Dante Alighieri
1265-1321 · Christian Literature · Household name
Dante was a Florentine poet who set out a Christian and Aristotelian picture of the world in the Divine Comedy. He made the political case in Monarchia: humanity needs one emperor over all of it, holding power direct from God rather than through the pope, to secure the peace in which the human race can put its collective mind to work. The Comedy carries the same longing for a single peace.
Signature
The position Dante is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent
- End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (19 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (94 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (31 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (20 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (92 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Ethics
- leans Means (80 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Dante refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Eschatological
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?