Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince are both works which rose out of the religiously-minded culture of Italy; but other than that, the two, in terms of message, seem to be as different as night and day, for each is distinct from the other in the how it presents the nature of morality to its readers. To Dante, morality is set-in-stone, something that is absolute in nature and directly correlated with the maintenance of public order; Machiavelli, on the other hand, presents morality as being flexible in nature, a mere institution that is, ultimately, in the eyes of the beholder, as well as one that has no real weight in real world affairs, except for when it can be used to one’s benefit. But while on the surface these two moral guidelines seem so different from one another, they are, in essence, similar for one reason: both of them, despite sprouting from different time periods, highlight how morality is problematic. So, in short, despite the differences in how the two works treat the issue of morality, they both raise questions on the best—or wisest—way in which to live one’s life.
In order to fully understand how these two pieces of literature differ in terms of the moral lessons they provide their readers, it is necessary to have a solid grasp of the cultural happenings surrounding the two works. To start, although the areas that Dante and Machiavelli wrote from are relatively close in proximity, the times in which the two writers lived differ by some two hundred years. A lot can change in two centuries, and it most certainly did in this case. For example, the Catholic Church played an active role in political affairs at the time in which Dante was writing his Inferno, whereas the secular powers of Eu...
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...lem with morality today as, I am sure, it was in both Alighieri and Machiavelli’s times. So, although they may seem vastly different, the two philosophies—one by a religiously devout man and the other by a man who cared nothing whatsoever about religion—are essentially haunted by the same question, despite being separated by two centuries and countless changes in the way in which people view religion and morality: is it possible for a person to seek happiness and security on earth and remain morally upright? In consideration of all this, then, I suppose each of us has been given an ultimatum from on high—that is, either sacrifice worldly happiness and security for the sake of righteousness as Alighieri suggests, or follow Machiavelli’s plan of action and sacrifice righteousness for the sake happiness and security on earth. For now, though, there is no middle ground.
In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong purity of morality is unwavering; for the purposes of this discussion, Dante’s Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dante’s dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell; each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that
Dante’s Inferno, although seemingly a religious epic poem, actually has many political undertones. The basis of his political influences start with his personal connection with the commercial world of Middle Ages Italy. This connection helped shape his political career, which in turn, influenced The Inferno. He was the son of a banker, the brother-in-law of a moneylender, and he, himself, engaged in some business and was a member of a guild, the "Arte dei medici e degli speziali." A guild is “an organized group of people who have joined together because they share the same job or interest; especially an association of people who made or sold goods in the Middle Ages (“Guild”, Def. 1). One can see how this fits into a political sphere, in which people with the same interests come together to protect their own interests. Dante was primarily involved with drugs and spices, but he probably joined the guild to further his political career. In the major cities of northern Italy, the world in which Dante lived, commerce was the main way people earned a livng and ma...
Ask anyone you know what their ultimate goal in life is, and the answer will unanimously be, “to be happy.” According to Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Dante, a state of fulfillment is the ultimate goal of all beings. This is how they define happiness: a state of being fully. Happiness and the means by which humans can achieve it is the main theme in Dante’s poem, The Comedy. In this poem, Dante starts his journey in the Inferno where he sees the souls of those who rejected the possibility of happiness by not knowing or refusing to know God. He then ascends to Purgatory, in which he observes souls who want to be happy, but must purge themselves of sin to achieve it. In the final installment, The Paradiso, Dante meets the souls of people who are truly happy. However, there is a peculiar feature in Dante’s version of paradise, which is that the souls are arranged in a hierarchy. The implications of a hierarchy of happiness would be that certain peoples’ fulfillment is less than others’, meaning that certain people have less potential to be happy than others. If there really were a hierarchy of human potential, then it would certainly contradict Catholic tenants such as divine grace and justice. Therefore it would stand to say that there is no hierarchy in heaven.
Virtue manifests itself differently within Christine de Pizan’s novel The Book of the City of Ladies and Niccolo Machiavelli’s novels The Prince and The Discourses Letter to Vettori. Pizan describes virtue in a moralistic sense, one closer to Aristotle and Plato’s traditional view. On the contrary, Machiavelli has a warped sense of morality and his view of virtue is one without a moral tone; he argues that a prince must adapt himself to whichever situation he finds himself in. Despite their disagreement of the materialization of virtue, they both attribute it to powerful people. Glory is attained through establishing a good political community; it can be marked in preserving the rule, stability, freedom and military power. Although their expressions of virtue differ, their ideas are similar regarding the relationship between virtue and glory; virtue should indefinitely leads to glory.
