“Here I saw more people than before, on one side and on the other, with loud cries rolling weights by the strength of their breast” (Hell 7.25-27) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill the heart of man. We must imagine Sisyphus happy. » - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus In the Confessions, Saint Augustine defines sin as distance from God. Dante also affirms this conception in Inferno. But while Augustine tends to emphasize the negative aspects of human freedom – it triggered the Fall and distanced man from God – Dante practices enlightened syncretism. Beyond Augustinian ideas, he defends the possibility of human virtue separated from God. In Inferno, extraordinary characters like Odysseus illustrate this possibility, displaying a unique human greatness. Essentially, Dante retains the Augustinian framework but continues to poeticize the heroic potential that arises from free will, describing its power for good and its ability to partially redeem souls languishing in damnation. Augustine makes almost all judgments relating to an all-powerful God. Such a worldview is manifested in almost all of his rhetoric: “Who will grant me that you come into my heart and intoxicate it, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one and only good, yourself? (IV[5]). Because God is “the one and only good,” the world of faiths lies along the axis between corrupt man and perfect divinity. For man to live virtuously, God must enter into man and man must accept God. It is only by divine grace that man can embrace the Lord. And it is only through this holy embrace that the state of sin, natural to man, can be overcome. The universe of Inferno has a secular atmosphere unlike Confessions. Dante refrains from addressing God with an apostrophe every other stanza. The divine remains restricted to rhetorical flourishings as “the art of God” (21, 16). Although the divine design of Hell remains implicit at every level and stage, God himself does not appear. The great chain of being highlighted in the second canto, connecting Virgil to Beatrice, to Lucy, to the Virgin Mary and finally to God, further expresses this immense gulf between man and divinity. This celestial silence fulfills at least two functions. First, it reinforces the concept found in the Confessions that a great distance exists between the creator and the created, especially sinners. That God does not show himself in the depths of Cocytus makes sense, because the sinners there are physically and spiritually far from God. Second, and more importantly, the virtual absence of an all-powerful deity provides greater scope for human action and thought, allowing Dante to develop a humanist perspective on will and virtue. Before an exposition of this candle is possible, Augustine's views must be examined. on free will and sin. In reference to his incident with the pears, Augustine recalls that “criminality was the hot sauce” (II.vi [12]). In other words, he sinned for the sake of sin. Because of this motivation, Augustine describes his crime as a recapitulation of the Fall: "I loved self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself » (II.iv [9]). By eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam chose the ability to determine his own actions. Augustine's crime was also the assertion of his own will without the need fordivine direction. And he loved self-destruction because, paradoxically, it was also self-creation; a thrill derived from the feeling of action. Given such an experience of his free will in his youth, the pessimistic attitude that Augustine develops as an adult is understandable. Although free will implies neither good nor less good, Augustine focuses on its ability to realize the latter and lead humanity away from God. He denigrates human agency as "an assertion of possessing a vague resemblance to omnipotence" (II.vi [14]). For Augustine, Adam before the Fall lived in perfect innocence and happiness according to a divine plan. It was only through free choice that he was defiled. In addressing the other half of the equation, whether free will can create virtue, Augustine posits that no virtue can exist apart from the worship of God. He states: “The soul fornicates...when it turns away from you and seeks outside of you the pure and clear intentions which can only be found by returning to you. In its perverted way, all humanity imitates you” (II. vi [14]). Thus, seeking a humanist definition of virtue will forever be in vain. In the Augustinian universe, man's distance from God prevents him from exercising an independent will of virtue, the action of which could resemble that of a perfect divinity. Even if men try to imitate the virtues of God, they only pervert themselves and their secular institutions. Concerning these men, Augustine says: “They put themselves at a distance from you and rise up against you” (II.vi [14]). In other words, although humans attempt to imitate divine virtue, this attempt ironically distances them from God and actually makes them less likely to receive divine grace. Augustine gives at least two reasons why such mortal claims to virtue must fail. First, although Augustine does not deny the limited dignity of human moral effort, what he calls the "need for