Dante's Deadly Sins

Moral Philosophy In Hell

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• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118112410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

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

1

INFERNO

Christopher Moltisanti reports that Hell is The Emerald Piper, an Irish bar where it is St. Patrick Day, every day, forever. The bar is supervised by a bouncer – a big, Irish goon wearing old-fashioned clothes – and is always open for business; the Irishmen win every roll of the dice in the crap games they play against the Italians and two Roman soldiers; and Moltisanti’s gangster father is murdered painfully every midnight, in the same fashion as he was slain on earth. Moltisanti, member of the mythical Soprano crime family, gleaned his vision of Hell from a one-minute near-death experience, when he suffered cardiac arrest after being shot by an enterprising hoodlum. For Moltisanti, being at the mercy of Irish American gangsters in the context of an eternal St. Patrick Day celebration tailors Hell specifically for Italian Americans.¹ Indeed, I shudder as I type.

Dante’s Mission

Fortunately, Dante Aligiheri has a more expansive vision of Hell. Dante the author had been exiled from Florence by the time he composed the Commedia and, like all of us, he had been exiled from heaven because of the transgressions of Adam and Eve. The prime character in the Commedia, Dante the pilgrim, portrays this dual exile as he journeys toward earthly and spiritual reconciliation. As the pilgrim travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, he interprets those regions and interprets himself. The process is an exercise in self-transformation. The pilgrim will move from the pure facticity of Hell – where character is forever fixed and frozen, and fresh possibilities are lacking – to increasing self-awareness, freedom, and self-creation. His self-transformation flows from his recognitions and struggles as he confronts the shades in the afterlife and his personal demons.

As the pilgrim meets condemned souls in Hell, he, along with the readers, finds many of them sympathetic. They are not merely one-dimensional personifications of pure evil. Some are seemingly seductive, classy, and attractive (such as Francesca in Canto 5); some are deeply patriotic and magnanimous (such as Farinata in Canto 10); some suffered grievously and excessively on earth (such as Pier in Canto 13); some are stunningly intellectual and accomplished (such as Brunetto in Canto 15); some manifest admirable parental compassion (such as Ugolino in Canto 33); and a few are noble, swashbuckling adventurers (such as Ulysses in Canto 26). But the pilgrim’s moral development requires stern repudiation of the damned: they have received their proper sentences. The infallible Judge has meted out pure procedural and substantive justice. Each soul has received what it morally deserved. Compassion is now misplaced. Steely, uncompromising justice replaces the allure of pleasing appearances, personal charms, and special skills and crafts. Human behavior is complex and nuanced; sin may be encased in a seductive package. However, the pilgrim and we must come to despise sin regardless of its occasional pleasing façade. The afterlife is no place for sissies.

In this chapter I summarize Dante’s Inferno, while highlighting the moral assumptions that ground his depictions of sinners in Hell. Crucial among these is the law of contrapasso: the punishment inflicted upon sinners must mirror the nature of their transgressions; the relationship between the particular suffering and the specific sin must be clear. In that sense, penitents bring about their own destiny. They receive what they willed through their choices and actions.

The Journey Begins

As the Inferno commences, the pilgrim awakens in a dark, dense forest. Terrified and lost, he roams until he faces a sunlit hill. Finding consolation in its beauty, he begins to climb the hill until three ferocious beasts block his path: a lonza (leopard), a leone (lion), and a lupa (she-wolf), who represent the three major types of sin – fraud, violence, and unrestrained desire, respectively. The fearful pilgrim retreats, but soon meets the shade of Virgil, to whom the pilgrim pleads for aid. Virgil bears good and bad news. The bad news is that Virgil cannot overcome the terrifying beasts, who will remain until the time a veltro (greyhound) drives them back into hell. (The greyhound may symbolize an individual redeemer, or the moment of a spiritual kingdom on earth where wisdom, love, and virtue – attributes of the Trinity – will unseat sin.) The good news is that Virgil can help the pilgrim by leading him by another path. Also, Virgil promises to guide him through Hell and Purgatory, after which a more suitable spirit will help the pilgrim reach Paradise.²

Virgil may represent the best of human reason, art, and poetry: the pinnacle of human intelligence uninspired by knowledge of God. As the historical Virgil was the poetic and political guide of Dante the author, so, too, the character Virgil will lead Dante the pilgrim through the most terrifying regions of the afterlife. The three beasts cannot be defeated by a person standing alone. Virgil will guide the pilgrim geographically, but, more importantly, he will help the pilgrim recognize, rise above, and renounce his sins. Virgil (70–19 BC) cannot guide Dante the pilgrim to Paradise because he lived and died prior to the birth of Christ. Lacking knowledge of Christian salvation, he resides in Limbo. Symbolizing only human reason, Virgil lacks the connection to grace or theology required to lead the pilgrim to Paradise.

