Aquinas 'Cantos I-V'

Dante’s Inferno follows the allegorical journey of Dante, who loses sight of the true path, representing good faith, and must travel through hell, among other places, to return to the path by trusting God and avoiding sin. Canto I of the story involves Dante, in the middle of his life where he has both human experience and time to improve, lost in the dark wilderness, threatened by beasts and unable to escape. In fact, darkness pervades in the first thirty-four cantos of the Comedy. It is important to note that Dante considers darkness to be the lack of natural light, as Throughout the Inferno, Dante uses the setting of darkness to represent both sin and sin’s deceiving nature. In doing so, Dante argues that to successfully have faith in God, one must discern the truth from among the darkness which permeates both Hell and humanity.

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

There are many similarities between Dante’s The Inferno and Virgil’s The Aeneid, be it their characterizations or descriptive imagery, but foremost in their ideas of what the afterlife consisted of. Each each epic hero in the works here have descended in to the depths of hell, with The Inferno depicting Dante’s descent into the depths of hell and with Virgil in Book VI of The Aeneid depicting Aeneas’s decent into hell. It can be argued that although different, the knowledge acquired by each character’s descent was equally important to accomplishing their greater tasks at the ends of their journey. Had their descent into hell been skipped their outcomes would have concluded in a different way because their voyages to Hell each played a crucial role in the advancing each narrative.

For Dante and Aquinas, happiness does not only compose a useful life on earth but also in Heaven. Dante and Aquinas were sure that continued use of Aristotle virtues would not land any of their followers in heaven. To increase chances of one entering heaven, Dante and Aquinas developed proposed the incorporation of hope, faith, and charity into the daily virtues that people possess. According to Dante and Aquinas, possession of virtues like good temper and judgement could only lead one to live a good life but not perfect for heaven. Dante and Aquinas specifically based there philosophical thinking on four ideas; perfect ordinary happiness on earth, happiness on earth is not important as compared to happiness in Heaven, following of Aristotle virtues was not a problem to them but it could not help in trying moments, and lastly the importance of perfecting the art of love especially to people

     Aquinas’ third way argument states that there has to be something that must exist, which is most likely God. He starts his argument by saying not everything must exist, because things are born and die every single day. By stating this we can jump to the conclusion that if everything need not exist then there would have been a time where there was nothing. But, he goes on, if there was a time when there was nothing, then nothing would exist even today, because something cannot come from nothing. However, our observations tell us that something does exist, therefore there is something that must exist, and Aquinas says that something is God.

Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.

After reading Article 1, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians by Timothy M. Renick most can automatically acquire that Thomas Aquinas was a very influential thinker amongst others when explaining his theological views. His religious views may have differed from others during his time, however, it did influence and encourage others on the different topics of God vs. Satan, and why God has not all the answers, and powers when making sure every human being should not face evil. Aquinas believed that Christians needed to view their basic beliefs in another way to make sense of their own faith when questioning all that God did for each individual. The real question to all this, which a lot of people even question today is “Why is their evil in the World?”

Aquinas makes numerous claims regarding happiness. Specifically, Aquinas uses the term “happiness” in a sense of objective fulfillment, rather than subjective well-being. He asserts that human happiness does not consist in acquiring things such as money, honor, fame, power, goods of the body, or pleasure. He also claims that complete, i.e. perfect, happiness can only be achieved by contemplating God in the afterlife. I will discuss arguments for, arguments against, and my opinion for both claims.

Thomas Aquinas is one of the Christian and Catholic churches most beloved philosophers and theologians. Throughout his 49-year lifespan, Aquinas combined the theological ideologies of religion with the logical concepts of reason. He did this most notably through his publication of the Five Ways, also known as the Five Proofs, which were written in his book Summa Theologica. In his Five Ways, Aquinas takes the cosmological approach to the argument over God’s existence. That is, each proof begins with an observation about the universe and connects the observations to the dependency of nature. For some action to occur, another action must push it into occurrence. For example, a ball cannot move from rest without an outside force acting on it. This links to the idea of God in that he is argued to be the outside force that initiated the universes existence. Aquinas breaks this argument down into the Arguments from Motion, Causation, Contingency, Degree, and the Teleological argument. Within this analysis, Aquinas’ Argument from Motion will be broken down into its parts, premises and conclusions, and criticisms countering his argument will be offered and explained.

In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet.  At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see

Journeys can be taken many ways. Some people take the path less traveled and some people take the easy way out. Dante happens to be on journey that is less traveled, by exploring the depths of Hell in the Inferno. The epic poem’s story is about self-realization and transformation. It sees Dante over coming many things to realize he is a completely different person from the start of the Inferno journey. Dante sees many things that help him gain courage in order to prove to himself and the reader that accepting change and gaining courage can help one to grow as a person and realize their full potential. After seeing people going through certain punishment Dante realizes that he must not seek pity on himself and others in order to fully realize his true potential.

With the literary devices demonstrated throughout the Canto, imagery and mood that occurred in Canto 24 really stands out to the reader with the well-detailed description that Dante shares with the reader. From lines 43-66 Dante tells the rigorous journey of the two men as they traveled into the eighth circle. Dante expresses the emotion felt by himself during the trip as a challenge early in the that laid an exhausting effect on Dante.

While St. Thomas Aquinas established himself as the New Aristotle of the 13th century, Dante Alighieri established himself the new Virgil. The two men made an immense impact in their respective fields (poetry and philosophy). Yet surprisingly, the two share common ideals. In each of their respective literary and philosophical views, they establish the importance of the relationship between nature and grace. In Dante’s Inferno the unique relationship of grace and nature is made apparent and reflects the writings of Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica”. Dante’s pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise exhibit and reflect St. Thomas’ understanding of the relationship of nature and grace. Dante

In his first article of The Inferno, Dante Alighieri starts to present a vivid view of Hell by taking a journey through many levels of it with his master Virgil. This voyage constitutes the main plot of the poem. The opening Canto mainly shows that, on halfway through his life, the poet Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest by wandering into a tangled valley. Being totally scared and disoriented, Dante sees the sunshine coming down from a hilltop, so he attempts to climb toward the light. However, he encounters three wild beasts on the way up to the mountain—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf—which force him to turn back. Then Dante sees a human figure, which is soon revealed to be the great Roman poet Virgil. He shows a different path

Around 1314, Dante Alighieri completed the Inferno, the first section of what would make up The Divine Comedy, a collection of three poems reflecting Dante’s imaginative journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In these poems, Dante the poet describes the pilgrimage that Dante the pilgrim must complete to attain salvation. With the Roman poet Virgil as his guide, Dante the pilgrim must purge himself of his own sinful nature, which can only be achieved by observing and learning from those that have landed themselves in either Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. Described in Inferno, his excursion begins in Hell where Dante learns about the stories and the sufferings of many sinners. As Dante the pilgrim progresses through Hell it is clear that he assumes different personas. In some instances, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as an empathetic man who pities the sinners while on other occasions, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as a callous and indignant being in regard to the sinners. While Dante the pilgrim is depicted in these two completely different ways, it is the insensitive portrayal that more precisely depicts Dante the pilgrim, as that is his true identity when he leaves Hell. His journey affected him so greatly that by the end of his pilgrimage, Dante the pilgrim has transformed from a compassionate man into an impervious and even cruel individual.