Dante
The vision of a Catholic universalist perspective is achieved through the tripart Commedia of Dante, which follows Dante from hell to heaven. In this work Dante explores the nature of truth, which he finds to be divine in its nature, rather than being composed of secular and spiritual truths. Do scientific untruths, (mis)informed by the science of Dante's day, challenge the totality of his work since so much emphasis, indeed the life-force of the Commedia itself, relies upon its truthfullness? Adam Roberts's essay "Contra Dante" (1) argues just this:
"The presence of untruth in the Commedia is corrosive in ways that it would not be in a differently-configured text. It’s not that Dante is speculating about the nature of the spots in the moon, and happens to speculate wrongly. The explanation the poem offers is not Dantean speculation; it is a rigorously argued-through application of the entire logic of the poem. If it is untrue, then what is called into question is not Dante’s speculative powers but the truthfulness of the whole."
One problem with this is that if we observe the fallacy in the geographic description of Jerusalem as having a mountain that reaches into the heavens, why not wonder whether Dante really believed he travelled to hell and met famous dead people there? While many people wondered at the time whether Dante's work was true or not, there does not seem to be any indication that he saw it as anything besides a deeply meaningful fiction. The quote Roberts takes from Harold Bloom sheds light: "no other secular author is so absolutely convinced that his own work is the truth, all of the truth that matters most." Is it possible then, that Dante both believed his work to be the truth that mattered most and it still be a work of fiction? Or did he believe the literal truth of his work, and was therefore probably mentally ill? I seriously doubt the latter. Dante is too self-aware throughout the text to be open to the charge of being the victim of a hallucinating mind. If Dante did then believe his fiction was capable of expressing the truth, then Robert's observance that "If the Commedia is not true, then what good is it?" is predicated upon a misunderstanding of Dante's grasp of truth. While Roberts makes an interesting argument for the corrosive effect of scientific untruths expressed in the Commedia, he amplifies their importance. When he asks what good the book is if it is untrue, and overstates his case. If far more scientific assumptions couched in the work prove to be false, the inventiveness and profound humanity of the Commedia make it an important work now and for the foreseeable future. One of the reasons it remains vital is the treatment of the suspension of belief involved in a work of fiction, and how that relationship between author and text is vital to understanding the relationship between God and his creations.
Roberts criticism of Dante can been seen as veiled flattery of Dante. It is true that Dante's vision belonged to a pre-Copernican world, in as much as Gravity's Rainbow belongs to a latter-twentieth century world. What cannot be challenged is the terrific power of invention, erudition, humanity and humor which make Dante such a rare species of author. Of course these are important values important in today's social paradigm, unlike religious devotion, which Dante may well have viewed as the great triumph of his art. Among these inventions was the dialectic relationship of Dante and Virgil, or the ghost of Virgil. Relegated to Virgil's role in Robert's essay is Dante himself, who, while wise and great in many ways, could not possibly be valid in our contemporary culture simply because he existed before it. Virgil similarly was cast into hell because he was not Christian, although he died before Christianity arose. Roberts acknowledges this fallacy in the beginning, writing " I have no comeback to the obvious objection—that I am merely attempting to foist my own, arbitrarily modern-day moral schema." He does reveal this bias when he states:
"It is a trivial observation that Dante’s poem does not take place in our cosmos; but in a Dante pre-Copernican one. Trivial except for the single destructive fact that the pre-Copernican model of the cosmos was untrue"
But the problem is not simply that he is foisting a "modern-day moral schema"; such a schema would also value Dante for his invention but be dismissive of his Catholic trends toward homophobia and anthropocentricism. The problem is that Robert's assertion that
"It’s not that Dante is speculating about the nature of the spots in the moon, and happens to speculate wrongly. The explanation the poem offers is not Dantean speculation; it is a rigorously argued-through application of the entire logic of the poem. If it is untrue, then what is called into question is not Dante’s speculative powers but the truthfulness of the whole."
This is the heart of the essay. Beatrice's revelation concerning the moon is that Dante's (correct) view, that the moon is spotted due to varying density of materials (a view he vigorously supported in the Convivo), Beatrice corrects him, saying the true reason is:
"The uniform divine power, distributed among the stars, is unfolded and multiplied down through the heavens. The compounds formed from different powers joined to different planetary bodies then display varying luminosity not only among the stars but also within the Moon (and presumably the other planetary bodies as well)." (2)
This section of text explicitly addresses the issue of a need for "alternative theory of knowledge in Paradise." Does this mean secular and spiritual truths then, living on different sides of town? Not neccesarily. Beatrice's arguement, while pseudo-scientific in parts, addresses the need for metaphysical truths in the world. The moon as an example may be no idle object for stargazing, but a deeper poetic analogy. The mutability of the moon is called into question, much in the same way mutability of truth is being called into question here. If science, an ideally rational process can arrive at so many different conclusions, then is there a different sort of truth. This text concerning the moon points that possibility, positing that scientific truth is like the moon, ever changing, while some stars more illiuminated by heaven are purged of their mutability. And just as Dante speculated correctly in the convivo, Roberts appropriately speculates early in his essay:
"Dante was perfectly well aware of the different valences of ‘truth’. The Commedia does not operate only on the level of ‘poetic’ or allegorical truth. It does operate on that level, of course; but it also strives—explicitly, at length, and with a dedicated dialogic energy—for all the other sorts of truth as well. These various truths include: moral truth; scientific truth; doctrinal truth and aesthetic truth. All these quantities have true and false explanations, or aspects, or figures, and in a thousand various ways Dante’s poem exhorts us to choose the truth, and turn away the false."
