1) A devaluation of our existence: Dante’s Infernal vision of the afterlife makes the implication that the human Will, when exposed to the knowledge of non-being (death), is the foundational principle of morality. Sophocles expresses the same principle in his Antigone. Both Dante and Sophocles imply that there are worlds beyond and beneath the world our existence is in (the empirical world, the world of Life), which follows its’ own rules. They both implicitly show that this world of Life is directed by the human Will (sightless desire, either for power or for pleasure). Those who are suffering from the empirical world around them thus rely on a different world for order. The world Antigone relies on for justice is the world of the Gods, the world Dante relies on for justice is his Inferno. Both places are ordered, reasoned and fair. Both give a sense of balance. This world of Reason the souls live in opposes the injustice of the world of Will (the world of Life) that the body is in. But by doing this, both Dante and Sophocles imply that Life is just an endless, pointless, disarray of desires and human Will. For they forget that any conception of death is an inverted reflection of life. They gave life justice but in an illusory position outside of it. These otherworlds where justice and order persists seems to devalue our existence in this world, the world we presently live in with our plurality of Wills. In other words, injustice, insatiety, suffering and deception exist here, but justice and salvation exists somewhere beyond. Explain how Dante’s and Sophocles’ principle of morality has devalued our existence and how their conceptions of the afterlife implicitly uncovers their perspective on Life. Or, argue against this point and show how their principle has founded a well-formed sense of morality.
2) Telos: For a telos to exist on it’s own the end goal must be absolute, or else the goal is relative to something else, and if you take away that something else you also take away the telos, and thus meaning. In the stories of The Thousand and One Nights, they have a telos relative to a framework. Would it be true, if we take away that framework the telos itself will disappear and the stories will become meaningless? They would just be told for the sake of continuity? And could now also be enjoyed in isolation? Is this framework important? Why is Dante’s telos of going to paradise independent from the poem’s framework (or why isn’t it- and if it isn’t explain how Dante’s journey would be, or not be, meaningless if we take away that framework)?