In this talk to his Chinese high school students, Jiang Xueqin explains that Dante’s Divine Comedy was the intellectual blueprint for the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution.
In a previous lecture, we explored how Augustine’s writings would pave the way for Europe’s Dark Ages. In his treatise “City of God,” Augustine argued that we were born in sin, and we can commit only more sin. Though God is perfect, we were “created out of nothing,” and cannot redeem ourselves.
Dante believed that God created us to do what He could not — love and imagine. Love is something that can happen only between humans, and is the Godforce within us that unites the universe. Because God is omnipresent and omniscient, he lacks an imagination (by definition). Our flaws, weaknesses, and limitations are what empowers our imagination. By constantly striving to be better, we continue God’s legacy and imagine a better world.
The link for Divine Comedy’s Paradiso Canto 33 (Mandelbaum translation) is here: https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-33/
