The Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal, in collaboration with Prof. Andrea Falcon (Department of Philosophy, Concordia University), is pleased to announce a series of talks on the topic of “Dante and Philosophy”.
Dante (1265-1321) was not a professional philosopher but was seriously engaged with philosophy, and this engagement was essential to his work as a whole. With the help of three guest speakers, we will explore various aspects of Dante’s engagement with philosophy from the Convivio to the Commedia.
Thursday, November 15, 2:45 pm
Department of Philosophy, Concordia University, 2145 MacKay (Room S-201)
Event in English
The seats for this event are limited. If you plan to attend, please email Prof. Andrea Falcon andrea.falcon@concordia.ca
Dante focuses on Ulysses in Canto 26 of Inferno, but the myth of Ulysses pervades the whole of the Divine Comedy, and this because the fundamental – and still very relevant – moral issue that Ulysses embodies is not that of fraudulent rhetoric, but of human intelligence: What are we to do with our intelligence? How far may we go with it? Are we allowed to pursue any intellectual quest regardless of its consequences? From Inferno 1 to 26, from Purgatorio 1 to 19, from Paradiso 2 to 27, the Ulysses’ myth occurs and re-occurs to Dante, both author and poet- character, as both a stimulus to search endlessly and a warning not to trespass the limit beyond which human intelligence can cause its own and other people’s destruction.
Lino Pertile is Carl A. Pescosolido Research Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Emeritus, at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. His studies deal with different themes, such as the Latin Middle Ages, French and Italian literature in the Renaissance period, Foscolo and Leopardi, the Italian novel of the twentieth century. Among his most recent publications we mention: L. Pertile and Z. G. Baranski (edd.) Dante in context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edition 2017; La punta del disio: Semantica del desiderio nella Commedia. Florence: Cadmo 2005; Dal Cantico dei Cantici al Paradiso terrestre di Dante. Ravenna: Longo 1998; L. Pertile (ed.), the Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996.