Great Books #10: Dante's Hierarchy of Hell

Welcome to hell. So, we finished Dante's Inferno. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the overview of how Dante constructs hell, the Inferno. And I'll explain to you his reasoning for the structure. So, first thing I'm going to do is explain to you Dante's cosmology, how he understands God and our relationship with God. So, God in Dante is really the monad of Plato. For Plato, God, or the monad, is and immutable. It has always been there. It will always be there. It is perfect.

And it will never ever change. This creates a problem for the universe, because if something is perfect, it cannot be creative. It lacks an imagination. If it knows everything, there's nothing for it to learn. Okay? So, it lacks an imagination. But without an imagination, the problem is the universe cannot expand. It cannot renew itself. It cannot rejuvenate. So, to solve this problem, what God does is create us, okay? Humans.

Because the problem with humans is that we exist in three different planes, okay? There is the ethereal, the spiritual, and the material. Okay? So, we're existing in multiple And when we exist on the material, we have bodies, right? And these bodies pain and pleasure. We can also die.

And as a result, we can sin. Okay? What allows us to sin is free Why it's important to sin, though, is that you can now be creative. You can now take risks. You can now be imaginative. What's important in this process is to redeem yourself, to forgive yourself. The problem then is, okay, if we can sin, we can do whatever we want, how do we know what is good and what is evil? And the solution to this is this. Because when God created us, okay, he breathed into us life. That's what it says in the Bible.

Therefore, there is a spark in us that is divine. Okay? So, we're humans, and there's a spark in us that is divine. All right? I'm sorry for the bad drawing, okay? I'm not an artist. But there's a spark in us that's divine, and it is called love. So, God is love. And when we love, the spark in us awakens and it grows. So, how does this thing grow and glow? The answer is we love someone else, okay? All right? Because the thing about the spark is that it wants to return to the source.

It wants to return to God, and that's what drives us. This eternal compulsion to return to the source of who we are, even though we've forgotten who we are. Okay? So, the way to do this is we cannot return to the source in our world, but we can love someone else. Not money, not our pet, not a computer, but someone else. It has to be someone else because only in someone else is another spark.

So, we're drawn to the spark. And this is really important. When you love someone else, that person doesn't have to love you back, okay? Because love is about giving. It is And someone else should receive. Okay? So, when a mother loves a child, it doesn't matter if the child loves her back. All that matters is that she loves him or her unconditionally. And when that happens, the spark in us glows. When it glows, it reconnects back to the source. All right? So, the moment we choose to love someone unconditionally, this glows and it grows and returns us to the source.

What happens now is this. It's really powerful that when this happens, our understanding of the universe expands. Because now our view is more cosmic. It's more global than before. We leave ourselves and we enter into the And this is what empowers the So, this is how Dante understands our purpose, why we're here, where we came from, where we're going. It is so that our compulsion, our will, is always to return to the source. To do so, we have to love someone else, okay? But in the process of loving else, love Let me say someone else.

This expands our imagination. And so, this sounds all a bit confusing, right? So, let's go back and talk about the Odyssey. All right, the Odyssey. The Odyssey is an epic poem about a family, right? Penelope, and Telemachus. Odysseus has left Penelope, and they're heartbroken. They long to return to each other, okay? They long to return to each other. During the Trojan War, Odysseus becomes traumatized by the horrors of war. Remember how he constructs the Trojan horse? But And he constructs the Trojan horse in order to return to Penelope, right?

It's his love for Penelope that expands his imagination, that allows him to conceive of the Trojan horse. The Trojan horse allows the Greeks to destroy Troy, but it traumatizes Odysseus because he sees himself how terrible war is. He came to war He came to Troy in order to restore a family, right? To restore Menelaus and Helen. But with the Trojan horse, he sees that, no, this is destroying families because the Trojans are being killed and their wives are being enslaved. And this traumatizes him. It breaks him apart. And it splits him from But he longs to return to Penelope, and in the process, their love for each other, once they combine, once they bind each other, it expands his imagination.

And by expanding his imagination, it allows him to heal himself. All right? Okay? So, this is the dynamic at work. What's amazing about this is the Odyssey was written by Homer, and this is written by Dante. What's amazing about what happened is that Dante never read Homer. He read Because Dante can read Latin. He can't read Greek. So, he doesn't have access to the Iliad and the Odyssey. He doesn't actually know what Homer wrote and said. But working independently, they were able to come to the same framework, understanding of how the universe works.

