Beatrice begins her final discourse on free will with her premise: free will is the greatest gift given to humans and angels. But even free will can will its own loss with a self-limiting vow, from which it’s hard to understand any notion of restitution.
Read MoreBeatrice begins to answer Dante’s question about making good on unfulfilled (or even broken) vows with a tightly-woven chain of ideas that leads to the generous and compassionate statement that all things have a vestige of the eternal light in them. But vows still need to be litigated if broken, including ones the poet himself may have made.
Read MoreBeatrice has concluded her answers to questions about the souls’ place in the heavens and (more importantly) about free will. Her answers may satisfy the pilgrim Dante intellectually as his understanding continues to scale the peaks but her answers have also prompted a more personal response from him: What about my own unfulfilled vows?
Read MoreBeatrice develops a sub-point on the concept of free will that proves—at least if you accept the reasoning from Aristotle and Aquinas—that Piccarda and Constance were indeed guilty of breaking their vows, even if they didn’t want to break them. Wanting doesn’t overcome their actions.
Read MoreBeatrice takes apart the pilgrim Dante’s second doubt: Is God unjust for relegating Piccarda and Constance to the lowest sphere of heaven? Beatrice launches into a hard, troubling argument about free will . . . and about how your actions are your fault, even when force is used to make you do something.
Read MoreBeatrice continues to demolish the pilgrim Dante’s doubts by turning to Plato’s TIMAEUS and using it as a turn from her notion that revelation requires accommodation to a much larger discussion of free will in the face of astral (or planetary) influences on human behavior.
Read MorePiccarda may have vanished, but the pilgrim still has his questions. Or are they doubts? He can’t voice them, so Beatrice steps up and articulates them, makes one very personal, and muddied the notion of a rational free will. He’s paralyzed . . . and maybe as frustrated as old King Nebuchadnezzar.
Read MoreDante meets his first soul in Paradise, the former nun Piccarda Donati. We’ve already encountered her in COMEDY through her brother, Forese, among the gluttons on Mount Purgatory. And she is also a refraction of an infamous figure, Francesca in INFERNO V. Piccarda’s speech is like the moon itself: mottled with dark and light.
Read MoreIf Dante has a question about how his body can transit other bodies in the universe, Beatrice doesn’t answer it. Instead, she launches into a discussion of our natural instincts and how they lead us to our natural ends, unless we swerve from what’s intended for us or find our pleasure elsewhere.
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