Dante’s Paradiso: No Human Beings Allowed

That there is a balance between reason and faith in Dante’s Divine Comedy is not news. Still, an exploration of this balance is worth additional attention. Among other things, one discovers that Dante, following Thomas Aquinas, rejects the classical Greek ideal of happiness as reasoning with excellence. In addition and more important, one discovers that what Dante requires in order for human beings to be happy leads to this surprising conclusion: the set of happy human beings in Dante’s heaven is empty.