(I was having computer issues too)
After thinking about Lauren and Khadija’s dialogue about divine will, and Emily’s comment about free will, I eventually started thinking of predestination. Predestination with respect to Dante confused me because Dante seems to present both predestination and free will, which seem two conflicting concepts. How can choice exist if everything is predetermined? If choice didn’t exist then how could hell (a place full of people who essentially made bad choices)? Yet in Paradiso Dante mentions predestination several times (in canto XXXII with the blessed infants for example), not to mention prophecy (which is made possible through predestination), and clearly hell exists for Dante.
Dante himself (at least Dante the pilgrim) seems to struggle with some aspects of predestination. In canto XX Dante asks, after finding Trajan and Ripheus in heaven, “Can such things be?” (83). To which the eagle showing him these things responds, “I can see that, since you speak of them, you do believe these things but cannot see how they may be; and thus, though you believe them, they are hidden” (87-90). Dante seems to attribute his incomprehension to the fact that he is human and thus can never fully understand God. In fact, in the next canto, St. Peter Damian tells Dante that “even Heaven’s most enlightened soul, that Seraph with his eye most set on God, could not provide the why,“ (91) and describes this trespass towards understanding as a “reachless goal” (99).
In a later discussion, we talked about how, to man, time is linear, but gods/God can see not only all three dimensions, but also the fourth of time; they have complete knowledge of all things. (Time as a fourth dimension was also discussed during the conference.) From this perspective, what is free will to man becomes predestination to God. God, who is outside of time, can see all the choices man will make, and knows what will happen in the end. In canto XVII, Cacciaguida uses a beautiful metaphor to explain the way of things to Dante. He says (starting at line 36), “Contingency, while not extending past the book in which your world of matter has been writ, is yet in the Eternal Vision all depicted (but this does not imply necessity, just as a ship that sails downstream is not determined by the eye that watches it).”
When trying to connect the idea of predestination to the classical tradition, the first example I thought of was King Oedipus, who seemed predestined to commit his horrendous acts. In trying to escape a prophecy, Oedipus’ family eventually fulfills it. I also thought of people in families that were cursed. These people seem to meet bad ends because their families are predestined for unfortunate events. Agamemnon, for example, was of the house of Atreus. Odysseus says, upon hearing how Agamemnon was killed, “How terrible! Zeus from the very start, the thunder king has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance”his trustiest weapon women’s twisted wiles.”
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Thank you for your very nice comments, Jessica. Why don’t you give this post a title?
Comment by Angela 12.04.06 @ 9:31 amJessica, you are tackling one knotty question, not only of the Commedia, but of Christian theology as a whole. Your discussion is well informed, refers to all the crucial passages in the Commedia, and your reading of these passages is solid. Brava! So what is Dante telling us? That God’s ways, although mysterious, do have a rationale, which in turn is even more mysterious. So, when facing God, man is facing what we may call a mystery to the square. Dante in otherworld is laying out a rationale for God’s actions based on PROVIDENCE and PREDESTINATION, while quickly making it VERY clear that grasping that rationale is beyond man’s capability. So what we do know is that we can’t know. But this is not a cop-out for simpletons; on the contrary it is all meant to place the due emphasis on FAITH, as the anaphoric use of the word “believe†in the passage you quote clearly indicates. “I can see that, since you speak of them, you do believe these things but cannot see how they may be; and thus, though you believe them, they are hidden.†Faith is Dante’s only response to the failure of reason to reconcile PROVIDENCE, PREDESTINATION and FREE WILL. Faith as acceptance of the intrinsic limitations of the human mind; and, at the same time, as Saint Augustine said, the only way to attempt to overcome such limitations: “intellige ut credas, crede ut intelligas.”
Comment by Federico 12.08.06 @ 4:51 pmYour parallel with the Classical tradition is interesting, but I believe needs a little clarification. There is indeed the will of the gods, which you are referring to in your quote from the Odyssey. We also have seen how much grief Juno’s wrath is causing to Aeneas and his companions. But this aspect of the god’s will is not really mysterious at all. On the other hand when you are referring to the tragic world of Oedipus, you are really talking about something that is indeed beyond the realm of the will of the gods: namely DESTINY or FATUM, to use a better word – the mysterious force that moves man to what is usually its inescapable tragic destiny. Although mysterious and removed from human understanding, FATUM is, however, definitely not the means through which an all-mighty, and most importantly saving God mysteriously guides the actions of man to salvaton. In this respect there clearly is a huge difference between the two traditions.