self-affirmation" (II.v[10]), he maintains that such progress cannot can never even approach the greatness of God. As an imitation (II.vi [14]) of infinite goodness, progress ultimately rings hollow. Thus, to totally immerse oneself in the mechanisms of the world would be to lose sight of the end in favor of the means: “We abandon the superior and supreme goods, that is to say You, Lord God, your truth and your law” ( II. As such, Augustine repeatedly urges humbling oneself before God, for the true path to good lies not in the solitary soul or in the collective effort of the world, but in the benevolence of the Lord. Second, Augustine views humans as fundamentally not capable of being heroic or virtuous on their own. Providing ample evidence of his antagonism toward human self-sufficiency, Augustine asserts that “[w]e who consider his frailty would not dare to attribute to his own strength his chastity and innocence” (II.vii [15 ]). Augustine condemns the fragility of the human will and the extreme vulnerability of man to the toxicity of the world's ideas. He then praises God's overwhelming grace in saving a wretch like man. Such a contrast represents the Augustinian perspective. Man cannot rely on his own strength to achieve chastity and innocence. For such virtues are beyond his modest reach and exist only through God. Now that the Augustinian view of free will and sin has been outlined, the contrasting presentations of Inferno can be recounted. One locality that particularly conflicts with the Confessions is Limbo, the resting place of humans who "have not sinned" (Hell 4.34), whose only fault was the lack of baptism, the gateway to faith (4.36). Dante struggles with the problem ofwhether to condemn the pagans for their lack of belief in the Christian God or to praise these “people of great worth” (4.44) for their virtues and achievements in the arts and sciences. The fact that he places them in limbo and declares through Virgil that they have not sinned marks a significant departure from the teachings of Augustine, who clearly writes that the soul fornicates when not focused on God (II.vi [14]). It seems obvious that Augustine would view paganism as a form of fornication. Dante, however, does not interpret paganism as sinful fornication. Because the pagans came before Christianity, it was impossible to know and worship God (4.37-8), and so their fornication was partly excusable because they did not want to. Dante, like Augustine, seems to conceive of sin as being intrinsically linked to free will. Unlike Augustine, he seems to give more recognition to the possibility of virtue in the absence of knowledge of God. Dante, in declaring Limbo free from sin, must believe that these spirits are paragons despite their secular existence. It is only because they have not received baptism that Dante does not place them in a higher realm. But baptism seems almost a formality, not a justification for damnation. Thus, Dante does not place these souls in Hell proper. Limbo, the realm between that of the saved and that of the damned, seems to radically represent a space for a humanist construction of virtue. Dante expresses his admiration for the grandeur of such a construction. He describes a fresh green meadow reminiscent of the Virgilian Elysium, populated by “people with slow, grave eyes and faces of great authority” (4.112-3). He enthuses: “I am still exalted within myself at this sight” (4.119-20). The nobility of these great minds shines through in poetry. Dante must raise (4.130) his eyebrow to find himself in the company of Socrates and Plato, who, according to him, still receive honors (4.133-4). A dimension of human will and virtue, independent of God, finds expression in limbo. The souls seem larger than life, proud like ancient supermen. Dante depicts humans who demonstrate self-sufficiency, clarity of purpose, and lucidity of intelligence. Although they stand apart from God, their portrayal almost suggests that they have no need of Him. The caveat, however, is that they live without hope, in desire (4:41-42). Augustine would not treat such a depiction of Limbo with deference. He would probably insist again on the fall from which original sin arose; man was moved into a region of dissimilarity with God, in a time after the golden age. Man's salvation lies solely in submission and humility before God: "Let no man say, 'What is this?' Why this? Let him not say it, let him not say it; for he is a man” (VII.vi [10]). So much for Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus or Ptolemy (4.137-142). If man asked himself why and where, it was for him to claim omnipotence, to claim to be God. In Augustine's mind, only in God would everything be clear. This polemic against any liberal construction of man finds additional force in Augustine's attack against the Neoplatonists, whom he accuses of not having learned to possess a "contrite and humble spirit" (VII.xxi [27] ). Furthermore, human wisdom and virtue are forever limited, as Augustine proves by quoting 1 Corinthians 4:7: “For what has he that he has not received? (VII.xxi [27]). In his epistemology, Augustine considers divine revelation as central, because what may be hidden from the wise can nevertheless be revealed to the child (VII.xxi [27]). Just like.