Okay, that's pretty amazing. All right? All right. So, this is the cosmology of Dante. Now, there's certain problems with this. The problem is this. The spark seeks to love another spark so that the spark can return to the source. Okay, which is God, the monad. Once you truly love someone, your imagination expands, right? And when your imagination expands, the universe itself expands.

And this is how and why we were created, to expand the universe. Because God cannot imagine. Only we can imagine. Because we can feel pain. Because we can sin. Because we can forgive each other. But there's a problem with this framework, okay? The problem is this.

We cannot love someone else, okay? Sometimes our soul cannot expand outwards. It's trapped inside of us. The answer is because we've sinned so much, okay? The sin is so much that we cannot forgive each other. Okay? We cannot forgive ourselves. We cannot forgive each other. And so we become trapped in who we are. We cannot expand outwards. Therefore, we become distant from the source. Okay? So, rather than moving to the source, which is heaven, we move downwards into our own hell.

So, in other words, heaven and hell are constructions of our own imaginations. They are the consequences of our emotional state. We have free will and we should choose to love someone else because that's what brings us back to the source. But sometimes we don't know that and we commit so much sin that we don't think we're worthy of the source. We're not worthy of God and therefore we create hell to imprison ourselves in. And again, this sounds confusing, but let's use the example of the Iliad.

And rather than feeling elation, joy in being the best warrior in the world, he instead descends into his own hell. He's trapped in his own hell. And it's only when Priam forgives him that he's able to forgive And then he's able to restore himself. All right? Okay, so there's two dimensions at work. When you love someone, when you do good, you ascend to the source, your imagination expands, the universe expands. But when you commit sin and the sin is so bad that you're not able to forgive, then you trap yourself in hell and you are there for all of eternity.

What's really important to understand is space and time are constructs of our imagination. So, in other words, even as we're speaking now, all right? Our souls are also living in eternity. So, the moment we commit a sin, we imagine ourselves in a certain place in hell.

And we could be there for all eternity unless we in our life choose to redeem No one can redeem us. Only we can redeem ourselves, through our imagination and through our love. Okay, does that make sense? All right. So, what he's going to show, he's going to tell us this much later, okay? But in Inferno, he's going to construct the structure of hell. All right. So, what is hell?

So, in hell, there are different layers, okay? Different circles. And obviously, the lower you go, The greater the punishment, the greater the sin.

All right? Here at this level, it's really about trapping yourself in hell. But the lower you go, the more people you trap in hell and the longer you trap them in hell for. So, the worst crime, the worst sin in Dante's world, is treachery.

Because think of Achilles and Patroclus. In many ways, Achilles betrays Patroclus. And as a result, Achilles feels guilt for betraying Patroclus. And if you remember the Iliad, he remembers Patroclus as a ghost that's haunting All right. So, treachery is the worst sin because you trap yourself in hell as well as others.

Then you have fraud. So, what you're doing is you are reducing the capacity of others to love. Right? So, if I lie to you, you want to lie to other people as well. That's just human nature. When you lie to other people, you cannot engage in love. You cannot engage in giving yourself to others. You become insecure. You become broken. Right? Same with fraud. When you cheat others, others are going to want to cheat others as well. It's almost like a virus. All right.

Okay. So, this is a schematic of how hell is constructed, okay? So, remember how we said that in the first circle of hell, it's called In limbo, it's kind of nice, okay? It's like here, but people live forever. And these people did nothing wrong. They did actually nothing wrong, but they were born before the time of And therefore, people were not aware of God. Okay? And these people include Julius Caesar. Okay? So, Julius Caesar is in limbo along other great historical figures. Then we go into people who have committed sin, including lust, okay?

So, remember people who committed lust are people like Dido and Cleopatra. And their punishment is they're just stuck in a whirlwind. And so they are moving around hell. They're being swept by the wind. And you think about it, this is actually a very appropriate punishment for lust, right? Because lust means that you are swept away by emotions. You are swept away by your lust for that person. You cannot control your emotions. And so, their punishment in hell is just being whipped around in a whirlwind, okay?

And the purpose So, the purpose of hell is to force you to engage in reflection. Because remember, the universe is governed by free will. So, people are in hell not because they did something wrong, but because they choose to be there because they thought they deserved to be there. All right. So, every punishment is constructed in a way that forces people to see the errors of their ways and to want to reform. But you don't have to. Okay? And then you have gluttony. And gluttony is basically overindulgence.

