The Importance Of Dante's Inferno

Dante refers to Aristotle, along with Plato and Socrates, in his Inferno, in his first circles of hell:

“I saw the Master there of those who know,

Amid the philosophic family,

By all admired, and by all reverenced;

There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,

Who stood beside him closer than the rest.” According to John Lord, “Aristotle penetrated into the whole mass, into every department of the universe of things, and subjected to the comprehension its scattered wealth; and the greater number of the philosophical sciences owe to him their separation and commencement… He is also the father of the history of philosophy, since he gives an historical review of the way in which the subject has been hitherto treated by the earlier philosophers…. Says

In Athens there was a remarkable politician named Pericles. His famous “funeral oration,” honoring fallen Athenian heroes, sounds almost American in its logic: “We have a form of government … which, because in the administration it hath respect not to a few but to the multitude, is called a democracy. Wherein … there be an equality amongst all men in point of law for their private controversies…. And we live not only free in the administration of the state but also one with another void of jealousy touching each other’s daily course of life, not offended at any man for following his own humor…. So that conversing one with another … without offense, we stand chiefly in fear to transgress against the public and are obedient always to those that govern and to the laws, and principally to such laws as are written for protection against injury….”

Pericles in his Funeral Oration, as recorded by the Historian Thucydides, praises Athenian society and its ideals. He shows confidence and extols democracy, justice, the ideal of the beautiful and the good, citizen’s participation in government, courage, freedom, and happiness. He eloquently