The Afterlife in the Classical and Italian Traditi

Session 5: The Moral Map

1. Lesley: The Afterlife as Moral and Spiritual Guide

2. Monic: Rivers: The Unifying Element in the Afterlife

3. Bethany: Does the Punishment fit the crime?

4. W. : Mortal Morality: A roadmap for the hereafter

 

 Conference Podcast 5 [50:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(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.”

I see that there’s a problem with logging into this blog, so temporarily you’ll need to manually direct yourself to http://www.umwcpr.org/afterlife/wp-login.php (i.e. click the link)

Classics 352B: The Afterlife in the Classical and Italian Traditions is currently hosting a student conference on “The Afterlife: A Dead End or a Road to Somewhere?”

Stay tuned for podcasts of the papers presented; we will begin posting them sometime this week.

I thought I mentioned this in the post already but i didn’t ( I wrote it around midnight last night, please excuse me): I really liked the presentation, and very good points were made; my questions are only about Beatrice. Let the friendly forum debate begin!

During the discussion friday I was not wholly convinced that Beatrice was marginalized and “separate from God”. In her life she was quite well-to-do and married very well, therefore she was in the uppercrust of society thus it is unlikely that she was marginalized during her life on Earth. In the afterlife she is in the celestial rose, which is a symbol of divine love- thus, saved. Any soul that is saved is close to God because even if dante is seeing them in different levels in heaven, they are just examples of different ways to be saved. In the Catholic tradition, i believe, no one can be “more saved’ than someone else. I believe we’ve discussed before in class that In the Italian tradition there seems to be a democracy among the souls, unlike in the classical tradition. One must be careful not to get the epicurean idea of distant gods to get in the way.

In some ways I don’t even see Beatrice as a prophet, but moreso a messenger and interpreter of the complicated predictions. I may be wrong, but I couldn’t go on without expressing my hestitance to accept the ideas presented.

I found the discussion on the messages of phropets being encrypted interesting. Personnaly it was good to see a differnt view. I have always just thought of the prophets being very straightforward in the classical tradition. In the Italian tradition I see the encription more especially with the allegories. GOOD JOb

I think that your discussion was interesting and was useful in a way of categorising prophets. However, I am not so sure on how I feel about the idea that since the sybl and the oracle of delphi were woman of power that that would set them apart from the community however very good job

Since I didn’t have the chance to write specific comments on every single midterm exam I graded, I thought it could be useful to come up with some general considerations on some of the central issues that came up in the exam, especially those I felt needed a little clarification.

On the relationship between the community and the deceased

It is undeniable that, compared to the Classical tradition, the Italian tradition assigns a less relevant role to funeral rites. One should however be careful to conclude that this deemphasizes or diminishes the role the community has, in the Italian tradition, in the successful transition of the deceased to the afterlife. If the role of the community appears to be lessened, it is because of the particularly strong tie, which the Italian tradition ushers in, between the deceased and God, which is what the examples of Manfred and Buonconte ultimately intend to underscore. This completely changes the ‘gravity’ of the deceased-community system, yet without diminishing any of the parameters. Indeed the crucial role of the community is supported by countless passages in Purgatorio, where the role of prayer for the deceased is constantly underscored, and where the process of purgation itself becomes a community business. One may say that the community is no longer crucial to the mere transition of the soul to the afterlife, yet it remains an essential part of the soul’s fulfillment in the afterlife. And that is indeed a big deal.

On topography and cosmology

The topography of the other world spells out the origins of the world itself. From Oceanus to Styx all the way to the mountain of purgatory, and at least the eight heavens that were known of in Dante’s time, the features of the other world in the Classical and Italian traditions are real geographical markers; for Dante, real astronomical markers too. That makes the other world a real place, albeit at times a vague place. It also makes the other world a place intimately connected with the history of mankind (we have spoken of the 5 ages of man in Hesiod, Ovid, Daniel and Dante). Thus, we may say that the other world in both the Classical and Italian traditions is made of meaningful cosmological signs.
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Wednesday’s dialogue about divine will got me thinking about the role of human will (what at least Dante would probably call “free will”) in both the classical and Italian traditions. I liked Khadija’s comment about how, according to Dante’s faith, one cannot be saved by works alone, for one must also have “love in the heart.” What interests me about this comment is that Dante seems to repeatedly stress that such love in the heart is optional — that each person has the ability to chose whether or not he shall seek God’s love inside himself and then make the commitment to follow it. Obviously, Dante illustrates what happens to those who chose not to take this path, but, in doing so, he emphasizes that a condemned person’s fate results from an act of his personal will. I’m not sure how how free will fits into the classical tradition, though I think our reading from Plato’s “Phaedo” might offer some clues on this subject. Plato discusses how those who “purif[y] themselves sufficiently with philosophy” achieve peace in the afterlife, and I suppose this belief implies that one has a choice about whether or not to pursue philosophy in life. However, I’m not sure if free will plays the same role in the other classical texts we’ve read.

Despite the prevalence of free will in Dante’s work, it also seems that, according to Dante, man’s will is ultimately part of God’s larger will. We ended Wednesday’s discussion by analyzing the last line in “Paradiso” and debating whether this line speaks more of acceptance or bliss. Here I think it’s important to look not only at the poem’s last line, but also at the few lines preceding it. Lines 142-145 read, “Here force failed my high fantasy; but my / desire and will were moved already — like / a wheel revolving uniformly — by / the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” This passage conveys how Dante’s will is subordinate to divine will, as Dante is no longer acting on his own because he is already “moved” by God. Thus, I’d say that this passage stands more as a statement of bliss than acceptance, and that this bliss seems to be so complete as to not allow for anything else; it stands so great as to even prevent Dante from consciously accepting God (…but that’s okay because God is already moving Dante to accept divine will). Therefore, I think “Paradiso”’s conclusion remains a great example of how Dante sees man’s will as a small piece of God’s greater will.