Key to All Mythologies Alex Earich

Why does the discourse on love begin with the words of a minor character, Marco of Lombardy, rather than Virgil?
Are Virgil’s discourses on love and free will more Augustinian or Aristotelian?
Is love the only thing in the cosmos that does not diminish as it is shared? Light?
What does it mean to say God is Love? Is God love?
Is Virgil’s schematic approach to these questions an example of the limits of human reason? Is faith what is missing?
Is Dante the poet critiquing Virgil, or are we critiquing Dante?
Even if you claim to hate God, must you still love God in order to live at all, since whatever you love was created by God, and your love for it is ultimately directed toward God, by your free will (or “free will”) via the object of your love?
Because God loves every thing that God created, and free will is the spark of the Divine in you?
So – evil?

Some questions discussed in this episode:


Can love undo the damage inflicted – to the self and the the community – by envy?
Is there a Golden Mean between vice and virtue?
Just how Aristotelian was Dante anyway?
How does the kind of person you are change the things you can (and cannot) see?
What is the distinction between truth and fact?
What does Dante means when he speaks of art as an “error” that is not false?

Some questions discussed in this episode:


What role does art have to play in the transformation of vice into virtue?


What is the connection, if there is one, between the soul of the artist and the beauty of what they create?


If virtue is properly presented by the artist, will it always be attractive, and vice always disgusting, to the audience?


Why is this the where Dante worries the reader might fall away? Why is this an especially dangerous moment for Dante’s vision of the unity of divine justice?


Why is the dominant metaphors in theses cantos economic?


Does every penitent in purgatory pass through every terrace? Or are the prayers of those on Earth enough to zap you past one or all of the terraces and directly to Heaven?


Why is the capstone image of pride the fall of Troy?

We are now through Cato’s gate, and into the antechamber, the incorporeal coat-room, the final stage before Purgatory proper. Dante moves among the penitents as they receive their just punishments, and serve their allotted waiting times, before they can slowly make their way up the mountain, and eventually to Heaven. We discuss the delicate interplay of light and darkness, of faith in the unseen and clarity of vision, and of certainty and doubt, which this painstaking crawl of redemption inspires. Bonus thoughts: We also think about what role beauty plays in religious art.

We continue our climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Canto Four begins with a consideration of the meaning of prayer for the process of purgation. God, we are told, cannot hear the prayers of those passing through Purgatory, but their time on the mountain can be shortened by the prayers of the living. We discuss this rather strange piece of doctrine. Given what we learned in Hell about the very precise nature of divine justice, doesn’t this violate or circumvent it somehow? Or is this an argument for the God-granted power of the human mind, and the importance of community within Christianity?

We also discuss the importance of paying attention. Dante seems to suggest here, in an almost proto-Existentialist way, that certain aspects of reality are revealed through attentiveness that can’t be discovered any other way. Does this connect to these Canto’s focus on prayer? Finally, we consider again Dante’s political commitments. Can his longing after the perfect monarch be squared with his metaphysics? Is it incurably naïve, or are we just being decadent moderns? Is the naivety with him or with us? 

We join Dante and Virgil as they begin their climb up the mountain of Purgatory. Why is Cato, a pagan who lived before Christ and died by suicide, the honored guardian of that mountain? Does he have access to Heaven? If so, why only him and no other “virtuous pagans” (including Virgil)? We also reflect on the tragedy and meaning of Virgil’s fate, and what this fate might say about his supposed status as the Divine Comedy’s embodiment of human reason. Finally, we talk about Dante’s larger plan for the Comedy. What is his grand vision of Christianity and the Christian life? And is this vision meant comfort us, or disturb us?