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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 851.1
EAN num: 9780195174618
ISBN number: 0195174615
Label: An American Academy of Religion Book
Manufacturer: An American Academy of Religion Book
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: March 17, 2005
Publishing house: An American Academy of Religion Book
Sale Popularity Level: 430554
Studio: An American Academy of Religion Book
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Product Description:
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 very 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.
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Rated by buyers -
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 very 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!
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short description:
This is the very 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 very 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.) : )
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