Dante and PHILOSOPHY

Danteand PHILOSOPHY by Etienne Cjilson • Translatedby David Moore Harper Torchbooks , The Academy Library • Harper & Row, Publishers New York, Evanston, and London CONTENTS Page PREFACE vu I. DANTE'S CLERICAL VOCATION AND METAMORPHOSES OF BEATRICE I I. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO THEOLOGY 2 II. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO A NUMBER 16 III. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO BAPTISM 21 IV. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO THE TON- SURE 25 v. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO MINOR ORDERS 29 VI. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO A CORD 31 VII. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO A BISHOP- DEATH OF BEATRICE 36 VIII. BEATRICE METAMORPHOSED INTO THE LIGHT OF GLORY 45 IX. BEATRICE'S MISSION 50 x. TRANSFIGURATION OF BEATRICE 72 II. PHILOSOPHY IN THE BANQUET 83 I. THE DONNA GENTILE 86 II. THE PRIMACY OF ETIDCS 99 III. TRANSCENDENCY OF THEOLOGY 112 IV. LIMITS OF METAPHYSICS 121 v. PRIMACY OF CONTEMPLATION 129 VI. THE PIDLOSOPHER AND THE EMPEROR 142 VII. THE SPIRIT OF THE BANQUET 151 xi xii CONTENTS Page III. PHILOSOPHY IN THE MONARCHY 162 I. THE GOAL OF THE HUMAN RACE 166 II. NECESSITY OF THE MONARCHY 171 III. INDEPENDENCE OF THE EMPIRE 180 IV. THE TWO FORMS OF BEATITUDE 191 v. DANTE'S PLACE IN HISTORY 201 IV. PHILOSOPHY IN THE DIVINE COMEDY 225 I. DANTE'S THOMISM 226 A. The Number of Beatrice 227 B. The Verb "To Smile" 230 C. The Symbolism ofIntelletto 231 D. The Symbolism of" Will" 232 E. The Actors in the Sacred Poem 233 F. The Voice of St. Thomas 239 II. DANTE'S CRITICISM OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS 242 III. THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON 253 IV. THE SYMBOLISM OF SIGER OF BRABANT 257 ECLAIRCISSEMENTS 282 I. OF POETS AND THEIR MUSES 282 II. CONCERNING TWO FAMILIES OF DANTESQUE SYMBOLS m. CONCERNING DANTE'S POLITICAL AND RE- LIGIOUS IDEAL IV. CONCERNING THE AVERROISM OF SIGER OF BRABANT 308 V. CONCERNING THE THOMISM OF SIGER OF BRABANT 317 INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 329 INDEX OF THE PRINCIPAL QUESTIONS DISCUSSED 333 8 DANTE AND PHILOSOPHY to the philosophers, and in particular to the authors of philosophic Consolations, as the custodians of the only effective remedy for such affiictions. That is what the poet himself says: I sought to console myself, cercava di consolarme;I desired a remedy for my tears, a le mie lagrime un remedio.1 Beyond doubt, and precisely because it was well chosen, the remedy was effective in the end; philosophy, or, as he defines it himself, amorous association with wisdom, in the end suppressed their cause. Let us add finally lthat even if it were true-and it is false: Purg., XXX, 48-that Dante ever ceased to love Beatrice, it would not be true that Dante put forward his love of philosophy as having caused the death of his love for Beatrice. What he says, on the contrary, is that the persistence of his love for Beatrice has led him to the readings and studies from which his love for philosophy sprang. Thus are created the pseudo-facts charged with masking the joints which false hypotheses make necessary. We have, alas, not yet seen the last. These deductions, which proceed implacably straight ahead, creating at every step the reality they pretend to discover, would in the end compel recognition merely by virtue of their internal coherence if, from time to time, they did not run into obstacles of such a sort that any unprejudiced mind must perceive them. Such is the case here. What the arguments of Father Mandonnet set out to prove is a very simple conclusion touching the hidden meaning of the Vita Nuova. He alleges that, under a veil of trans parent symbols and poetic fictions which could only be taken literally by a somewhat obtuse mind, Dante's first book does not tell us the story of his love for a young Florentine girl, but of his desertion of theology, which was his first love, for human wis dom: "Dante is, then, a deserter from Theology who has gone over to Philosophy, Yes, and that is the smarrimento,as Dante says, addressing his soul, nel quale se' caduta vilmente per questa donna chee apparita" (Conv., II, ro).2 Father Mandonnet' s thesis not only has the instinct of self preservation; it has all its creative fecundity. Here the expedient consists in not translating the word smarrimento,as if this un mysterious term were heavy with implications, then in com menting upon it with a passage in which the adverb vilmente is encountered. The impression is thereby created that this 1 DANTB, Convivio, II, 12. 