You want too much. And so, if you remember the punishment for overindulgence, gluttony, it's rain. And it's like a rain that never stops. And that's a pretty fitting punishment for gluttony, where you like food and you don't want to stop, right? So, it's almost like rain raining on you and it can never stop. Okay? So, then again, the purpose is to force you to see the error of your ways, to see the limitations of your sin, and to want to All right? And then we get into the worst circle.

And here, this is basically self sin, okay? Meaning sin that only impacts you. Now, we get to the sin that impacts others, okay? So, here it's violence. Then you go to fraud. Then the very worst is treachery.

And this is how hell is constructed. All I want to talk about is the two bottom circles of hell. Traitors to guests and friends, and traitors to Okay? So, treachery is a really important concept in The Divine Comedy because treachery is the worst way to condemn people away from God. All right? And what Dante says is that there are four different types of treachery and each is worse than the other. The first type of treachery, betrayal, is when you betray your family. And for Dante, this is actually the least problematic of all betrayals because you're born into a family.

You don't actually choose to be part of a family, okay? And as such, when we betray someone, it's bad, but it's not as bad as if you choose to go into a bond with someone and then betray that person.

All right? So, that's why traitors to guests and friends are the worst, because these are bonds created by free will and trust. And so, you're destroying the person's capacity to trust other people, which destroys that person's capacity to love other people. All right? So, the example that Dante uses is this Count Ugolino, okay? Count Ugolino.

Count Ugolino. And he's actually a real person. So, remember how Dante was participating in these political wars in Italy? Well, from his perspective, the worst culprit was Count Ugolino, who was the head of Pisa. He comes from a prominent family and he's power crazy. So, what he does is he betrays everyone in order to obtain power. And then finally, he was betrayed by one of his friends, an archbishop. And this archbishop betrays Count Ugolino and throws him in the prison along with his children and he throws away the key so that they starve to death together.

Okay? And when Dante and Virgil encounter Count Ugolino, he is biting the head of the archbishop. They're stuck in a frozen lake to represent all of eternity, to represent immutability, the incapacity to change, and this is happening over and over, where Count Ugolino is biting the head of the archbishop. Now, if you think about it, this is an analogy to Achilles mutilating the body of Hector. Right? Remember in the Iliad? Achilles kills Hector in the battle and at this point, he should return Hector's body for ransom to the Trojans so the Trojans can bury him.

But instead, Achilles spends all his time just mutilating Hector's body. Achilles feels guilt and sorrow for the loss of his friend Patroclus. He takes it out on Hector. Okay? By mutilating Hector's body. The same dynamic is happening here, where Count Ugolino blames the archbishop for the death of his family.

But he in his heart knows it's not the archbishop that killed his children. It was he himself who condemned his children because he constantly engaged in the pursuit of power. When you engage in the pursuit of power, you move away from love. You lose the capacity to love your children and so, you condemn your children to hell and to Okay? So, it's this self-hatred that drives his hatred of the archbishop. So, it's very similar to the Iliad. And what Homer says and what Dante says is the same thing, which is that betraying others condemns you to betraying everyone, including your own children.

And that makes you hate yourself so much that you burn with self-hatred for all of Okay? You are now the most imprisoned in hell because of your self-hatred. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. So, what we're going to do is we're going to read this part from The Divine Comedy. And so, the story is again, Count Ugolino, he's always engaged in power politics. He's always engaged in betrayal, including betrayal of his own people in Eventually, the people of Pisa get really angry at him and they overthrow him, led by the archbishop.

He's thrown into prison. His children are also put in the prison with him. And the archbishop throws away the key. So, they're just left to starve. As they're starving, it is implied that Count Ugolino eats his own children. Okay? And that's a metaphor for what betrayal is. Because when you betray someone, you're cannibalizing that person's soul. Okay? And you are cannibalizing the soul of everyone around you. All right? So, this is just a story told by Count Ugolino to Dante, who's asking him, "Why are you here?" Okay? Back to you.

They were awake by now. Okay? They were my sons, okay? Like my four sons. Okay? So, again, he's stuck in prison. They threw away the key. And he's stuck there with his four young The hour drew near at which our food was usually brought and each because of what he drowned dreamed was anxious. Below, I heard them Sorry, I really can't see what's on the Nailing.

And they, who thought I'd done that out of hunger, immediately rose and told me, "Father, it would be far less painful for us if you ate of us. For you clothed us in this sad flesh. It is for you to strip it off." Okay. All right. So, the count, he's hungry. He knows he's at fault for condemning his entire family to death. But he cannot bring himself to admit this. And he becomes very anxious and he starts biting himself because he's so afraid of what will happen to his sons.

