"Here I saw people more numerous than before, on one side and on the other, with loud shouts who rolled weights with the strength of their chest" (Inferno 7 ,25-27) Let's say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "The very struggle towards the heights is enough to fill the heart of man. We must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus In the Confessions, Saint Augustine defines sin as alienation from God. Dante also affirms this concept in Inferno. But while Augustine tends to underline the negative aspects of human freedom - which triggered the Fall and distanced man from God - Dante practices a discerning syncretism. Going beyond Augustinian ideas, he defends the possibility that human virtue is separate from God. In Inferno, extraordinary characters such as Ulysses exemplify this possibility, displaying a uniquely human greatness. In essence, Dante maintains the Augustinian structure but proceeds to poeticize the heroic potential that arises from free will, outlining its power for good and its ability to partially redeem souls languishing in damnation. Augustine makes almost all of the judgment relative to an omnipotent God. Such a worldview is manifested in almost all of his rhetoric: "Who will allow me to come to my heart and inebriate it, so that you forget my evils and embrace my only good, yourself?" (IV[5]). Since God is "the only good", the world of the Confessions lies along the axis between corrupt man and perfect divinity. In order for man to live virtuously, God must enter man and man must accept God. Only through divine grace can man come to embrace the Lord. And only through this holy embrace can the state of sin, natural to man, be overcome. The universe of Hell has a secular atmosphere in contrast to the Confessions. Dante refrains from addressing God with an apostrophe every second stanza. The divine remains repressed in rhetorical flourishes as “the art of God” (21:16). Although the divine design of Hell remains implicit at every level and step, God himself does not appear. The great chain that manifests itself in the second canto, connecting Virgil to Beatrice, to Lucia, to the Virgin Mary and finally to God, further expresses this immense abyss between man and divinity. This celestial silence serves at least two functions. First, it reinforces the concept found in the Confessions that there is a great distance between the creator and the created, especially sinners. That God does not show himself in the depths of Cocytus is logical, because sinners are far from God both physically and spiritually. Second, and more significantly, the near absence of an omnipotent deity provides greater space for human action and thought, allowing Dante to develop a humanistic perspective on will and virtue. Before an exposition of this candle is possible, it is necessary to examine Augustine's views. about free will and sin. In reference to the pear incident, Augustine recalls that "crime was the hot sauce" (II.vi [12]). In other words, he sinned for the sake of sinning. For this motivation, Augustine depicts his crime as a recapitulation of the Fall: «I loved self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen, but my fall itself» (II.iv[9 ]). . By eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam chose the ability to determine his own actions. Augustine's crime was also an assertion of his own will without the need for divine guidance. And he loved self-destruction because it, paradoxically, was also self-creation; a thrill derived from the feeling of agency. Given such a oneexperience with his own free will in his youth, the pessimistic attitude that Augustine develops in adulthood is understandable. Although free will implies neither good nor less good, Augustine focuses on its ability to bring about the latter and distance humanity from God. He denigrates human agency as "claiming to possess a vague resemblance to the omnipotence" (II.vi [14]). For Augustine, before the Fall, Adam lived in perfect innocence and happiness according to a divine plan. It was only through free choice that he became contaminated. In addressing the other half of the equation, whether action can create virtue, Augustine postulates that no virtue can exist outside of the worship of God. He states: "The soul fornicates... when it turns away from you and look outside of you for pure and clear intentions, which are not found except by returning to you. In their perverse way all humanity imitates you" (II. vi[14]). Therefore, seeking a humanistic definition of virtue will forever be futile. In the Augustinian universe, man's distance from God prevents him from exercising an independent will of virtue, the exercise of which could resemble perfect divinity. Although men may attempt to imitate the virtues of God, they are only perverting themselves and their secular institutions. Of these men Augustine states: «[They] turn away from you and exalt themselves against you» (II.vi [14]). In other words, although humans attempt to imitate divine virtue, this attempt ironically takes them further from God and actually makes them less likely to receive divine grace. Augustine gives at least two reasons why such mortal claims to virtue must fail. First, although Augustine does not deny the limited dignity of human moral commitment, what he calls “the impulse to self-affirmation” (II.v [10]), he argues that such progress can never even come close to the greatness of God .As an imitation (II.vi [14]) of infinite goodness, progress ultimately sounds