Dante should be required reading. Maybe people woud be more motivated to read Dante if they realized that we're no different than we were in 1300. My millennial neighbour told me today that his clan is in complete upheaval since their dad confessed to their mom of his 20-year affair. (How do affairs begin? Flattery...)
No different at all. Dante remains formidable, even today. His ranking is based on considerations of the will. Sins of passion, however heinous, are done with only tacit approval of the perpetrator's will. Usually, they involve placing a lesser good above a higher one in a heated moment; But the calculated sin actively uses the intellect to undo the good; it attacks the trust and the good that underpins a society. An angry man commits a murder that he never would have done if he had a taken a ten second walk away from the situation; a politician says that murder is licit and even justified. The politician, Dante realizes, is by far the worse.
Dante should be required reading. Maybe people woud be more motivated to read Dante if they realized that we're no different than we were in 1300. My millennial neighbour told me today that his clan is in complete upheaval since their dad confessed to their mom of his 20-year affair. (How do affairs begin? Flattery...)
No different at all. Dante remains formidable, even today. His ranking is based on considerations of the will. Sins of passion, however heinous, are done with only tacit approval of the perpetrator's will. Usually, they involve placing a lesser good above a higher one in a heated moment; But the calculated sin actively uses the intellect to undo the good; it attacks the trust and the good that underpins a society. An angry man commits a murder that he never would have done if he had a taken a ten second walk away from the situation; a politician says that murder is licit and even justified. The politician, Dante realizes, is by far the worse.