Dante's Paradiso as an illustration of mediation in Augustine's Confessions: the role of the particular in the soul's ascent

Abstract

This thesis provides an interpretation of Augustine’s Confessions as an expression of Christian Neoplatonic mediation. In studying Augustine’s diverse inheritance central to his inspiration, I expose an ambiguity in his expression of the role of the particular in the soul’s mediative ascent. Some modern critical interpretations (Hannah Arendt and David Meconi) present Augustine largely as a Plotinian figure who denies a value to the particularity of mediative objects in the soul’s ascent. I reject these interpretations and suggest that Augustine’s theology of incarnation (the unmediated union of the ineffable and the sensible) must be employed as a central hermeneutic that allows for each mediative object to be valued qua itself as a function of the soul’s ascent into God. Dante’s Paradiso draws heavily on the metaphysics and theology of the mediative ascent of the Confessions and, further, offers a clarifying illustration of Augustine’s mediation and its dependence on incarnation. The Empyrean Heaven, the highest heaven and final vision of the entire Commedia, is illustrated as a brilliant diversity of distinct identities, most fully themselves, revolving around and illumined by the incarnate person of Christ: the unmediated union of the ineffable and sensible.