His sons see this and they feel pity for him and say, "Are you hungry?" And he can't answer. So, they basically said to him, "You know what? It's better for you to eat us than for us to see you starve." All right? So, the sons are demonstrating a last act of love for their father. And because the man has betrayed so many people and he can only see the world in terms of betrayal, he doesn't recognize this act of love. He's confused by it and he's desperate to feed himself. So, he actually eats his sons.

And so, that's why treachery is so devastating, because it blinds you to the possibility of love. Okay? It denies you the possibility of love. And it lets you commit the most evil because you refuse to believe that love exists.

All right. Now, okay? This is the most interesting part, where we are now at the very bottom of hell. We've entered the very center of hell. And so, this is the place for the worst people. And so, there are four people in the very center of hell. There's this Satan, Lucifer, okay? The angel who betrayed God and who was condemned to hell. And then, he's biting three individuals who betrayed God. He is biting, chewing on Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. That makes sense. The other people don't actually make any sense.

They are Cassius and Brutus. And I'll explain to you why it doesn't really make sense later, okay? But can you read? You can skip this part. This is Latin. Okay. But basically the king of God No, sorry. The king of hell is before us. Toward us and therefore keep your eyes ahead, my master said, to see if you can spy him. Just as when night falls on our hemisphere or when a heavy fog is blowing thick, a windmill seems to wheel when seen far off. So then I seem to see that sort of structure.

And next, because the wind was strong, I shrank behind my guide. There was no other shelter. And now, with fear, I set it down in meter. I was where all the shades were fully covered but visible as swifts of straw and glass. There are some lie flat and others stand erect, one on his head and one upon his souls. And some bend face to feet, just like a But after we had made our way ahead, my master felt he now should have me see that creature who was once a handsome presence.

He stepped aside and made me stop and said, "Look, here's this and this is the place and this is the place where you will have to arm yourself with fortitude."

Cools hell down. But this lacks agency, lacks ideas, lacks everything, okay? So it's just a machine now. And this Satan, Lucifer, has three heads and on each head is biting three people.

The first is, of course, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus. And again, this makes perfect sense. But you have Brutus and Cassius. And Brutus and Cassius are the ones who betrayed Julius Okay? So if we just extend the logic, you would say, "Okay, well, if Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and Jesus is and Brutus and Cassius betrayed Julius Caesar, therefore Julius Caesar should be God as well, right? Therefore, Julius Caesar should be in heaven." But he's not in heaven. He's in limbo. This makes no sense. Okay? This is a paradox.

And again, Dante does this a lot, where these paradoxes are for you to think that maybe everything I'm seeing is not real. Maybe this reality is being created for me by a stronger power, okay? So the question then is, who would think of putting Brutus and Cassius into hell? Now that person, of course, would be Okay? And this gives us another clue that maybe it's Virgil who's master of hell and not Lucifer, Satan. Because Lucifer and Satan don't have agency. They have no imagination. They don't actually speak or think. They're just a machine.

Whereas Virgil is the one who's navigating and negotiating hell and maybe he wants to put Brutus in hell because Virgil's master, of course, is Augustus Caesar. And Augustus Caesar, his father is Julius Caesar. And in fact, Augustus made Julius Caesar God of his time. Okay? So if you just assume this logically, it doesn't make any sense if we just think that everything is as it seems. All right? Now, what's going to happen is that they're going to climb Lucifer and escape hell and now they're in purgatory. All right? They've left hell, now they're in purgatory.

And this is the first stanza of Sorry, not the first stanza. But when they go to purgatory, and purgatory is actually a And they're going to climb the mountain so that they can ascend ultimately to But on the shores of purgatory, they meet the guardian of purgatory. And this guardian is named Who is Cato? Cato, along with Brutus and Cassius, Julius Caesar. At this time, Julius Caesar was amassing power for himself in Rome. There were a lot of people who opposed Julius Caesar, including Ptolemy and including Cato. Cato chose to kill himself rather than submit to Julius Caesar.

But this makes no sense because first of all, okay, was born before Jesus. Does that make sense? He was born before Jesus. And Virgil told us that if you're born before Jesus, the best place you can hope for is limbo. That's it. But Cato is in purgatory, which is better than hell. Not only that, but he's the master and guardian of purgatory. That makes no sense. That's point one. Point two is he killed himself.

