness to those who love her, perfecting their
natures and drawing them close to God, of whose majesty and wisdom her
beauty is the expression. It is largely a meditation on love,
understood as Dante's response, intellectual, poetic, and
psychological, to his enlightenment at the hands of the beautiful lady
whom he celebrates as Philosophy.



Early in the third book Dante cites the *Liber de Causis*:
every "substantial form" proceeds from the first cause,
God, and participates in His divine nature according to its nobility
[3.2.4-8; LC 1.1]. The human soul, noblest of all created forms,
loves all things to the degree that they manifest the divine goodness,
but desires above all to be united with God. Philosophy is the
expression of this desire in such a way that it, "apart from the
soul and considered in itself, has for its subject understanding and
for its form an almost divine love for what is understood"
[3.11.13]. Thus it is through the love of philosophy--"the
spiritual union of the soul with" [3.2.3] philosophy
itself--that humanity perfects its "highest nature, in
other words the truly human one--or better, the angelic or
rational nature" [3.3.11]. For in this spiritual union, the soul
discovers in itself "that fine and most precious part of the
soul, which is deity" [3.2.19] and "participates in the
divine nature in the manner of a sempiternal Intelligence"
[3.2.14]. As such it mirrors the nobility, wisdom and love of the
divine essence and its "loving use of wisdom" becomes
unified with God "through eternal marriage"
[3.12.11-14].



All of this may appear sheer fantasy, but we should remember that the
aim of philosophy as the *Convivio* pursues it is to attain,
through natural reason, the greatest happiness of which we are capable
in our earthly state. Such felicity is of course circumscribed by our
mortality, and the Dante who celebrates philosophical understanding as
a quasi-mystical union with God also maintains that true union can be
granted only through grace to a soul made receptive by the infusion of
the theological virtues which transcend the workings of rational,
natural virtue.



In this vein, it is not surprising that Dante speaks of the soul after
death as enduring "perpetually in a nature that is more than
human" [2.8.6], and asserts that to perceive God is not possible
for our nature [3.15.10]. Aristotle, too, had argued that a life of
pure contemplation is beyond our strictly human capacity--that we
can live in this way only to the extent that we have in us
"something divine" [NE 10.7, 1177b]. But for Dante, as for
Thomas Aquinas, the *modus essendi* of the soul joined to the
body differs from that of the soul in separation: though they are the
same in nature, the separated soul understands, not by means of
sensory images, but through species in which it participates by virtue
of the divine light [cf. ST 1.89.1r]. In the temporal life, however,
as Dante acknowledges, there are truths which we can apprehend only as
if in a dream, "*come sognando*," [*Conv*.
2.12.4; Nardi (1944), 81-90], and our desire for perfect
understanding is necessarily limited. To desire what is beyond the
capacity of our intellectual nature would be ethically and rationally
incoherent, a desire for imperfection rather than perfection of
understanding. Therefore, our love of wisdom is "proportioned in
this life to the knowledge which we can have here, and does not go
past that point except by an error which is outside the intention of
nature" [3.15.8-10].



But the *Convivio* continually strains against these same
limits that it claims are appropriate to the proper scope of human
knowledge in our temporal condition. For Dante, first and foremost a
poet of love, the experience of acquiring philosophical understanding
has an important psychological component. By enabling us to analyze
the processes of perception, philosophy brings us into contact with
the true nature of things, and for Dante, as Kenelm Foster observes,
the slightest such contact could have a metaphysical value:



> 
> 
> It did not in one sense matter to Dante what the particular object of
> his knowing might be, since the joy of knowing it was already a
> foretaste of all conceivable knowledge and all joy; and this precisely
> because, in knowing, the mind seized truth...once intelligence,
> the truth-faculty, had tasted truth as such, that is, its own
> correspondence with reality, it could not help desiring truth whole
> and entire, that is, its correspondence with all reality. [Foster
> (1965), 59-60]
> 
> 
> 



At this point, knowledge and the joy of possessing it combine to
prepare the ground for faith. By explaining phenomena which without
her guidance would merely astonish us, philosophy inspires us to
believe "that every miracle can be perceived by a superior
intellect to have a reasonable cause" [3.14.14]:



> 
> 
> And here our good faith has its origin; from which comes hope, which
> is desire for what is foreseen; and through this arises the act of
> charity. Through these three virtues one ascends to philosophize in
> that celestial Athens, where the Stoics and Peripatetics and
> Epicureans, by the light of eternal truth, in a single will, concur in
> total concord one with the other.
> 
> 
> 



Philosophy thus conceived can still be regarded as the handmaid of
theology, but as Dante develops his philosophical ideal metaphorically
in terms of the beauty of the *donna gentile*, it assumes a
religious value of its own. Since the wisdom she embodies is the
consummation of human self-realization, the *donna gentile*
resides in the divine mind as "the intentional exemplar of the
human essence" [3.6.6]. In desiring her we desire our own
perfection, for she is "as supremely perfect as human essence
can be" [3.6.8] When at this point Dante adds a reminder that
nothing in our human experience can fully satisfy this desire, he
seems to be acknowledging that what Thomas' *Ethics*
commentary refers to as the ultimate end of desire's natural
inclination is unattainable in this life, since it would require an
understanding more complete than any human being can possess [Thomas,
*Exp. Eth*. 1, lect. 9, 107; SCG 3.48.2].



