The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy (Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion) [Hardcover]

Christian Moevs (Author)

Book Description

Series: Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion | Publication Date: March 17, 2005

The recovery of Dante's metaphysics - which are very different from our own - is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called "the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy." That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the status of revelation, vision, or experiential record - as something more than imaginative literature. In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. Moevs arrives at the radical conclusion that Dante believed that all of what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is in fact a creation or projection of conscious being. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Christian Moevs has written a work of astonishing audacity profound learning, lucid style, and acute critical sensibility. No serious student of Dante can afford to ignore this book." --Renaissance Quarterly

"Christian Moevs's Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy is a brilliant book. From beginning to end Moevs compels us to rethink Dante's poem. The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy is a remarkable book and a major contribution to our understanding of Commedia. --Warren Ginsburg, University of Oregon

"Christian Moevs has written the first truly comprehensive account of Dante's metaphysics. All the theories about creation, separate substances, relation between the intellect and the world of contingencies are finally put in their proper relationship with his poetic vision. This fresh, careful, and lucid examination of three notoriously complex cantos of Paradiso (XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX) dismantles formalist accounts of the poem and it amounts to a persuasive argument in favor of its deeper theology."--Giuseppe Mazzotta, Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Italian Language and Literature, Yale University

"...one of the most beautiful and original works that American Dantism has produced in recent years.... A text written with elegance, verve, and precision, which one cannot put down until the end."--Il Sole-24 Ore

"This is a wonderful book, integral, ordered, developed, culminating, like Dante's poeticized universe, in the point of it all, the apprehension of Being. Moevs writes beautifully: he is clear--elegantly clear--in a prose that nonetheless expresses complex ideas. This is a major contribution that makes us appreciate how, in Dante, being relates to Being. One of my colleagues told me that he considered this a dangerous book. I told him that I considered that one of its strengths. Insisting on, even magnifying, the metaphysical/mystical side of Dante, Moevs is trying to set the Commedia into relation with other great thinkers and other religions."--Robert Hollander, Emeritus Professor in European Literature, Princeton University

"It would be difficult to summarize all the lines of dazzling argument presented by Moevs...The implications of these principles for reading the Commedia are explored through senstive close reading, leading to fresh interpretations of passages from all three cantiche. The consequences of Moevs' analysis of Dante's metaphysics not only bear upon readings of individual passages. They touch some of the most important and controversial questions surrounding the Commedia as a whole."--Vittorio Montemaggi, Churchill College, Cambridge.

About the Author

Christian Moevs is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Fellow of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195174615
• ISBN-13: 978-0195174618
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,280,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Understandings, February 8, 2007

By 

Joseph Murphy (Flushing, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy (Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion) (Hardcover)

Moevs poses a critical warning: you cannot "understand the Comedy simply because (you) are familiar with Christian or Scholastic Doctrine". What is needed, Moevs convincingly demonstrates, is to rid ourselves of "post-Renaissance, empiricist" assumptions; e.g. mind-body dualism, creation/causation as a series of temporal events, idealism versus realism/Neo-Platonism versus Aristotle.

The path that Moevs provides is a rigorous but clearly written intellectual and comparative history of the ideas that informed late-medieval understandings and make them radically different than those of "modern" philosophy. Do not assume that you have walked this path. Neither Ozanam's beautifully written "Dante and Catholic Philosophy", written to assert Dante's orthodoxy, nor Gilson's "Dante and Philosophy", written to "define Dante's attitudes ... not to...look for their sources", provide the historical and analytic depth of Moevs' text. Moevs' text is indeed "the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy".

Moevs has reproduced his own journey to a fuller understanding of Dante's Comedy and the philosophies that inform it and make it meaningful to us. His readers owe Christian Moevs a gracious and sincere Thank You!

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars descriptions from the book jacket, April 12, 2005

By 

Christian Moevs (Notre Dame, Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy (Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion) (Hardcover)

short description:

This is the first book on Dante's metaphysical understanding of reality, and on how that understanding, centered on the concepts of creation, non-duality, and self-knowledge, grounds the Comedy's poetics, cosmology, and travelogue, gives meaning to its claims to be true or revelatory, and dissolves the distinction between poetry and theology in the poem.


longer description:

Christian Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and of the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. He carries this out through a detailed examination of three notoriously complex cantos of the Paradiso, read against the background of the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian tradition from which they arise.

Dante's metaphysics--his understanding of reality--is very different from our own. To present Dante's ideas about the cosmos, or God, or salvation, or history, or poetry within the context of post-Enlightenment presuppositions, as is usually done, is thus to capture only imperfectly the essence of those ideas. The recovery of Dante's metaphysics is also essential, Moevs argues, if we are to resolve what has been called "the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy." That problem is what to make of the Comedy's claim to the "status of revelation, vision, or experiential record--as something more than imaginative literature."

Moevs finds the key to the Comedy's metaphysics and poetics in the concept of creation, which implies three fundamental insights into the nature of reality: 1) The world (finite being) is radically contingent, dependent at every instant on what gives it being. 2) The relation between the world and the ground of its being is non-dualistic (God is not a thing, and there is nothing the world is "made of"). 3) Human beings are radically free, unbound by the limits of nature, and thus can come to experience themselves as encompassing all space and time. These insights are the foundation of the pilgrim Dante's journey from the center of the world to the Empyrean which contains it.

For Dante, in sum, what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is a creation or projection of conscious being, which can only be known as oneself. Moevs argues that self-knowledge is in fact the keystone of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, and the essence of the Christian revelation in which that tradition culminates. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy. In particular, it becomes clear that poetry coincides with theology and philosophy in the poem: Dante poeta cannot be distinguished from Dante theologus.

And the book is definitely worth 5 stars! (That's not on the book jacket.) : )

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guide to Paradiso, March 13, 2010

By 

J. C. Woods "silvannus" (Malden, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy (American Academy of Religion Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion) (Paperback)

Thomas Aquinas said of allegory that it is useful both to present spiritual truths to those accustomed to thinking only in the terms of sensual reality and, simultaneously, to hide them from the unworthy (St. I.1.9 res 3). In the first two canticles of the Comedy (Inferno and Purgatorio) Dante has a strong physical-sensual image: the Earth. Spiritual realities are described in terms of movement in physical space. In Inferno the pilgrim descends into a pit, in Purgatorio, he climbs a mountain. In Paradiso, the central image is light, which is, no doubt, sensual but not really physical. It is, in fact, psychical. In Paradiso, Dante's mystical-metaphysical concerns come to the fore.
He begins Paradiso 2 with a warning: those struggling to follow him (who have not partaken of the "bread of angels") should put the book down NOW (he will not be responsible for lost luggage). Moreover, those who think themselves capable of following had better keep up (there are no maps to where he is going and no place ask directions). Then, to reenforce his warning, the canto continues with Dante and Beatrice landing on the moon and getting into an abstruse disputation about the "moonspots" including a Fourteenth Century map of the cosmos and experiments you can do at home. I admit to my shame and chagrin that I have, more than once, been forced to submit and put the book down.
Which is why I recommend this book. The point of allegory, after all, is its subtext and this book shines in conveying you past the surface conversation to what Dante and Beatrice are really talking about (if you believe they are "really" discussing "moonspots," Moevs can't help you).
Also, if you like, you can check out my author's pageDante's Journey: A Field Guide to the Infernal Regionsand keep a look out for my new book on Purgatorio which will be out shortly.