This is a sin. Okay? This is a crime. You should be in hell for that. Why is he in purgatory? The third thing is he betrayed Okay? Or opposed Cassius and Brutus also betrayed and opposed Caesar and they are burning in hell.

So again, this is a paradox. And it forces us to think about what's really going on here. All right? So can you read I saw a solitary patriarch near me. His aspect worthy of such reverence that even son to father owes no more. His beard was long and mixed with white as were the hairs upon his head and his hair spread down to his chest in the divided tress. The rays of the four holy stars so framed his face with light that in my sight he seemed like one who is confronted by the sun.

"Who are you who, against the hidden river, were able to escape the eternal prison?" He said, moving those venerable plumes. "Who is your guide? What serves you both as lantern when, from the deep night that will always keep the hellish valley dark, you were set free? The laws of the abyss, have they been broken or has a new change a changed decree in heaven let you, so damned, approach my rocky slopes?"

As I have told you, I was sent to him for his deliverance. The only road I could have taken was the road I took. I showed him all the people of perdition. Now I intend to show to him those spirits who, in your care, are bent on expiation. "To tell you how I led him would take long. It is a power descending from above that helped me guide him here to see and hear you." Okay. So what's happening here is Cato's like, "What are you guys doing here?" And Virgil steps up and tries to explain what's going on.

Now, what's interesting is that Cato and Virgil know each other. They were born and they lived around the same time in Rome, okay? And they were in limbo together. So they know each other really well, but Virgil is being very polite to him. He's almost afraid of Cato, okay? All right. Keep on reading. "Now may it please you to his coming. He goes in search of liberty, so precious and as he who gives his life for it must You know it, who in Utica found death Okay, so he killed himself in Utica.

Then incline to us. Allow our journey through your seven realms. I shall thank her for the kindness you bestow if you would let your name be named below. Okay, all right. This is really interesting, okay?

David. These people who are in the Bible and who are part of the Christian tradition, Jesus took with him. But everyone else is stuck in But he's saying, "Cato, while you're not a Christian, you killed yourself, you were with us in but you were able to ascend to purgatory while your wife Marcia was still left Okay? This is like a paradox.

Okay, keep on going. Now that she dwells beyond the evil river, she has no power to move me any Such was the law decreed when I was But if a lady come from heaven speaks in hell's mouth Okay, all right.

If you make a lot of money, then you want to share this money with the people you love, right? But again, this is where Dante is different, because what is the most important thing is free If you truly love someone, you let that person choose. You don't force that person to do anything against his or her free will. Okay? So, I, Cato, I chose to come to because I willed it. I desired it. Therefore, God let me come. I was able to find the will and desire to self-reflect, to forgive myself, and to come to purgatory.

Marcia did not, but I cannot make her self-reflect. She has to choose to do so on her own. So, as long as she's there, I have to let her be there.

My love for her won't change anything. So, I choose to focus on other things. Okay, does that make sense? All right, it does you no good to force anyone to do anything. That's not what love is. All right. Keep on reading. As you say, there is no need of flattery. It is not indeed to ask me for her sake. Go then, but first wind a smooth rush around his waist and bathe his face to wash away all of hell's stains. For it would not be seemly to approach with eyes still dimmed by any mists.

The first custodian angel, one from paradise. This solitary island, all around its very base, there where the breakers pound, bare rush on the soft and muddy ground. There is no other plant that looks below, no plant with leaves or plant that as it grows hardens and breaks beneath the waves' harsh blows. That done, do not return by the same path. The sun, which rises now, will show you how this hillside can be climbed more easily. With that, he vanished and without a word, I rose and drew in closer to my guide and it was on him I set my eyes.

Okay? So, again, this is a journey undertaken by okay, into the cosmos. And he's taking us with him. What's really interesting about Dante is he appreciates that for us to understand, we first have to misunderstand, okay? It's That leads to understanding.

Any questions? All right, okay. So we'll continue this next week. Okay? So, again, this is a journey Okay, into the cosmos. And he's taking us with him. What's really interesting about Dante is he appreciates that for us to understand, we first have to misunderstand, okay? It's that leads to understanding.

We have to correct ourselves in order to fully understand the truth. What he also believes is that for us to be virtuous, we first have to sin. Okay? It's okay to sin because it allows us to recognize our limitations and then makes us much more virtuous. And it's this process that drives the imagination. Does that make sense? If you want to understand, you first have to misunderstand. If you want to be virtuous, you must first sin.

Any questions?