But having provided this caution, Dante seems to ignore it, as if
unable to resist the conviction that philosophy satisfies our desire
in a manner proper to itself. Everything naturally desires its own
perfection, and for human beings this is "the perfection of
reason" [3.15.3-4; cf. Thomas, *Exp. Eth*. 9, lect.
9, 1872]. But philosophy, as embodied in the *donna gentile*,
is not just the consummation of natural understanding. For Dante, as
for Aristotle, the human intellect as such is somehow more than human,
and he is at times similarly unclear on the question of whether human
beings can attain happiness through the exercise of virtue, and to
what extent it is a gift of the gods [Foster (1977), 198-201].
Repeatedly he draws a distinction between merely human happiness and
that attainable through grace, only to seemingly disregard it in
subsequent discussion. Thus in the final chapter of the third treatise
he acknowledges the "strong misgivings" that one might
have about the happiness attainable through philosophy. Since certain
things--God, eternity, and primal matter are named--exceed
the capacity of our intellect, our natural desire to know must remain
unfulfilled in this life [3.15.7]. Dante answers this by affirming, as
noted above, that the natural desire for perfection is always
proportionate to our capacity to attain it; for to desire the
unattainable would be to desire our imperfection [3.15.8-11].
Human happiness, then, consists in the attainment of Aristotle's
"human good," through the exercise of the virtues. This is
what Dante calls "*l'umana operazione*," and
its end is the highest that human beings can attain through their own
powers.



Yet philosophy offers the promise of more. The same chapter is
climaxed by the vision of Wisdom as "the mother of all
things," the origin of all motion and order in the created
universe, guiding the quest of human wisdom by the light of the divine
intellect. When the human mind is fully informed by philosophy, it
would appear, it becomes virtually one of the *intelligenze*,
who know both what is above them and what is below, God as cause and
the created universe as effect [3.6.4-6]. Thus Dante can speak
of our rational nature as, simultaneously our "truly
human" and "our angelic nature" [Moevs (2005),
83-86].



The *Liber de causis* says that each cause infuses into its
effect the goodness it receives from its own cause, or, in the case of
the soul, from God [*Conv*. 3.6.11; LC 4.48]. When gazing on
the body of the *donna gentile*, we are perceiving the effect
of a cause which is ultimately God, and thus, Dante asserts
[3.6.12-13]:



> 
> 
> insofar as, with regard to her bodily aspect, marvelous things are
> seen in her... it is evident that her form, that is her soul,
> which directs it [her bodily aspect] as its proper cause, miraculously
> receives the beloved goodness of God. And so it is demonstrated by
> this appearance that, beyond the due of our nature (which is most
> perfect in her, as was stated above), this lady is favored by God and
> made a noble thing.
> 
> 
> 



Thus in effect the *donna gentile* is the perfection we desire.
Through her we experience the divine goodness, by an outflowing, a
*discorrimento*, which Dante glosses with a further reference
to the *Liber de Causis* [3.7.2; LC 20.157] in terms of the
hierarchical emanation of the divine goodness. In the quasi-continuous
series of gradations that descends from angel to brute animal, there
is no intervening grade between man and angel, so that some human
beings are so noble as to be nothing less than angels [Aristotle, NE
7.1, 1145a]. Such is the *donna gentile*; she receives divine
virtue just as the angels do [3.7.7]. She is a thing *visibilmente
miraculosa*, ordained from eternity by God in *testimonio de la
fede* for us [3.7.16-17; Foster (1965), 56], and God, by
instilling his radiance in her love of philosophy,
"assimilates" her form "to his likeness insofar as
it is possible to be like Him" [3.14.3; cf. Thomas, SCG
1.91].



Philosophy has clearly become far more than the means whereby human
nature achieves self-realization, though this ideal continues to
provide a framework for Dante's praise of her. She has assumed
the status of Wisdom, *sapientia*, the divine mind as expressed
in the order and harmony of creation. Like the separate substances and
God Himself, her beauty can only be described in terms of its effects.
The true philosopher "loves every part of wisdom, and wisdom
every part of the philosopher, since she draws him to herself in full
measure" [3.11.12]. Moreover, because the object of every
philosopher's contemplation is the same angelic intelligence,
philosophical activity also unites individual human beings to
*donna gentile* in such a way that, as Ardizzone has put it,
emphasizes a "principle of unity in which the cosmological order
is the expression of a superior intellectual love and desire, one
which human and superhuman beings may share" [Ardizzone (2016),
274].



Here we may recall Dante's account of how the swift motion of
the Primum Mobile expresses its desire for total participation in the
divinity of the Empyrean [2.3.8]. And it is in such terms that Dante
ends his account of philosophy-as-wisdom. In the final chapter of the
third treatise, she is explicitly identified with the all-creating
Wisdom of God as "the mother of all things and the origin of
every motion" [3.15.15], and Dante concludes in prophetic
exhortation [3.15.17]:



> 
> 
> Oh, worse than dead are you who flee her friendship! Open your eyes
> and look; for, before you were, she loved you, preparing and ordering
> the process that created you; and once you were made, to show you the
> way she came to you in your likeness.
> 
> 
> 



The fourth treatise of the *Convivio* seems to have been
written later than the first three, and it is markedly different in
orientation. The principal theme of its *canzone* is the true
nature of nobility. Introducing his prose discussion, Dante gives a
curious account of how an interruption in his philosophical studies,
caused by what the *canzone* calls "disdainful and
harsh" behavior on the part of the *donna gentile*,
provided an occasion for taking up this topic:



> 
> 
> So, since this lady of mine had slightly altered her sweet expressions
> toward me, above all where I investigated and researched whether the
> prime matter of the elements was comprehended by God--because of
> which I refrained for a while from being in the presence of her
> face--living more or less without her, I started to reflect on
> the human defect related to the above-mentioned error [i.e., a false
> perception of the bases of human nobility]. [4.1.8]
> 
> 
> 