2 P. MANDONNET, op. cit., p. 49. DANTE'S CLERICAL VOCATION 53 of facts. Bice Portinari, or any other real woman whom one \ may like to substitute for her, may well have been the woman loved by Dante; it remains none the less true that Beatrice was born of the genius of Dante, not of the marriage of Falco Portinari and Cilia Caponsacchi. The assertion of the right to argue from one to the other as if it were a question of one and the same person results from a confusion that is fatal to our studies. Bice Portinari is a historical personage whose shadow discreetly accompanies the eternally living Beatrice whom / Dante alone has created. Of this shadow history knows practic- ally nothing, and it speaks of it only because Dante has en riched the nature of that eminent reality which is Beatrice, the work of art created by him; but even if history were capable of telling us everything about Bice Portinari, the birth of Beatrice would be in no way explained thereby. Now the historians are here disarmed. There is no tomb to be violated, there are no drawers to be forced that the dead may be robbed of their secrets, no intimate joys or woes to be prostituted to the public for money. Bice Portinari has, thank God, no history, but if she had one it would only be the history of the young Florentine girl who was encountered by Dante, became the second wife of Simone dei Bardi, and died in the month of June, 1290. If Bice Portinari had left us any letters, memoirs or some intimate diary, we could write her history. If Dante had written a Secretum, as Petrarch was to do, we could divine, beneath the surface of the Vita Nuova, something of the reality which it treats poetically. In fact, we have nothing of all this. We do not even know if Dante had a Secretumto write, and there is nothing that authorizes us to suppose that his relations with Beatrice were more involved than he says. It is true that someone or other called Bice Portinari would have existed even if Dante had not sung of her, but that is precisely the reason why, even if we had the material with which to write it, her history would not be that of Beatrice. The interpreter of Dante need not therefore concern himself with it. In contrast to the infra-Beatrices, the ultra-Beatrices obstin ately solicit our attention. Instead of reducing an artistic creation to the dimensions of a historical personage, these latter transfigure it into mere symbols, as if the artistic value of Beatrice did not essentially"imply that she is presented as a reality. All that we PHILOSOPHY IN THE BANQUET 85 usually prevented by their public duties, their family responsi bilities or simply material circumstances from instructing them selves in these matters and extracting from them the benefits to which they are entitled. If what we shall say below of philo sophy as conceived by Dante seems true, it will be understood how the actual idea of such a treatise is organically bound up with his idea of philosophy. This science is in his eyes a laymen's science, without which they cannot attain the temporal aims which are their prerogative. It is indispensable to them in order that they may live happily after their way; it is therefore necessary that some at least among them should be acquainted with it, and since these laymen cannot conveniently go and learn it from the clerics who teach it, it is necessary that one of them should write for the others this "philosophic initiation" for worldly folk which is precisely what the Banquet is. Undoubtedly Dante has availed himself of ' the opportunity to express personal ideas, principally the one which I have just mentioned and which is by a very long way the most important; but for that very reason we must be careful always to interpret the chunks of doctrine which Dante utilizes, not according to what they contain or what they imply in the .philosophies from which he borrows them, but according to the justification which they provide for the personal thesis which Dante wishes to uphold. In other words, if we wish to under stand Dante in the Convivio, we must not install ourselves suc cessively in each of the positions through which he passes~nor probe each of them to its depths or diverge from each of them in all the directions which, taken by itself, it suggests; we must pass through them in his company, with the same motion as that with which he passes through them, as if they were halting places at which we may linger a moment to enjoy the scenery, none of them, however, being the goal. 1 To avoid these various . dangers, the wisest course will be to 1 With regard to Dante's general attitude in the Banquet, there is everything to be gained from reading the three wise remarks made by M.

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