When choosing between a scientific and allegorical truth, as I think happened in this case, Dante chose the allegory, pointing toward the mutability of science's understanding. Both truths are made conscious through divine light. In making this choice, perhaps Dante meant to bring the poem itself closer to the celestial light of which the moon is so lacking.
Notes:
1 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/contra_dante/
2 http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/paradiso/01moon.html
"The presence of untruth in the Commedia is corrosive in ways that it would not be in a differently-configured text. It’s not that Dante is speculating about the nature of the spots in the moon, and happens to speculate wrongly. The explanation the poem offers is not Dantean speculation; it is a rigorously argued-through application of the entire logic of the poem. If it is untrue, then what is called into question is not Dante’s speculative powers but the truthfulness of the whole."
One problem with this is that if we observe the fallacy in the geographic description of Jerusalem as having a mountain that reaches into the heavens, why not wonder whether Dante really believed he travelled to hell and met famous dead people there? While many people wondered at the time whether Dante's work was true or not, there does not seem to be any indication that he saw it as anything besides a deeply meaningful fiction. The quote Roberts takes from Harold Bloom sheds light: "no other secular author is so absolutely convinced that his own work is the truth, all of the truth that matters most." Is it possible then, that Dante both believed his work to be the truth that mattered most and it still be a work of fiction? Or did he believe the literal truth of his work, and was therefore probably mentally ill? I seriously doubt the latter. Dante is too self-aware throughout the text to be open to the charge of being the victim of a hallucinating mind. If Dante did then believe his fiction was capable of expressing the truth, then Robert's observance that "If the Commedia is not true, then what good is it?" is predicated upon a misunderstanding of Dante's grasp of truth. While Roberts makes an interesting argument for the corrosive effect of scientific untruths expressed in the Commedia, he amplifies their importance. When he asks what good the book is if it is untrue, and overstates his case. If far more scientific assumptions couched in the work prove to be false, the inventiveness and profound humanity of the Commedia make it an important work now and for the foreseeable future. One of the reasons it remains vital is the treatment of the suspension of belief involved in a work of fiction, and how that relationship between author and text is vital to understanding the relationship between God and his creations.
Roberts criticism of Dante can been seen as veiled flattery of Dante. It is true that Dante's vision belonged to a pre-Copernican world, in as much as Gravity's Rainbow belongs to a latter-twentieth century world. What cannot be challenged is the terrific power of invention, erudition, humanity and humor which make Dante such a rare species of author. Of course these are important values important in today's social paradigm, unlike religious devotion, which Dante may well have viewed as the great triumph of his art. Among these inventions was the dialectic relationship of Dante and Virgil, or the ghost of Virgil. Relegated to Virgil's role in Robert's essay is Dante himself, who, while wise and great in many ways, could not possibly be valid in our contemporary culture simply because he existed before it. Virgil similarly was cast into hell because he was not Christian, although he died before Christianity arose. Roberts acknowledges this fallacy in the beginning, writing " I have no comeback to the obvious objection—that I am merely attempting to foist my own, arbitrarily modern-day moral schema." He does reveal this bias when he states:
"It is a trivial observation that Dante’s poem does not take place in our cosmos; but in a Dante pre-Copernican one. Trivial except for the single destructive fact that the pre-Copernican model of the cosmos was untrue"
But the problem is not simply that he is foisting a "modern-day moral schema"; such a schema would also value Dante for his invention but be dismissive of his Catholic trends toward homophobia and anthropocentricism. The problem is that Robert's assertion that
"It’s not that Dante is speculating about the nature of the spots in the moon, and happens to speculate wrongly. The explanation the poem offers is not Dantean speculation; it is a rigorously argued-through application of the entire logic of the poem. If it is untrue, then what is called into question is not Dante’s speculative powers but the truthfulness of the whole."
This is the heart of the essay. Beatrice's revelation concerning the moon is that Dante's (correct) view, that the moon is spotted due to varying density of materials (a view he vigorously supported in the Convivo), Beatrice corrects him, saying the true reason is:
"The uniform divine power, distributed among the stars, is unfolded and multiplied down through the heavens. The compounds formed from different powers joined to different planetary bodies then display varying luminosity not only among the stars but also within the Moon (and presumably the other planetary bodies as well)." (2)
This section of text explicitly addresses the issue of a need for "alternative theory of knowledge in Paradise." Does this mean secular and spiritual truths then, living on different sides of town? Not neccesarily. Beatrice's arguement, while pseudo-scientific in parts, addresses the need for metaphysical truths in the world. The moon as an example may be no idle object for stargazing, but a deeper poetic analogy. The mutability of the moon is called into question, much in the same way mutability of truth is being called into question here. If science, an ideally rational process can arrive at so many different conclusions, then is there a different sort of truth. This text concerning the moon points that possibility, positing that scientific truth is like the moon, ever changing, while some stars more illiuminated by heaven are purged of their mutability. And just as Dante speculated correctly in the convivo, Roberts appropriately speculates early in his essay:
"Dante was perfectly well aware of the different valences of ‘truth’. The Commedia does not operate only on the level of ‘poetic’ or allegorical truth. It does operate on that level, of course; but it also strives—explicitly, at length, and with a dedicated dialogic energy—for all the other sorts of truth as well. These various truths include: moral truth; scientific truth; doctrinal truth and aesthetic truth. All these quantities have true and false explanations, or aspects, or figures, and in a thousand various ways Dante’s poem exhorts us to choose the truth, and turn away the false."
When choosing between a scientific and allegorical truth, as I think happened in this case, Dante chose the allegory, pointing toward the mutability of science's understanding. Both truths are made conscious through divine light. In making this choice, perhaps Dante meant to bring the poem itself closer to the celestial light of which the moon is so lacking.
Notes:
1 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/contra_dante/
2 http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/paradiso/01moon.html
posted by Nick Gardner at 2:02 AM
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