The pilgrim, however, is fearful. To reassure him, Virgil evokes the string of events that conferred upon him the role of guide: the Virgin Mary herself exercised her bountiful compassion and asked Santa Lucia, the personification of grace, to aid the pilgrim. The saint contacted the blessed Beatrice (“Bice”) Portinari, Dante’s idealized earthly love, who went to Limbo and asked Virgil to assume the task until the time when Beatrice would guide the pilgrim to Paradise. This explanation reassures and emboldens the pilgrim. The journey begins. The pilgrim requires an education about sin as prelude to his ascent to the vision of the Divine.

Vestibule (Ante-Hell): The Indecisive Neutrals

The pilgrim recoils as he reads the words inscribed about the gate: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate (“abandon every hope, you who enter”). Lacking all hope and possibility, the shades in Hell cannot perceive themselves except as fully actualized. Metaphorically, the denizens of Hell earned entrance by antecedently abandoning hope: they perceived themselves as fully determined. In existential terms, they ran from their freedom and stripped themselves of possibilities. They thereby exude bad faith and are inauthentic. They have nothing left to abandon when they swing through the gate.

Virgil softens the pilgrim’s fear by pointing out that the words apply to him – consigned forever to Limbo, as he is – but not to Dante the pilgrim.

Qui si convien lasciare ogne sospetto; ogne viltà convien che qui sia morta [“Here one must leave behind all hesitation; here every cowardice must meet its death”]. (I III, 14–15)

Here the pilgrim observes two sets of unfulfilled souls: the first race endlessly just inside the gate, meaninglessly pursuing a banner while they are beset by flies and wasps; the second set are newly arrived souls and await their escort to their appropriate permanent place in the multi-layered Inferno. They died unrepentant and without reverence, and will meet their proper fate shortly.

Dante the author conjures the vestibule of Hell for those without passion, decisiveness, or conviction. They refused to take a stand between virtue and vice during their earthly lives, so they are now compelled to race forever without purpose. They are rejected equally by Hell proper and by Heaven. The cliché “getting nowhere fast” applies. (My mother would call them “pasta asciutta” – dried-up macaroni.) They now have no hope of transcending their meaningless activity. Shunning vigorous commitment and lacking deep passion while on earth, the neutrals are now stung repeatedly by insects. Having refused, in existentialist terms, to create a robust self on earth, they brought about their disgraceful eternity.

Questo misero modo tegnon l’anime triste di coloro che visser senza infamia e senza lodo [“This miserable way is taken by the melancholy souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise”]. (I III, 34–36)

As with all punishments in Hell, the sentences of those condemned reflect their earthly lives, or, in this case, their refusal to commit to crafting a substantive life. The contrapasso (law of counter-suffering) demands that the unrepentant and irreverent serve penance in proportion to, and according to, the nature of their sins. The lash of the contrapasso is only the fulfillment of the destiny chosen by each soul during his or her earthly life. The afterlife continues, deepens, and solidifies the life led by souls while they were on earth. The sufferings of the damned are their sins, portrayed in horrifying images. At death, the sinful soul becomes “the emblematic form of its inward life.”³

The vast horde of indecisive neutrals remains nameless, as a just response to their nondescript lives. The neutrals sought personal safety over commitment to principle. Allusions are made to angels who refused to take sides when Lucifer rebelled against God; and, possibly, to Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands rather than pass judgment on Jesus. Naked in their despair, the indecisive neutrals run futilely after a banner which may symbolize a leader, or a firm conviction, or a connection to enduring value.

Dante the author invented the vestibule of Hell for cowardly pasta asciutta pieces – people who merited neither praise nor blame. Cravenly fleeing from an authentic existence and remaining agnostic about value, they deserve the disgraceful vacuousness of their eternity.

Upper Hell: Sins of Unrestrained Desire (the Wolf)

LIMBO, CIRCLE 1 Virtuous pagans, innocent babies

Those who died without being baptized and those who were virtuous but expired prior to the life of Christ occupy Limbo. They committed no serious unrepented sin, but they grieve without torment, as they now yearn hopelessly for God.

Che senza speme vivemo in desio [“Still desiring, we live without hope”]. (I IV, 42)

Dante the author underscores that baptism and faith in Christ are (almost) necessary conditions for salvation. But Dante the pilgrim will confront some exceptions later in his journey. For example, the church teaches the doctrine of the harrowing of Hell, when Christ descended into Hell after His death and redeemed Old Testament figures – such as Adam, Noah, Moses, David, and Solomon – who embodied implicit faith. Although these figures died prior to the birth of Christ, they embraced God’s earliest manifestations and thereby attained implicit faith. Moreover, at times, special bestowals of grace liberate those who would otherwise reside in limbo.