vain. Thus, to immerse oneself totally in the mechanisms of the world would mean losing sight of the end for the means: "We abandon the superior and supreme goods, that is, you, Lord God, and your truth and your law" (II. v[10]). As such, Augustine repeatedly urges one to humble oneself before God, for the true path to goodness is found not in the solitary soul or in the collective effort of the world, but through the benevolence of the Lord. Second, Augustine sees human beings as essentially incapable of being heroic or virtuous on their own. Providing ample evidence of his antagonism toward human self-sufficiency, Augustine states that "[n]o anyone who considers his own frailty would dare attribute his chastity and innocence to his own strength" (II.vii [15]). Augustine condemns the fragility of the human will and the extreme vulnerability of man to the toxicity of worldly ideas. Then he praises the overwhelming grace of God in saving an unfortunate man like man. This contrast represents the Augustinian perspective. Man cannot rely on his own strength to achieve chastity and innocence. For such virtues are beyond his humble reach and exist only through God. Now that the Augustinian view of free will and sin has been sketched, the contrasting presentations in Hell can be related. A location that particularly clashes with the Confessions is Limbo, the resting place of men who "did not sin" (Hell 4.34), whose only fault was the lack of baptism, the door of faith (4.36). Dante grapples with the problem of whether to condemn the pagans for their lack of faith in the Christian God or to praise these "people of great worth" (4.44) for their virtues and achievements in the arts and sciences. The fact that he places them in Limbo and states through Virgil that they did not sin marks a significantdeparture from the teachings of Augustine, who clearly writes that the soul fornicates when it is not focused on God (II.vi [14]). It seems clear that Augustine would consider paganism a form of fornication. Dante, however, does not interpret paganism as sinful fornication. Since pagans came before Christianity, it was impossible to have known and worshiped God (4.37-8), and therefore their fornication was partly excusable because they did not want it. Dante, like Augustine, seems to conceive of sin as intrinsically related to sinful free will. Unlike Augustine, he seems to grant greater recognition to the possibility of virtue in the absence of knowledge of God. Dante, in declaring Limbo free from sin, must believe that these spirits are exemplars despite their secular existence. Just because they have not received baptism Dante does not place them in a higher realm. But baptism almost seems like a technicality, not a justification for damnation. Therefore, Dante does not place these souls in Hell proper. Limbo, the realm between that of the saved and that of the damned, seems to radically represent a space for a humanistic construction of virtues. Dante expresses admiration for the grandeur of this construction. He describes a fresh green meadow reminiscent of Virgil's Elysée, populated by "people with slow, grave eyes and great authority in their faces" (4.112-3). He enthusiastically states: "At that sight I still feel exalted within myself" (4.119-20). The nobility of these great spirits is manifested in poetry. Dante must raise his brow (4.130) to find himself in the company of Socrates and Plato, who, in his opinion, still receive honor (4.133-4). A dimension of human will and virtue, independent of God, finds expression in Limbo. The souls seem larger than life, proud as ancient supermen. Dante portrays human beings who display self-sufficiency, clarity of purpose, and clarity of intelligence. Although they are distinct from God, their portrayal almost suggests that they have no need of Him. The caveat, however, is that they live without hope, in desire (4.41-42). Augustine would not treat such a depiction of Limbo with deference. It would probably re-emphasize the Fall from which Original Sin arose; man was moved into a region of dissimilarity from God, in a time after the Golden Age. Man's salvation lies only in submission and humility before God: «Let not man say: 'What is this? Why that?' Don't say it, don't say it; because he is man" (VII.vi[10]). This concerns Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus or Ptolemy (4.137-142). Let man ask himself why and where is the fact of pretending omnipotence, of pretending to be God. In Augustine's mind, only in God would all things be made clear. This polemic against every liberal construction of man finds further strength in Augustine's attack on the Neoplatonists, who he accuses of not learning to possess a "contrite and humble spirit" (VII.xxi [27]). Furthermore, human wisdom and virtue are forever limited, as Augustine demonstrates by quoting 1 Corinthians 4:7, “What has he that he has not received?” (VII.xxi [27]). In his epistemology, Augustine considers divine revelation to be central, since what can be hidden from the wise can nevertheless be revealed to the child (VII.xxi [27]). Just as Dante and Augustine differ on the damnation of paganists, so the two thinkers differ on views of human action. Augustine's Confessions scorns the idea of ​​an uncompromising human will, portraying it as barely strong enough to ask for divine help to sustain it. Monica, perhaps the most virtuous model of all, is the "servant of thy servants" (IX.ix [22]), her chief virtues being devotion and patience, not independence..