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aristotelian synthesis
[ 107 ]
Bonaventure, like Albert and Siger, is placed in the same circle of knowledge
as Aquinas, though on a separate ring representing a loving approach to knowl-
edge, as contrasted with the philosophic approach of Aquinas. Augustine, on the
other hand, is placed at the highest human level, in a mystic ring above the empir-
ium, where, along with the Apostles, Beatrice, Mary, and others, he has a clear
vision of the Trinity.
Non-Christian philosophers are treated differently. Because most of them
were pagans, they could not be placed in heaven, or even purgatory, both of
which required baptism. As a result, Dante placed them in the depths of hell,
depicted as within the earth, or in limbo, with unbaptized infants, just below the
surface. In limbo, souls could experience natural joy but would always feel
deprived of the love of God. Since ancient pagan philosophers like Aristotle did
not know of God during their own lives, Dante’s picture of them is not unlike
their own view of natural happiness. Avicenna and Averroës are allowed to join
this company of philosophers, despite their having been aware of Christianity
yet believers in Islam. Dante’s toleration of virtuous non-Christians even went so
far as to give the Islamic military leader Saladin, who had defeated crusading
Christians, a place in limbo!
By contrast, Epicurus is placed in the sixth circle of hell, the circle of the her-
etics, not because he did not believe in Christ, since he lived before the birth of
Jesus, but because he did not believe in the immortality of the soul. Dante felt
that the immortality of the soul is so certain a truth that even pagans should have
believed in it. In his Convivo, written before the Divine Comedy, where, curiously
enough, Epicurus is seen in a positive light, Dante goes into a tirade on the issue
of immortality of the soul: “I say then that of all the basely stupid opinions the
belief that after this life there is no other life is the stupidest, the vilest, and the
most pernicious.”
21
By the time he wrote the Comedy, he had learned of Epicurus’s
views on the mortality of the soul but apparently had failed to notice that
Democritus and Hippocrates had the same view. Dante was not offended that
Averroës did not believe in personal immortality apparently because Averroës
allowed for immortality of the human intellect.
22
Dante’s conception of eternal justice is well illustrated by his treatment of
heretics. In canto 10 of the Inferno, he describes the “shades” of Epicurus and
others who denied the immortality of the soul. All that can be seen of them is
their open tombs. Virgil tells him that because they failed to believe in immortal-
ity they remain entombed even in hell. However, after the last judgment, when
tombs on earth will open and everyone’s body will be resurrected and joined to
their souls, disbelievers in immortality, like Epicurus, will have their bodies
joined to their souls in hell and their tombs there closed for eternity.
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