That God is the creator of prime matter was an article of faith, and
Thomas had dealt decisively with the role of divine will and intellect
in the creative act [SCG 2.20.7, 21-24]. That Dante should admit
to having entertained doubts about such a question is perhaps a way
hedging against or concealing the heterodox implications of his claims
in book 3 [Ardizzone (2016)]. Alternatively, he may have sensed
himself idolizing the secondary powers in whose hierarchical
*circulazione* he felt himself, as poet, to be in a special
sense participant, and allowing these preoccupations to cloud his
awareness of God's omnipotence. The anger of the *donna
gentile* would then express his sense of a corresponding loss of
focus, a failure to affirm her unique and transcendent role in the
expression of the divine will. Or perhaps Dante had come to regard the
metaphysical exposition of books 2 and 3 as incidental to what he
regarded as a more significant philosophical theme that emerges in
book 4.



Whatever the precise nature of the dilemma to which Dante alludes, the
fourth treatise is marked by a noticeable shift away from metaphysics
in the direction of ethics and rhetoric. Philosophical knowledge is
redirected to the purposes of social and political life, and the
treatise, while punctuated like the others by numerous digressions,
pursues a single sustained argument. Dante begins by explaining that
social order is a necessary condition for human happiness and that it
requires a single governor whose authority embraces that of all
particular governors and directs their several efforts to a single end
[4.4]. After a long digression on the role of Rome in the providential
design of human history, he turns from political to philosophical
authority, citing Aristotle as in effect the governor of the mind,
"master and guide of human reason insofar as it is occupied with
its final end" [4.6.8]. From this, Dante derives the conclusion
that even an emperor's authority must be circumscribed insofar
as the art of ruling and the laws it creates cannot overrule rational
judgment based on the laws of nature [4.9].



On this basis Dante proceeds to refute the view that nobility consists
in wealth and ancestry, a view which he here attributes to Frederick
II, "the last emperor of the Romans," and for which he
will elsewhere cite Aristotle's *Politics* [*Mon*.
2.3.4; *Pol*. 4.8, 1294a]. Perhaps as significant as the
arguments he musters to show the treacherous nature of riches and the
uncertain course of nobility from one generation to another is the
assertion of Dante's own authority, as philosopher and citizen,
that is implied by his elaborate apology for speaking as he does
[Ascoli (1989), 35-41]. The gesture nicely epitomizes the
project of the *Convivio*, a vernacular discourse which defines
for its lay audience the limits of political and scholastic authority
and affirms the autonomy and potential dignity of individual human
reason.



The later portions of the fourth treatise are grounded in an
Aristotelian definition of nobility, as the perfection of a thing
according to its nature [*Conv*. 4.16.7; *Physics* 7.3,
246a]. The human expression of this perfection is virtue, moral and
intellectual. Electing to address the moral virtues, as more
accessible to a lay understanding, Dante begins by describing how
nobility is implanted in the nascent soul as the seed of virtue, from
which spring the two branches of the active and the contemplative
life. The final chapters of the *Convivio* show how the virtues
that stem from nobility can direct the natural appetite of the mind,
enabling it to evolve through love of them to the happiness which is
the end of virtue [*Conv*. 4.17.8-9; NE 1.13, 1102a].



In the final stanza of the *canzone* analyzed in the fourth
treatise, Dante addresses the poem itself as
"Contra-li-erranti," his
"Contra-the-mistaken," and the final chapter of the
commentary explains this as an allusion to the *Summa contra
gentiles* of Thomas, written "to confound all those who
deviate from our Faith" [*Conv*. 4.30.3]. By thus
declaring himself the follower of so fine a craftsman, Dante suggests,
he hopes to "ennoble" his own undertaking.



The *Contra gentiles* may seem an odd choice of model. Bruno
Nardi considers that Dante had at most a superficial knowledge of this
work at the time when he wrote the *Convivio*, and it is
certainly the case that he is fundamentally at odds with Thomas over
such specific matters as the origin of the soul, the role of the
celestial intelligences in creation, and, more important, in claiming
for philosophy the power to fulfil the human desire for knowledge in
this life [Nardi (1992), 28-29]. On all of these matters, Dante
is closer to the position of Albert.



In any case, having dwelt at length on the insatiability of the base
desire for riches, Dante addresses the question of whether our desire
for knowledge, too, since it continues to grow as knowledge is
acquired, is not similarly base. Dante begins his answer by asserting
that "the supreme desire of each thing, the primal one given by
its nature, is to return to its principle" or cause, and he
illustrates this proposition by the images of a traveller on an
unfamiliar road, who imagines each house he encounters to be the inn
he seeks, and the desires of youth, which focus first on an apple or a
pet bird, then evolve to encompass love and prosperity [*Conv*.
4.12.14-16]. But while this may seem to evoke Thomas's
view of a single desire which seeks to grow continuously toward union
with God, Dante's point is that the path to fulfillment involves
multiple desires and the attainment of multiple perfections
[*Conv*. 4.13.1-2]:



> 
> 
> ...the desire for knowledge cannot be said to *grow* in
> the proper sense, even if as was stated earlier it does
> *expand* in a certain way. This is because anything which grows
> in the proper sense is always one; the desire for knowledge is not
> always one but is many--when one is completed, another comes
> along--so that properly speaking, its expansion is not growth but
> a progression from something small to something large. For if I desire
> to know the principles of natural things, no sooner do I know them
> than this desire is satisfied and fulfilled. And if I subsequently
> desire to know the what and the how of each of these principles, this
> is another, new desire, the occurrence of which does nothing to take
> away the perfection to which the other desire led me; and this
> expansion is not a cause of imperfection, but of greater perfection or
> completeness.
> 
> 
> 



Thomas can speak of the natural desire to know as a force like
gravity, whose attraction intensifies as it approaches its object [SCG
3.25.13]. In contrast Dante's insistence on types and stages of
knowing may seem almost perverse, a matter of emphasizing the stages
of the mind's ascent rather than a single, unified desire that
leads it forward from stage to stage. But what is at stake for Dante
is the need to acknowledge human ends as having a definite value of
their own, and this need will play an equally important role in
Dante's other major philosophical works.


