Redefining Faith in Dante’s "Divine Comedy"

“Jason Aleksander’s Redefining Faith in Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is a major contribution toward the illumination of Dante’s authentic thinking and writing. Through very close readings of major episodes, Aleksander unearths subtle moments of Dante’s irony, ambiguity, and intentional promotion of aporia. Aleksander’s Dante is not especially interested in teaching a true set of doctrinal positions regarding the one path to salvation or the reality of Divine Providence. Rather, Dante’s concerns are practical and universal, as he aims to improve human individual, social, and political life by training readers to proceed slowly and—by withholding judgment concerning the veracity of what one has been taught to believe—to consider the possible benefits of entertaining alternative perspectives. Aleksander’s scholarship and philology (including a substantial and very pertinent discussion of Averroes) are impeccable and wide-ranging, whether his is treating Dante’s Comedy or relevant medieval history, intellectual history, the history of medieval doctrines, and the history of philosophy.” (Gregory B. Stone, Joseph S. Yenni Professor of Italian Studies, Louisiana State University, USA)

“In Redefining Faith in Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Jason Aleksander offers a refreshingly philosophical engagement with Dante that will reward both seasoned scholars and devoted readers of the poem. Drawing on a practiced phronēsis informed by his command of Dante’s oeuvre, Aleksander shows how the Commedia invites its readers into the exhilarating risks of interpretation—where genuine understanding requires humility, courage, and the freedom to read boldly. Through a crisply interdisciplinary method that brings theology, intellectual history, literary criticism, and key philosophical traditions into conversation, this book compellingly reframes the Divine Comedy as an invitation to interpretive self-transformation.” (Sean Erwin, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Theology and Philosophy, Barry University, USA)

“Immense intellectual challenges confront anyone who would unveil the meaning of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Redefining Faith in the “Divine Comedy” Jason Aleksander meets those challenges as few commentators do. Key to Aleksander’s success is his attention to the philosophic and theological implications of the Comedy’s form, an approach essential to understand a poem that makes reading itself thematic. Aleksander’s appropriately self-reflective treatment heeds Dante’s own poetic principle in its preservation of the tension between the Comedy’s individualized characters and the general views they express, a tension that, as Aleksander explains, makes prudence indispensable. He exhibits that capacity himself in guiding us through Dante’s risky reconsideration of heresy and salvation, faith and freedom. Unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries, Aleksander deploys the erudition required to illuminate the re-thinking that constitutes the poem’s depths. But his erudition serves a still greater goal: Though many may regard the poem as of merely historical interest, Aleksander’s work brings the Divine Comedy to bear on our most urgent concern, showing how it addresses the desire of each to discern how best to live.” (Paul Stern, Professor Emeritus, Ursinus College, USA)

“A philosopher’s reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy, this book offers a striking new definition of ‘faith’ that is poised to challenge traditional scholarship and unlock the poem’s power to unhinge contemporary assumptions about knowledge, virtue, and the ways we define and reshape them. With his limpid and evocative prose, Aleksander leads readers on an interpretive journey into what he defines as Dante’s ‘complex experiment in the ethics of reading.’ Under his critical lens, the poem’s ambiguities and aporias become opportunities for inquiry and invitations to reconsider its epistemological and ethical demands on the reader.” (Filippo Gianferrari, Associate Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA)

“Jason Aleksander’s Redefining Faith in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ is a major contribution toward the illumination of Dante’s authentic thinking and writing…. Aleksander’s scholarship and philology (including a substantial and very pertinent discussion of Averroes) are impeccable and wide-ranging, whether he is treating Dante’s Comedy or relevant medieval history, intellectual history, the history of medieval doctrines, and the history of philosophy.”
—Gregory B. Stone, Joseph S. Yenni Professor of Italian Studies, Louisiana State University, USA

“A philosopher’s reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy, this book offers a striking new definition of ‘faith’ that is poised to challenge traditional scholarship and unlock the poem’s power to unhinge contemporary assumptions about knowledge, virtue, and the ways we define and reshape them. With his limpid and evocative prose, Aleksander leads readers on an interpretive journey into what he defines as Dante’s ‘complex experiment in the ethics of reading.’ Under his critical lens, the poem’s ambiguities and aporias become opportunities for inquiry and invitations to reconsider its epistemological and ethical demands on the reader.”
—Filippo Gianferrari, Associate Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Drawing on close readings of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, Jason Aleksander’s Redefining Faith in Dante’s Divine Comedy invites readers to see Dante’s poem anew—as a work that provocatively reconfigures “faith” as a mode of creative and interpretive engagement grounded in the exercise of practical judgment (phronēsis) and intellectual humility. Weaving together intellectual history, literary analysis, and sustained engagement with pagan, Christian, and Islamic philosophical traditions, Aleksander shows how the poem’s treatment of heresy, salvation, personal immortality, atonement, and freedom of will invite us to read—and to live—with greater attentiveness, responsibility, and openness to the possibility of personal transformation. This book is ideal for scholars and students of Dante, medieval and Renaissance thought, philosophical hermeneutics, and readers interested in how literature shapes moral imagination.

Jason Aleksander is Professor of Philosophy at San José State University, USA.