Dante’s Inferno is the narration told of the life of Dante Alighieri. The narration is done by Dante himself where he explains his life and various encounters. Dante is known for writing various stories and poems which he did after he was exiled from Florence where he was an ambassador. He had lived a life among the middle class, loved and lost his love to death, and gotten into leadership in Florence. His various experiences in life had caused him to have a distorted view of the purity of the Catholic Church in its indulgence in politics. The terms of the exile demanded that his return would be punishable by death.
Machiavelli is undisputedly one of the most influential political philosophers of all time. In The Prince, his most well-known work, he relates clearly and precisely how a decisive, intelligent man can gain and maintain power in a region. This work is revolutionary because it flies in the face of the Christian morality which let the Roman Catholic Church hold onto Europe for centuries. Machiavelli's work not only ignores the medieval world's ethics: The Prince suggests actions which oppose the four most basic of Christianity's Ten Commandments.
Written almost 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” brings forward a new definition of virtue. Machiavelli’s definition argued against the concept brought forward by the Catholic Church. Machiavelli did not impose any thoughts of his own, rather he wrote from his experience and whatever philosophy that lead to actions which essentially produced effective outcomes in the political scene of Italy and in other countries. While Machiavelli is still criticized for his notions, the truth is that, consciously or subconsciously we are all thinking for our own benefit and going at length to achieve it. On matters of power where there is much to gain and a lot more to lose, the concept of Machiavelli’s virtue of “doing what needs to be done” applies rigorously to our modern politics and thus “The Prince” still serves as a suitable political treatise in the 21st century.
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
It is important to establish from the very beginning of the essay what Machiavelli’s politics are and how he arrives at his beliefs in order to understand his views on religion in politics. Machiavelli is a realist thinker whose main arguments are about maintaining political authority over a state by using historical evidence, especially Roman, in order to support his theories. His main writings are an illustration of realpolitik, a government policy that emphasizes retaining power by using any means necessary including war and deceit. “Niccolò Machiavelli … emphasized a political calculus based on interest, prudence, power, and expediency above all other considerations.” (Kegley pp 36) Therefore, one must remember when reading Machiavelli that he is attempting to use religion as an instrument to maintain political power rather than a mechanism for achieving ideals.
Machiavelli’s views were drastically different from other humanists at his time. He strongly promoted a secular society and felt morality was not necessary but stood in the way of a successfully governed state. He stated that people generally tended to work for their own best interests and gave little thought to the well being of the state. He distrusted citizens saying, “In time of adversity, when a state is in need of its citizens, there are few to be found.” In his writings in The Prince, he constantly questioned the citizens’ loyalty and warned for the leaders to be wary in trusting citizens. His radical and distrusting thoughts on human nature were derived out of concern for Italy’s then unstable government. Machiavelli also had a s...
Seeing as this work was written by Dante, and the journey is taken by Dante, he has a unique opportunity to judge his fellow man and decide how they will be punished. He also gets to place his enemies in hell, forever besmirching their names for generations to remember. Perhaps unknowing to Dante, that is worse than any of the punishments that he placed his enemies in. The reality of The Inferno is unlikely and therefore these punishments are nothing but a fictiona...
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradiso. Dante presents these principles in Inferno where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell the degrees of sin get progressively worse as do the severity of punishment. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
The Divine Comedy is a poetic Italian masterpiece by Dante Alighieri composed of three parts which he called respectively: The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso. As this edition’s translator, John Ciardi puts it, originally Dante simply entitled his works as The Comedy, however, in later years, it was renamed The Divine Comedy for the connections that the public saw it had with human behavior and morality (Ciardi, 2003). For the goals and purposes of this review, we will focus specifically on the portion of the book called The Inferno. At a time when religious and secular concerns were at their peak in fourteenth century Italy, a tone of conflict broke out between the church and the government. Beyond the commonalities of corruption
Machiavelli uses classical sources to advise a prince on the best way to maintain power. He alludes to Plato’ Republic to illustrate how many men have attempted to advice princes “ A great many men have imagined states and princedoms such as nobody ever saw or knew in the real word, and there’s such a difference between the way we really live and the way we ought to live that the man who neglects the real to study the ideal will learn how to accomplish his ruin, not his salvation.” Machiavelli also makes various references to classical figures to demonstrate examples of princely leadership. Machiavelli’s classical allusions are indicative of the Renaissance as the renewed study of the ancient classics was an important element of the Renaissance. Machiavelli adopted classical ideas in the hopes that these examples could inspire improvements within Italy. Rafael Major supports this idea in “ A New Argument for Morality: Machiavelli and the Ancients.” He argues, “ Even a cursory survey of classical literature reveals that very little of The Prince can properly be called original.” More also reflects the Renaissance through his classical allusions. He uses his classical sources to criticize certain practices within Europe, while also offering solutions to these problems through the example of the classics. For example, he also alludes to