## 5. The *De vulgari eloquentia*



During the same period in which Dante was writing the
*Convivio* he was also composing the *De vulgari
eloquentia*. Written in Latin, this treatise was, like the
*Convivio*, abandoned sometime around 1307. In it, however,
many of the lengthy discussions of ethics and politics from book 4 of
*Convivio* are put in the service of a discussion of the
capacity of poets possessing both *scientia et
ingenium--*that is, those who possess both knowledge and
genius [*DVE* 2.1.8]--to use an illustrious vernacular
language to "melt the hearts of human beings, so as to make the
unwilling willing and the willing unwilling" [1.17.4].
Underwriting this purpose, Dante offers a wholly unique treatment of
the origins and development of language in book 1 before proceeding in
book 2 to set down specific rules that ought to govern the proper
poetic deployment of this illustrious vernacular.



There are nineteen chapter divisions to part one. Chapters 1-3
lay the groundwork by discussing the basic purposes of human language.
Here, Dante quite rightly recognizes that, even were we to regard
intellectual content as immaterial, human beings are nevertheless
constituted in such a way as to derive intellectual content initially
from sensation directly (as in the case of induction arriving at a
first principle) or through the sensory communication of intellectual
content from one human being to another (as in the case of dialectical
or rhetorical engagement). Languages thus convey thinking but do so in
a material medium (e.g., sound produced by one person's vocal
cords and vibrating another person's receiving organ of the
ear). Indeed, for Dante, this use of language is at the very core of
what it means to be human since, unlike other animals and also unlike
angels and demons, "in order to communicate their mental
conceptions (*conceptiones*) to one another, men had to have
some kind of rational and sensory sign...rational because it
would both arise from and lead to reason...[and sensory] since
nothing can be transferred from one reasoning mind to another except
by sensory means." [1.3.2].



Chapters 4-10 then proceed to offer an investigation of the
origins of the diversity of vernaculars in the world. The view Dante
offers in these chapters focuses on both the creation of Adam and
Adam's first speech as well as on the story of the tower of
Babel. (Aspects of the account offered here are later revised in the
Pilgrim's discussion of this subject with Adam in
*Paradiso* 26--see Aleksander [2016], 240-41). In
chapters 11-15, Dante describes his supposed hunt among the
existing Italian vernaculars of his day for an illustrious version of
Italian. But rather than locating an illustrious vernacular among any
of the existing modes of Italian, he mainly heaps scorn on most of the
regional vernaculars, including his own native Tuscan vernacular. For
instance, Dante writes that "the Tuscans, who, rendered
senseless by some aberration of their own" [1.13.1] merely
persist in drunken raving [*in hac ebrietate baccantur*,
1.13.2] about the excellence of their "foul jargon"
[*turpiloquio*, 1.13.3].



There is one important exception to Dante's scorn for the
fourteen or so vernaculars that he reviews, and it is the vernacular
of the Bolognese. Dante claims that the Bolognese seem to "speak
a more beautiful language than most" [1.15.2] because their
vernacular, unlike that of other regions of Italy, borrows from other
vernaculars in such a way that it is "tempered by the
combination of opposites" [1.15.5]. Unfortunately for them,
however, Dante explains that his praise for their language is not
absolute but is only relative to his disdain for the sad state of the
other existing vernaculars. After all, he says, had the dialect of the
Bolognese been absolutely the best of the existing Italian
vernaculars, why would praiseworthy poets such as Guido Guinizelli,
Guido Ghislieri, Fabruzzo, and Onesto have abandoned it?



In 1.16, Dante turns from his hunt for an illustrious vernacular among
existing modes of Italian to his own definition of the mode of
vernacular against which all other Italian vernaculars ought to be
judged. Here Dante draws an implicit analogy between what is he is
seeking in the case of the Italian vernaculars and the ways in which
we are able to identify through intellectual insight a law or
principle that provides a determination of what is good or bad with
respect to some distinct capacity for action. Dante reasons that just
as we are able to arrive at conceptions of "virtue" that
ought to govern our conduct, so too we ought be able to arrive at an
understanding of the mode of language that is best suited to our
practical needs as language users. As he will eventually make clear in
2.1-2, this mode of language would be appropriate only for the
best of uses by the best individuals. That is, this mode would only be
appropriate for use by those who are equipped by their own perfection
to generate virtues in others. Moreover, this mode would only express
and produce the virtues that correspond to the tripartite aspects of a
human soul: prowess in arms, which pertains to the vegetal part of the
soul's determination to seek that which is useful; love, which
pertains to a rectitude of the appetitive or animal part of the soul;
and rectitude of will, which pertains to the rational part of the soul
[2.2].



