Redefining Faith in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”

Redefining Faith in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Palgrave Macmillan 2026) offers a philosophical reinterpretation of Dante’s poem, arguing that the Comedy reconfigures “faith” not simply as doctrinal assent, but as a mode of creative and interpretive engagement grounded in practical judgment, or phronēsis, and intellectual humility. Through close readings of all three canticles, I examine figures such as Farinata degli Uberti, Ulysses, Cato of Utica, Statius, Virgil, and Beatrice, showing how Dante’s poem both represents and cultivates the virtues needed to navigate uncertainty, conflict, and fragmentation. Bringing together intellectual history, literary analysis, and engagement with pagan, Christian, and Islamic philosophical traditions, the book explores Dante’s treatment of heresy, salvation, personal immortality, atonement, and freedom of will. At its center is the claim that the Divine Comedy invites us not only to reconsider what it means to believe, but also to reflect on how we read, judge, and live.

Download the book’s introduction here: https://philpapers.org/archive/ALERFI.pdf

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