Alighieri, Dante

« Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321) 'radical Aristotelians', such as Boethius of Dacia and Aubry of Reims (see Averroism).

These Parisian masters claimed that philosophy is autonomous and should not be subordinated to any other discipline, in particular not to theology, because it provides humans with all the knowledge required for obtaining happiness.

Since humans are essentially rational animals, they fully realize their capacities if they dedicate themselves to the most rational activity, philosophy.

Dante conceives of philosophy - 'philosophy' taken synonymously with 'science' (scientia) - as a unified system of knowledge that can be hierarchically divided.

He explains the order by comparing these disciplines with the celestial spheres.

There are at least three reasons, he claims, for making such a comparison (Convivio II, xiii, 3-6 ).

First, every science moves around its subject, just as a celestial sphere turns around its immovable centre.

Second, every science makes its subject clear and understandable, just as a celestial sphere illumines the things around which it turns.

Third, every science leads to a certain perfection by structuring and explaining things, just as a celestial sphere improves things by keeping them in order and moving them.

Not only is there, according to Dante, an analogy between science as a whole and the celestial spheres, but one can even attribute a specific science to each of the nine celestial spheres.

There is a correspondence between each of the first seven spheres (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) and each of the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry and astrology).

Physics and mathematics, dealing with innumerably many entities, correspond to the eighth sphere that consists of innumerable fixed stars.

Finally, moral philosophy (including both ethics and political philosophy) corresponds to the ninth, socalled 'crystalline sphere', because moral philosophy enables humans to study all the other sciences just as this ninth unmoved sphere moves all the other spheres.

Not only does Dante believe, as did many medieval philosophers of science (for example, Robert Kilwardby), that philosophy (or science) is a unified, strictly ordered system of knowledge, but he also claims that the scientific system mirrors the cosmological system (see Natural philosophy, medieval ).

Whereas he follows the traditional scheme in his ordering of the seven liberal arts, he deliberately deviates from tradition in his claim that moral philosophy and not metaphysics, usually taken as 'first philosophy', is the highest scientific discipline.

Although it is important to know, in the Aristotelian framework of metaphysics, what being qua being and its principles are, this is not the highest goal in philosophy.

One obtains perfect knowledge, Dante claims, only if one is aware of the principles leading to a good life.

That is why 'morality is the beauty of philosophy' (Convivio III, xv, 11 ).

When one takes this important claim into account, it becomes clear why Dante emphatically holds that human happiness is to be sought through philosophy.

Since moral philosophy, the culmination of every scientific activity, enables humans to recognize the principles governing a good life in a peaceful community, humans must philosophize if they want to attain such a life (see Happiness).

3 Political philosophy In the Monarchia, a treatise that is highly scholastic in both style and content, Dante aims to show first, that a universal monarchy is necessary for a peaceful community of humans, second, that the Roman nation legitimately acquired its hegemony over all other nations, and third, that the power of the Roman emperor is not subordinate to that of the pope.

Thus the main purpose of the work is clearly political and has to be understood in the light of the late medieval controversies over mundane and spiritual power (notably those between King Philip the Fair of France and Pope Boniface VIII).

Yet in his defence of the Roman emperor, Dante makes a rich use of philosophical arguments, often going beyond the concrete political context.

This becomes clear from his discussion of the principle governing human behaviour, a principle that underlies all his political theses, as he explicitly says ( Monarchia, I, ii, 8 ).

Dante starts his search for such a principle by asking why humans want to live in a community.

Following the Aristotelian tradition, he gives a teleological answer; all humans have certain goals they want to obtain. However, unlike most medieval authors in the Aristotelian tradition, he claims that there is not only a goal for each individual, each household and each city, but also a goal for the entire human species.

This goal is to be attained only through an activity of the entire species.

Such an activity consists in all realization of the 'possible' intellect (Monarchia I, iii, 8), that is, in an exhaustive development of one's cognitive capacity.

An isolated person, limited in activity, is never able to achieve such development, which requires one's integration into a peaceful community in which all humans participate.

It is remarkable and original in the medieval context that Dante uses an epistemological argument to justify his political theory.

Neither a natural order established by God, nor a need for protection, nor a need for exchanging goods and making contracts is the main reason for which humans want to live in a peaceful community.

Rather, the main reason is an intellectual need; humans want to use their cognitive capacity.

Following Aristotle, Dante claims that this capacity is nothing other than the possible intellect that is 'realized', or put to active use, when it receives the forms of the cognized things.

But, unlike Aristotle, he does not take the use of this intellect to be a mere individual operation; and, contrary to some radical Aristotelians (for example, Boethius of Dacia or Siger of Brabant), he does not hold that every person is an autonomous cognizer, capable of acquiring all possible knowledge through an individual contemplation of the highest principles.

Nor does he make the controversial Averroistic claim, as his first critics (such as Guido Vernani) complained, that there is just one possible intellect for all humans, so that every individual would be dependent upon this all-embracing intellect.

Rather, Dante holds that every person has an individual possible intellect; but one can make full use of one's own possible intellect only if one is a member of a peaceful community.

Thus, social interaction is a sine qua non for successful cognitive activity (see Political philosophy, history of).

4 Natural philosophy In the Questio, a written record of a scholastic debate, Dante (if indeed the text was written by him) raises the question of how the elements water and earth are related to each other. Which element has a higher location, water or earth? At first sight, this question seems puzzling or even pointless.

Is it not obvious that there are some places (such as the mountains) where earth is higher, and others (such as the sea) where water is higher? But considered from a medieval point of view, the question points to a serious problem.

According to the geocentric model that was strongly influenced by the Euclidean theory of spheres, the terrestrial world is located in the middle of a spherical cosmos and consists of four spherically ordered elements: earth, water, air and fire.

The element water completely surrounds and covers the element earth, located in the middle of all the spheres.

Thus we are confronted with a conflict between the common sense view that there is no fixed order among the elements, and the theoretical view that there must be a strict order according to the spherical model.

In light of this conflict, it is not surprising that the question raised by Dante was a prominent puzzle in medieval philosophy of nature (Duhem 1958: 79-235 ).

Dante tried to resolve this dilemma by introducing a distinction between two kinds of nature.

The 'universal nature' is present in the celestial spheres and determines the movement of all terrestrial things.

The 'particular nature', on the other hand, is present in each terrestrial thing and makes it tend toward the place it is suited for.

So, according to the particular nature, inherent in the elements, earth tends toward the middle of all elements and is completely covered by water.

However, the universal nature is able to influence and change this tendency so that there can be some dry places (the so-called 'habitable parts') where earth emerges from water and, therefore, has a higher location than water (Questio 49).

Dante claims that this general nature is to be found in the eighth sphere, the 'crystalline sphere' (Questio 69).

This explanation allows Dante to maintain the geocentric spherical model without rejecting the common sense view.

It also allows him to avoid the solution suggested by earlier authors such as Andalò del Negro, that the two spheres (earth and water) may not be concentric.

Such a solution would threaten the entire cosmological model.

If there is no concentricity, neither is there any guarantee that all the spheres - and not just one element - will revolve around the earth.

While insisting on the concentric order, Dante introduces a distinction between two kinds of nature that betrays a Neoplatonic background: God, the first cause of everything, created the celestial spheres, which act as secondary causes.

Thus the cosmos is taken to be a strictly ordered, closed system in which the place and movement of every singular thing or element can be explained in terms of its dependency on certain causes.. »