For Dante there are four main features of any mode of expression
appropriate for these tasks. Dante identifies these four features as a
vernacular's illustriousness, cardinality, courtliness, and
curiality. That such a language can *generate* virtues in human
beings is precisely what Dante means in 1.17 when he calls such a
language "illustrious" since such a language is
"sublime in both learning and power" [1.17.2]. And, in
1.18, Dante explains that such a language is "cardinal,"
or "pivotal," (*cardinalis*) because it
"plants" (*plantat*) what is best and peculiar to
specific local vernaculars and "removes"
(*exstirpat*) what is disreputable [1.18.1]. It is
"courtly" or "aulic" (*aulicus*)
because "it is common to all and the property of none"
[1.18.2]. And it is "curial" (*curialis*) because
it has been weighed by the scales of justice in a court unified either
under the rule of a singular monarch or--as is the case for
Dante's Italian contemporaries, who lack a unified court in this
sense--according to a court unified by "the gracious light
of reason" [1.18.5]. This last criterion thus suggests that such
a vernacular also depends upon and expresses the principles of just
rule since, according to Dante, "the essence of being curial is
no more than providing a balanced assessment of whatever has to be
dealt with" [1.18.4].



Dante's style of argumentation in the *De vulgari
eloquentia* is notably assertorial and seems to beg the question
of the grounds for his own authority to offer the principles
summarized above. To illustrate the significance of this style of
argumentation, it is worth backing up for a moment to see that prior
to defining the four main features of any illustrious vernacular,
Dante had already hunted for an illustrious vernacular among roughly
fourteen existing regional species of the Italian mode of the
vernacular. During the course of this hunt, however, Dante offered
judgments regarding the deficiencies of various aesthetic features of
these existing modes of the Italian vernacular as if he had already
established the very principles that he articulated only after having
abandoned that hunt. For instance, after heaping scorn on the
vernacular habits of his fellow Tuscans, Dante proceeds to the
following evaluation of the Genoese:



> 
> If there is anyone who thinks that what I have just said about the
> Tuscans could not be applied to the Genoese, let him consider only
> that if, through forgetfulness, the people of Genoa lost the use of
> the letter *z*, they would either have to fall silent for ever
> or invent a new language for themselves. For *z* forms the
> greater part of their vernacular, and it is, of course a letter that
> cannot be pronounced without considerable harshness.
> 



The claim that an illustrious vernacular would not include frequent
uses of the phoneme *z* is puzzling on the surface and seems to
call for a justification much more robust than the judgment that
*z* is a harsh sound. Indeed, Dante seems somewhat aware of
this problem, for in 1.6.2-3 he had already staked out his own
authority in undertaking his investigation by explaining that:



> 
> whoever is so misguided as to think that the place of his birth is the
> most delightful spot under the sun may also believe that his own
> language--his mother tongue, that is--is pre-eminent among
> all others; and, as a result he may believe that his language was also
> Adam's. To me, however, the whole world is a homeland, like the
> sea to fish--though I drank from the Arno before cutting my
> teeth, and love Florence so much that, because I loved her suffer
> exile unjustly--and I will weight the balance of my judgment more
> with reason than with [sensation].
> 



Taken to an extreme, this comment suggests that the basis of his
authority to evaluate the quality of diverse vernaculars is his
"exile." Read in this way, Dante's unjust exile from
the imperfect community of Florence perhaps suggests a reversal of
Adam's exile from Eden (or of the hubris that resulted in
Nimrod's linguistic isolation illustrated in *Inferno*
31)--an interpretation that is also justified by the very fact
that in this same section Dante proceeds from this comment on his own
suitability to judge Italian vernaculars immediately to a discussion
of the *forma locutionis* of Adamic language.



However, these claims also permit a more modest interpretation of
Dante's self-justification. In the first place, Dante's
claim to authority by virtue of his exile from Florence suggests that
the legitimacy of an illustrious vernacular is not simply rooted in a
game of numbers--that is, the illustriousness of a vernacular is
not simply a product of how many people use it in a given region of
the world. Quite to the contrary, since the proper use of such a
vernacular requires that a poet possesses both *scientia et
ingenium*, those who are legitimate users of an illustrious
vernacular are likely to be few in number, and the ways in which they
ought to employ such a language are similarly constrained. Moreover,
both Dante's warnings about the problems of bias in our
attitudes toward our own linguistic conventions as well as his point
that the legitimacy of his own evaluation is rooted in his attention
to reason rather than merely to the senses provides a hint that Dante
regards the legitimacy of poetic employments of an illustrious
vernacular as grounded in philosophy's authoritativeness with
respect to ethical and political matters.



To see how this hint bears out it will help to recall the points that
Dante offered in the *Convivio* about the relationship between
philosophical, theological, and secular political authority. As noted
above, in *Convivio* 4 Dante argues that even an
emperor*'*s authority must be circumscribed insofar as
the art of ruling and the laws it creates cannot overrule rational
judgment based on philosophical understanding of the laws of nature.
But, in fact, Dante pursues this line of thinking even further in
*Convivio* 4.6.16-18 by explaining the practical
necessity of the unification of imperial and philosophical
authority.



> 
> the authority of the supreme philosopher referred to here [Aristotle]
> is utterly valid [or, more literally "is invested with complete
> power"]. Philosophical authority is not opposed to imperial
> authority; but the latter without the former is dangerous, and the
> former without the latter is weak, as it were, not in itself but
> because of the disorder that results among the people; so that one
> combined with the other is highly useful and most valid. And so it is
> written in the Book of Wisdom: "Love the light of wisdom, all
> you who are before the people"; in other words, unite
> philosophical authority and imperial authority, for the sake of good
> and perfect rule.
> 



Later in the text, Dante is even more explicit about the priority of
philosophy's authority to that of the emperor with respect to
judgments concerning the political necessities dictated by human
nature. In *Convivio* 4.9.14-16, for instance, Dante
offers the following claim:



