eleonore.stump@slu.edu

Adorjan Hall Room 202 (SLU)

This class meets every Wednesday from 2:30-5:00 pm in Adorjan 343C.

The zoom link for auditors:

https://slu.zoom.us/j/95320556111?pwd=TTFUNk9Hdk81U0JHdEFPU2JaUUpFQT09

In this seminar, we will read Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso in the context of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. For our reading of the Divine Comedy, we will rely on Aquinas’s philosophical theology and also some parts of his philosophical psychology. In connection with the Purgatorio, we will focus on the cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice or covetousness, gluttony, and lust). In connection with the Paradiso, we will focus on the theological virtues, on grace, and the doctrine of the atonement. The assigned readings will include sections of both Dante’s poem and Aquinas’s text, and our seminar discussion will focus on both Dante’s poem and Aquinas’s text, although we will privilege the poem in the seminar. Dante chose narrative poetry to teach about the same subjects that Aquinas taught through expository philosophy. We will explore those subjects in both ways.

NOTE: This is the second part of a class that started last semester. For access to the website for the first part of this class, click here.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, translated by John Ciardi, 2003.

Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Free online at aquinas.cc

N.B.: Seminar participants must have the relevant text available in seminar meetings, either by printing the reading for the week or by having it available electronically.

Optional Reading:

The most scholarly edition and translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy is by Charles Singleton

There are also many good translations of Dante’s Inferno with helpful notes. They include the translations by Sinclair, Musa, and Durlinger.

Every conceivable resource for understanding Dante can be found at the Dartmouth Dante Project: https://dante.dartmouth.edu

The bibliography on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae is vast, but you should at least be clear about the fact that your seminar teacher has a book in this bibliography too. We have put a few chapters from that book on the seminar website. For a general introduction to my own interpretation of Aquinas’s ethics, see my paper “The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas’s Ethics”, which is also on the website.

(a) Appointments to discuss possible paper topics: between February 2nd and February 14th (a sign up sheet will be sent out for this).

(b) Paper topics approved: no later than February 14th.

(c) First Draft - Due date: March 14th.

(d) Written comments on the first draft of another student’s paper. Due date: March 28th.

(e) Final draft of paper. Due date: April 25th.

* = The due dates for the two drafts of the paper, the comments, and the paper topic must be met, unless there is some reason for the tardiness which has been approved in advance. Work that is late without prior excuse will be suitably penalized.