There is, in reality, a distinction between behavior which incites guilt and behavior which produces shame. Guilt is feeling badly about your behavior because of something external; you try to hide what you’ve done from the world around you. Shame, on the other hand, is more primitive and internal; you feel bad about yourself because you’ve acted contrary to yourself. In the world Dante is exploring, what happens when you do what you think is right, and therefore feel no shame? If it does not align with what God believes to be virtuous you either begin to feel guilty in your lifetime and hope to repent your sin, or you spend eternity being punished to make sure you feel absolute regret.
Justice in Dante’s Inferno appears, thus far, to be based on a very specific portrayal and direction of human passions. You are instructed to be human, but on God’s terms. As such, it is unfortunately easy to be damned for acting as you feel fitting. In Canto III, Virgil and Dante pass all of the damned souls who neither led remarkable or despicable lives. They are punished for remaining impartial, and never stirring the pot. I’ve always understood impartiality to be a virtue in itself in a world where even the smallest conflicts have waged war. (Ex: America once had a war with Britain over a pig.)
In this canto, a particular soul I feel is being wrongly punished is the pope Celestine V. He made the great refusal, abdicating his position as pope. He told the court at his time that they needed to elect a pope, and they chose him without even asking if he would consider it. By resigning, he was honest with himself and his people in admitting he was not fit for the position. He was not the person who should have had that power, and to carry on as if he was worthy would have been disgraceful to the Lord and his disciples. His action was praiseworthy.
Further, arguing that instead of noble he was simply a coward, shouldn’t the Lord have pity on a soul too weak to carry out his bidding? Apparently not. Rather, the poor soul is damned to experience his oddly inverted immortality suffering, running from insects.
Hi Viv,
I agree with your outrage at the retribution against souls deemed too impartial. Pope Celestine V’s case is one of several instances where it seems that the punishment does not fit the crime. Even though the pope felt incapable of leading the church, in Dante’s eyes, he is a sinner deserving of intense and extreme punishment. Much of this stems from the fact that we adhere to a completely different value system than Dante. As you said, impartiality is an often praised virtue in today’s world, whereas it is condemned in Dante’s.
I also enjoyed your introductory analysis–it really gets to the heart of the matter. Humans are free to express whatever they feel as long as it is within the God’s ordained boundaries. You summed this idea up best in the following statement: “You are instructed to be human, but on God’s terms”.
I really like your line: ” You are instructed to be human, but on God’s terms.” It is a great summation of the way of life presented in The Inferno and the infractions that put so many of the souls in hell. I wonder if most of the souls who are in hell ever thought that they would be punished in hell for doing things that they thought were right but were against God’s law. On another point, what purpose does it serve to punish these people if it is not meant as a preventative measure in order to inform the living that the things they think are right are against God’s law and will be punished by an eternity in hell? After all, word of the punishment of these type of things would never reach the living. This is where Dante comes in, and this must be his purpose.