> 
> what we have discussed with regard to the various arts can be observed
> in the imperial art; for there are conventions in that art, too, which
> are pure arts, as for example laws on marriage, domestic servants,
> military service, or successors in public office: in these we are
> completely subject to the emperor, without doubt or hesitation. There
> are other laws which follow on nature, so to speak, as in establishing
> when a man is old enough to manage his own affairs, and where these
> are concerned we are not wholly subject. There are many others which
> appear to have some relation to the imperial art--and whoever
> believes that the emperor's opinion in this area is
> authoritative is and was deluded--as in defining what constitutes
> early adulthood and nobility, over which no imperial judgment must be
> accepted merely because it is the emperor's: thus, may that
> which is Caesar's be rendered unto Caesar, and may that which is
> God's be rendered unto God. Consequently, there is no obligation
> to believe or assent to the emperor Nero, who said that early
> adulthood was bodily beauty and strength, but [instead] to him, a
> philosopher [Aristotle], who said that early adulthood is the peak of
> natural life.
> 



In other words, Dante's argument in *De vulgari
eloquentia* ultimately depends upon and reinforces the claims of
the *Convivio* that just rule requires the unification of
philosophical authority with that of the authority to establish and
enforce laws. Philosophy qua philosophy is impotent in the task of
guiding all but those who have already achieved both ethical and
intellectual virtues. The emperor, on the other hand, can indeed
either benefit or corrupt his subjects, but the emperor's
legitimacy depends on his recognition of the priority of
philosophy's claims to the knowledge of the principles of
justice and the other human virtues since such matters are dictated
more by human nature than by local conventions. What the *De
vulgari eloquentia* adds to Dante's emerging political
philosophy in the *Convivio*, however, is explicit attention to
the significance of poetic/rhetorical discourse as a tool to be used
on behalf of the project of unifying people under the joint rule of
philosophy and empire--a perspective that it is easy to imagine
played a significant role in his choice to turn back to poetry as his
primary vehicle for addressing his fellow Italians in their own
vernacular in the *Divine Comedy*.


## 6. The *Monarchia*



Although there remains some dispute about the date of the
*Monarchia*'s composition (probably after 1314), it is
clear that, unlike the *Convivio* and the *De vulgari
eloquentia*, the *Monarchia* was completed and disseminated
in Dante's own lifetime--though, evidently, it was not
widely circulated until the late 1320's, when it came to be
deployed as propaganda supporting Louis IV's claim to the title
of Holy Roman Emperor [Cassell (2004), 33-49].



Regardless of the uses to which it was later put, the
*Monarchia* is in its own way as idiosyncratic as the
*Convivio*. Its purpose, foreshadowed in the discussion of
empire in *Convivio* IV, is to demonstrate the necessity of a
single ruling power, reverent toward but independent of the Church,
capable of ordering the will of collective humanity in peace and
concord. Under such a power the potential intellect of humanity can be
fully actuated--the intellect, that is, of collective humanity,
existent throughout the world, acting as one. For just as a multitude
of species must continually be generated to actualize the full
potentiality of prime matter, so the full intellectual capacity of
humanity cannot be realized at one time nor in a single individual
[*Mon*. 1.3.3-8]. Here Dante adds his own further
particularization of this Aristotelian doctrine [*De Anima*
3.5, 430a10-15], asserting that no single household, community,
or city can bring it to realization. The ordering of the collective
human will to the goal of realizing its intellectual potential
requires universal peace [1.4], and this in turn requires a single
ordering power through whose authority humanity may achieve unity and
so realize the intention and likeness of God [1.8].



The basis of this argument for empire is evidently the first sentence
of the Prologue to Thomas' commentary on the
*Metaphysics*, where he declares that when several things are
ordered to a single end, one of them must govern, "as the
Philosopher teaches in his *Politics*" [Thomas, *Exp.
Metaph.*, Proemium; Aristotle, *Politics* 1.5,
1254a-55a]. For Thomas this is only an analogy, a way of
introducing the theme of order as it applies to the soul and its
pursuit of happiness. The passage he cites from the *Politics*
is concerned only with the rudiments of hierarchy; the idea of
"ordering of things to one end" is present only by
implication, and Aristotle makes no attempt to develop its
metaphysical implications. Dante, however, seems clearly to associate
with Aristotle, or with Thomas' reference to Aristotle, the idea
of "a political organization which leads in its way to
'beatitudo' for the whole human race"
[Minio-Paluello, 74-77]. One may wonder if Dante's
erroneous impression of the Aristotelian passage, which he cites
directly with no reference to Thomas in both the *Convivio* and
the *Monarchia* [*Conv*. 4.4.5; *Mon*.
1.5.2-3], is not a symptom of his intense need to draw the
Philosopher into support of his view of world empire.



The second of the *Monarchia*'s three books deals with
the great example of Rome, describing the city's providential
role in world history, largely by way of citations from Roman
literature aimed at demonstrating the consistent dedication of Roman
power to the public good, and the conformity of Roman
*imperium* with the order of nature and the will of God.