Dante the author names over three dozen historical and mythological figures among the countless in limbo: the great pagan poets Homer, Horace, Lucan, and Ovid (and, of course, Virgil); the mythical poet and musician Orpheus; renown philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna, Cicero, Diogenes, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Seneca, Socrates, Thales, and Zeno; famous military heroes such as Aeneas, Lucius Brutus, Julius Caesar, Hector, King Latinus, and Saladin; pioneers in mathematics and science such as Democritus, Dioscorides, Euclid, Galen, Hippocrates, and Ptolemy; and praiseworthy women such as Camilla, Cornelia, Electra, Julia, Lavinia, Lucretia, Marcia, and Penthesilea.

Virgil, who is otherwise firm in feeling no compassion for justifiably punished souls, expresses pity for those in limbo (including himself, we might suspect). His concern is well placed. Through no fault of their own, in most cases with no access to the life and teachings of Christ, and leading otherwise worthy lives as judged by secular morality and in the historical perspective of Dante the author, these virtuous pagans are consigned to an eternity of unrequited longing. Should luck play so critical a role in one’s destiny?

CIRCLE 2 The lustful

The horror of Hell most graphically begins in the second circle. All human beings who die unrepentant and in a state of serious sin must confess their transgressions. There Minos, the mythological half-human, half-beastly creature, twists his tail a discernible number of times, to indicate to which of the eight circles of proper Hell sinners are to be relegated. Horrifying and snarling, Minos instructs the pilgrim to enter Hell carefully and be wary of trusting its denizens.

Sins of incontinence or unrestrained desire are natural for human beings and offend God less than sins of malice. The second circle of Hell, the first circle of Hell proper, punishes the lustful. These miscreants shriek, lament, and curse as they are blown about by an “infernal storm, eternal in its rage.” The core of their sin, and the other transgressions punished in upper Hell, is desire unconstrained by reason and will. Virgil points out to the pilgrim the shades of historical and mythological figures such as Achilles, Cleopatra, Dido, Helen of Troy, Paris, and Tristan. However, the centerpiece of this circle is a couple bound tightly together and being hurled about violently. Francesca da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta were adulterous lovers in life and were slain by Francesca’s husband and Paolo’s brother, Gianciotta.

Francesca weaves a seductive tale. She alleges that she was beguiled by her reading of a medieval French romance novel focused on the courtly story of the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere. Spurred by the intoxications of the novel, Paolo’s initial kiss sealed her fate. Overcome by emotions not of her choosing, and captured by love itself, Francesca appeals to the pilgrim’s pity and, perhaps, his empathy. Was not her amorous affair excusable, or a mere peccadillo? Was she not overwhelmed by forces too powerful to resist?

The pilgrim confronts a recurrent theme: sinners lack self-knowledge, deny responsibility, and fervently seek to blame other people or adverse circumstances for their plight. They obtusely see themselves as having been determined by external causes and forces. In existential terms, they are pure facticity. They deny their freedom, flee from responsibility, and clothe themselves in flimsy excuses. They exude bad faith as they cower in their “givenness,” and they deny their capability of reimagining their characters and of remaking their contexts. The sinners in Hell view themselves as compelled by external causes and forces and project that meaning on their environment. They are in conflict with their own desire for freedom. For example, Francesca misinterprets the moral of the romance novel: its intent is to warn against, not to glorify, adulterous relationships. Francesca wrongly understands the romance novel as validating the power of love to overwhelm the banal restrictions oppressing married couples: even moral judgment must retreat before the majesty of noble hearts struck by uncontrollable passion. In acting as they do, Francesca and Paolo choose lust for each other over devotion to God, transience over permanence, and unguided desire over reason, while insisting that they did not choose at all.

Yet the pilgrim is moved deeply by Francesca’s eloquence and by Paolo’s sobbing. How could such an eloquent, compassionate, gracious woman such as Francesca be so heartlessly consigned to eternal damnation? The pilgrim’s compassion is wildly misplaced. He has not learned how disingenuous the lustful are, nor how rational and just the punishment meted out in the afterlife is. The pilgrim has naïvely allowed Francesca to slide him through the grease. In fact Francesca distorts the meaning of the romance novel, cravenly casts off responsibility for her actions, and mistakes lust for love. She has chosen to be unfree, while dully believing that she had no choice. Glistening with inauthenticity, Francesca is now condemned together with Paolo, forever to be conjoined, as an eternal reminder of their mutual shame in privileging transient pleasure over moral duty. Worse, she now shamelessly exemplifies how seductive rhetoric can facilitate the triumph of desire over reason. Her situation in Hell mirrors the circumstance she found so pleasurable in life. Although insisting she was compelled by “love” while on earth, she, while living and now in Hell, cravenly flees from responsibility for crafting her destiny.

However, the con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 INFERNO
• 2 PURGATORIO
• 3 THE NOTION OF DESERT AND THE LAW OF CONTRAPASSO
• 4 PARADOXES AND PUZZLES
• 5 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
• 6 DANTE’S EXISTENTIAL MORAL LESSONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX