Phoenix Institute: Dante and the Liberal Arts

(0 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Seven hundred years after his death and the publication of the Divine Comedy, Dante's great poem remains as vital and challenging today, as it was when it first appeared complete in 1321. Dante's Commedia narrates an epic journey through the realms of the afterlife—Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. It undertakes a study of the condition of souls after death (status animarum post mortem), but it also challenges its readers to an experience of self-examination and a survey of the condition of our souls in this life (status animarum in vitam). This course invites a focused reading of the Divine Comedy in relation to the aims and ends of education, specifically a liberal arts education directed to freeing minds and souls for the discovery and propagation of truth, goodness, and beauty and for the sake of human flourishing. As we shall see, Dante builds into his poem a curriculum of study, including not only reflections on the Trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) but also engagement with the whole scope of what we call the "humanities" - those disciplines dedicated to understanding human things, including history, politics, literature, psychology, philosophy, and theology. In our reading of the Inferno, we will undergo an education in moral reasoning and interpersonal interpretation. Then we will climb our way up the Purgatorio and experience the lessons of works and worship and the integral formation of the imagination. Finally, we will ascend through the Paradiso and learn about love to gain a love of learning amid the prismatic colors of what Dante calls luce intellettual piena d'amore ("intellectual light full of love"). In that light, we will reflect upon Dante's abiding relevance for education today as a torch for those who walk in darkness and find themselves "midway in the journey of our life" (Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita). Required texts: Inferno (Trans. Robert & Jean Hollander. Anchor Books, 2002), Purgatorio (Trans. Robert & Jean Hollander. Anchor Books, 2004), and Paradiso (Trans. Robert & Jean Hollander. Anchor Books, 2007).