The third book deals with the crucial issue of the relationship
between political and ecclesiastical authority. Dante argues on
various grounds that power in the temporal realm is neither derived
from nor dependent on spiritual authority, though it benefits from the
power of the Papacy to bless its activity. These arguments consist
largely in refutations of traditional claims for the temporal
authority of the Papacy, but the final chapter makes the argument on
positive grounds and in terms that recall the arguments first laid
down in the *Convivio*. Since the human being consists of soul
and body, its nature partakes of both the corruptible and the
incorruptible. Uniting two natures, human existence must necessarily
be ordered to the goals of both these natures [*Mon*.
3.16.7-9]:



> 
> Ineffable providence has thus set before us two goals to aim at: i.e.
> happiness in this life, which consists in the exercise of our own
> powers and is figured in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the
> eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God (to
> which our own powers cannot raise us except with the help of
> God's light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise.
> Now these two kinds of happiness must be reached by different means,
> as representing different ends. For we attain the first through the
> teachings of philosophy, provided that we follow them putting into
> practice the moral and intellectual virtues; whereas we attain the
> second through spiritual teachings which transcend human reason,
> provided that we follow them putting into practice the theological
> virtues, i.e. faith, hope, and charity. These ends and the means to
> attain them have been shown to us on the one hand by human reason,
> which has been entirely revealed to us by the philosophers, and on the
> other by the Holy Spirit...
> 



This is Dante's most explicit, uncompromising claim for the
autonomy of reason, reinforced by the entire world-historical argument
of the *Monarchia* and constituting its final justification for
world empire. Dante here goes well beyond Augustine's sense of
the stabilizing function of empire, and eliminates any hint of the
anti-Roman emphasis in Augustine's separation of the earthly and
heavenly cities. In the final sentences of the *Monarchia* the
temporal monarch becomes, like the aspiring intellect of the
*Convivio*, the uniquely privileged beneficiary of a divine
bounty which, "without any intermediary, descends into him from
the Fountainhead of universal authority" [*Mon*.
3.16.15]. Like the Averroistic reasoning of his earlier claim that
only under a world empire can humanity realize its intellectual
destiny, this crowning claim shows Dante appropriating Aristotle to
the service of a unique and almost desperate vision of empire as a
redemptive force.


## 7. The *Commedia* (The *Divine Comedy*)



Few texts have generated such deep and abiding interest as has the
*Divine Comedy* in its nearly centuries of transmission. In
large part, this wealth of attention is a function of the way in which
the *Divine Comedy* seems to gather, in what is often called an
"encyclopedic" fashion, the entire edifice of classical
poetry, medieval knowledge (including but not limited to its
reflections on ethics, political theory, metaphysics, theology,
biblical exegesis, literary history, rhetoric, and aesthetics) and to
call out to its contemporary and future readers with the perennial
demand that they make its encyclopedic interests meaningful in their
own lives. In part because of this seemingly encyclopedic character,
but also because so many of the poetic stratagems of the *Divine
Comedy* involve irony and outright paradox, any attempt to
summarize its philosophical content or significance is to a certain
degree an act of folly. In fact all of the themes mentioned in the
discussion of Dante's three expository treatises above
constitute significant themes in Dante's magnum opus. For this
reason, rather than attempt to summarize the *Divine
Comedy*'s treatment of these themes, it may be more useful
to offer a brief comment on what may be at stake in the question of
the relationship between the philosophical content of the *Divine
Comedy* and its poetic form.



At the outset, it is worth dispensing with the notion that the
*Divine Comedy* rejects philosophy in favor of what appears to
be a mystical undertaking. It is, of course, quite true that the
*Divine Comedy* condemns even Aristotle, the "master of
those who know," to Hell [*Inf.* 4.131; all translations
of the *Divine Comedy* in this entry are those of Robert
Durling (1996-2011)]--specifically to the portion of Limbo
in which souls of the noble pagans are punished only insofar as
"without hope [they] live in desire" [*Inf.* 4.42].
However, even if philosophical perfection is, in itself, insufficient
for salvation according to the *Divine Comedy*'s
spiritual economy, this is not to say that salvation is possible
without philosophy. In other words, the question of what philosophy
means within the world described by the *Divine Comedy*
probably should not rest upon a superficial identification of it
exclusively with the fates it imagines even for those who are too
easily taken to be its symbols.



Indeed, already in the *Convivio*, Dante presents a complicated
understanding of the meaning and scope of philosophy. There, lady
philosophy was depicted in books 2 and 3 as offering human beings the
capacity for contemplative unity with God through their devotion to
her. Hence, it is worth recalling a passage mentioned above in which
Dante maintains that



> 
> it should be understood that the gaze of this woman was so liberally
> ordained for us, not only for seeing the countenance that she reveals
> to us, but for desiring to attain the things she keeps hidden. Thus,
> because through her many of those things are seen by means of reason,
> and consequently *can* be seen, while without her they seem
> inexplicable and miraculous, so we believe through her that every
> miracle may have its reason in a higher intellect and consequently is
> possible. And here our good faith has its origin; from which comes
> hope, which is desire for what is foreseen; and through this arises
> the act of charity. Through these three virtues one ascends to
> philosophize in that celestial Athens, where the Stoics and
> Peripatetics and Epicureans, by the light of eternal truth, in a
> single will, concur in total concord one with the other.
> [3.13-14]
> 



In this light, it is also worth noting that Dante turns toward the
authority of Aristotle in *Convivio* 4 only after having
"refrained" from pursuing his desire for the *donna
gentile* who embodies philosophy [4.1.8]. And it is noteworthy,
too, that Dante appeals to Aristotle's authority not about the
spiritual and metaphysical matters that were the subjects of
discussion in *Convivio* 2-3, but about those that
concern the definition of nobility and the role of philosophy in
ethical and political issues--issues that are pertinent only to
the question of the pursuit of temporal rather than spiritual goods.
In other words, the tension between the role of philosophy in the
active life and its potential role for the contemplative life is
broached in the *Convivio* in such a way that hints that the
*Divine Comedy*, too, may be structured by the tension between
its ambitions to make legitimate use of philosophy in these two
related but fundamentally different manners--ways that may even
be in tension with each other insofar as pursuit of one end may
sometimes seem to preclude or require the abandonment of pursuit of
the other.



