Dante’s “Transhumanism”
Keywords:
Italian literature, Renaissance, Dante Alighieri, mysticism, mystical experience, deification, metaphysics of willAbstract
The article deals with the interpretation of famous Dante’s neologism in the last canticle of Divine Comedy: trasumanar. The question that could be raised regarding this expression is whether it designates mystical experience or no. The analysis of the key passages of the last cantos of Paradiso reveals Dante’s “transhumanization” as pointing at the beginning of the long process of deification. Yet the last verse of Comedy, from which the whole work should be understood, do not present the climax of the drama of human salvation in the frames of noetic vision of God (visio Dei), but in the frames of so-called metaphysics of will, namely as fusion of wills, union of human and God’s will. We are dealing here with the concept of the mystical experience that is deeply processual and, at least in statu viae, cannot be accomplished. Such an interpretation paves the way to a special understanding of literary self, namely as dynamic “deep Self” that is opened for transformative acts of the Other.References
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