There are, however, two major complications that hinder any direct
assessment of the *Divine Comedy*'s treatment of the
nature of philosophy. First, there is the question of the how to
interpret the explicit doctrinal claims of the various speakers in the
*Divine Comedy*. *Purgatorio* 16, for instance,
introduces Marco the Lombard on the terrace of wrath. Marco's
speech to Dante's pilgrim touches on a variety of philosophical
subjects, including a refutation of astral determinism. But the
culminating lines of his speech do little more than offer a brief
summary of the political philosophy espoused in *Convivio* 4
and *Monarchia*. Specifically, Marco offers the following
diagnosis of the cause of civil strife in the Italy of Dante's
day (*Purg.*, 16.106-12):



> 
> 
> *Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo,
>   
> 
> due soli aver, che l'una e l'altra strada
>   
> 
> facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
>   
> 
> L'un l'altro ha spento, ed e giunta la spade
>   
> 
> col pasturale, e l'un con l'altro insieme
>   
> 
> per viva forza mal convien che vada
>   
> 
> pero che, giunti, l'un l'altro non teme.*
> 
> 
> 
> [Rome, which made the good world,
>   
> 
> used to have two suns that made visible
>   
> 
> the two paths, of the world and of God.
>   
> 
> One sun has extinguished the other,
>   
> 
> and the sword is joined to the shepherd's staff,
>   
> 
> and it is ill for those two to be violently forced together,
>   
> 
> for, joined, neither fears the other.]
> 
> 
> 



Accordingly, read in light of the *Convivio* and the
*Monarchia*, when Marco asserts in 16.91-96 that either a
guide or reins are necessary to turn human appetite away from base
pleasures so that the human being may be genuinely happy, we may
understand Dante to be endorsing the view that the best case scenario
for the cultivation of justice involves a unification of the political
authority of the emperor, whose laws operate as "reins" on
human desire, with the authority of the intrinsic
"guidance" that philosophy provides in its concerns with
matters of ethics.



Nevertheless, as straightforward as Marco's speech seems to be
at this juncture, the careful reader will keep in mind that the
speaker may be undergoing penance because his own sense of devotion to
justice fostered in him wrath towards others who did not share his
values--and in an unjust world, this would mean that
Marco's love of valor [16.47] would have made charity difficult
for him. In other words, even though it is true that Marco's
speech recapitulates key arguments of *Convivio* 4 and
*Monarchia*, the dramatic context for the speech introduces
some doubt as to whether we are meant to understand this speech as an
unqualified endorsement for those positions. And, of course, this
problem--the interpretive problem posed by the significance of
the dramatic context for the various speeches in the *Divine
Comedy*--is an inescapable feature of the hermeneutic
framework within which philosophical (and theological) doctrines are
offered for our consideration.



The second basic complication that hinders any straightforward
assessment of the *Divine Comedy*'s treatment of the
nature of philosophy is that Dante's choice to deploy Beatrice
as the ultimate and explicit guarantor of the veracity and salvific
potential of the text invokes and transforms the meaning of his entire
corpus of writings. That is, because Beatrice and *donna
gentile* are simultaneously real women and yet also allegorical
tropes as early as the *Vita Nuova*, the *Divine
Comedy*'s reinvention of Beatrice calls upon the reader to
return to Dante's earlier texts while also hindering any clear
sense of what those texts have to offer in terms of their claims on
the reader's interpretation of the *Divine Comedy*.
Moreover, it must also be kept in mind that the *Divine
Comedy*'s pilgrim is a fictionalized depiction of the same
person who, relative to the setting of the *Divine Comedy*, had
already written the *Vita Nuova* but had not yet begun writing
the *Convivio*, the *De vulgari eloquentia*, and the
*Monarchia*, and this also contributes to the strange
relationship that the *Divine Comedy* constructs between itself
and Dante's prior writings. Indeed, a great deal of scholarly
attention and debate has centered around a handful of passages in the
*Divine Comedy* that may be considered palinodes to *Vita
Nuova* and *Convivio* [see, for example, Freccero 1973;
Hollander 1975, 1990; Jacoff, 1980; Pertile 1993; Scott 1990, 1991,
1995; Ascoli 1995; Dronke 1997; and Aleksander 2011a].



However, even if these two complications both hinder any
straightforward assessment of the the *Divine Comedy*'s
understanding of the nature of philosophy, they permit a more modest
conclusion about one of the fundamental features of the poem. That is,
if it is safe to say that the dramatic context that unfolds in the
relationship between Beatrice and the pilgrim troubles our attempts to
understand the *Divine Comedy*'s treatment of philosophy,
then it is nevertheless also safe to say that there is a philosophical
lesson to be derived from the *way in which* the text troubles
our attempts to understand it. In particular, even while the
*Divine Comedy* explicitly defends the superiority of a
contemplative path to salvation, nevertheless the poem also stimulates
the will of the reader by confronting her with the unsettling
realization that the doctrinal content defended in the poem's
explicitly philosophical register is to a certain extent illusory in
its veracity and therefore of questionable value to the attempt to
follow the intellectual path that is mapped out in that register.
Fortunately, this illusory nature of the doctrinal content may be
irrelevant to the way in which the reader's engagement with the
poem actually generates meaning through a process that does, in any
case, always demand rigorous philosophical thinking. This is because
the poem is structured by the conviction that there can be no hope of
achieving any of our possible perfections without constantly exposing
ourselves, especially in our shared activity of reading, to the
anxious experience of wonder--an experience that is heightened
and sustained by simultaneously striving for philosophical rigor and
acknowledging it limitations.