Penitence and Human Flourishing in Dante and Dostoevsky
By Melissa Cain Travis
Many great thinkers of the Western Tradition have emphasized the inverse correlation between human sin (non-virtuous living) and human happiness. They did not define happiness as maximal pleasure and minimal pain; rather, they understood it as a state of flourishing, what the ancient Greeks (notably, Aristotle) called eudaimonia. The path to eudaimonia, they argued, is a life of virtue, the pursuit of The Good. To live virtuously is to function properly as a human being, to be in harmony with our telos, while vicious living (succumbing to one’s vices) prevents our flourishing. To defy our true end as human beings is detrimental to our very essence. Here I’m reminded of St. Irenaeus’ famous proclamation, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” We become more human as we increase in virtue, as we become more Christ-like. As G.K. Chesterton puts it in The Everlasting Man, Christ was “something more human than humanity”; he was the ideal, the archetype to which we aspire. If you’ve read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, you will recall that the people in the story become more real as they move towards goodness.
We know firsthand that no one lives a life of perfect virtue; we experience moral failure daily. Christian writers of the Tradition openly acknowledged human sinfulness and — because we cannot save ourselves or earn salvation through good works — the necessity of a Redeemer. However, they also recognized that to flourish in this life, an appropriate response to our own sin is essential. Day by day, we must walk in repentance and the pursuit of The Good. This idea is imaginatively illustrated in both Dante’s Purgatorio and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
In the Purgatorio and The Brothers K, we encounter a common theme: the idea that sin is the root cause of a soul’s failure to flourish. Dante and, more subtly, Dostoevsky, both show us that a failure to recognize, mourn, and eliminate sin has the effect of impeding one’s progress towards a higher, more joyful state of existence. Moreover, both Dante and Dostoevsky imply that the quest for godliness is what gets us to the authentic Good Life. Chasing the counterfeit happiness through the vicious pleasures of our fallen world will not get us there.
In Canto 27 of the Purgatorio, an angel appears to Dante and his escort and urges them onward into the dreadful flames of Purgatory saying, “Holy souls, you cannot move ahead unless the fire has stung you first” (27.10-11). Virgil (Dante’s guide) assures Dante that the refining fire will be painful yet not kill him, and encourages him to “put down, your every fear; turn toward the fire, and enter, confident!” (27.31-32). After hesitating, Dante plunges into the burning agony, but, as Virgil promised, comes out the other side unscathed.
The next leg of Dante’s journey through Purgatory (Canto 28) takes him through an ancient forest where he encounters a fair woman gathering flowers in the primordial Garden. She reveals to Dante that the Highest Good created mankind to be and to do good, but that man exchanged “frank laughter and sweet sport for lamentation and for anxiousness” (28.94-96). Dante weeps bitterly, and the fair lady, who turns out to be his beloved Beatrice, says that the measure of his sorrow must match his sin (31.108), that penitence is achieved by lamenting one’s sin (30.145). Dante then confesses his sin, saying, “Mere appearances turned me aside with their false loveliness” (31.34-35), and expresses deep remorse for his failures. By the end of Purgatorio, Dante is fully sanctified, free of the vestiges of his earthly sin, “pure and prepared to climb unto the stars” (33.145). Thus, in the Purgatorio, we see that penitence was essential in Dante’s progress upwards towards God, the Highest Good.
In Book II, Chapter 4 of The Brothers Karamazov, we encounter a conversation between a “sentimental society lady” and a clerical elder. The lady tearfully confesses to the elder that she is far from happy because she lives in a state of persistent fear caused by uncertainty about the afterlife; she says, “The thought of the life beyond the grave distracts me to anguish, to terror. . . Oh, how unhappy I am! I stand and look about me and see that scarcely anyone else cares; no one troubles his head about it, and I’m the only one who can’t stand it. It’s deadly — deadly!” As a spiritual remedy for her plight, the elder prescribes a life of active love: “Strive to love your neighbour actively and indefatigably. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul. If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbour, then you will believe without doubt, and no doubt can possibly enter your soul.”
When the lady proceeds to lament her terrible inability to love others with purity of heart because of how much she despises their common ungratefulness, the elder replies,
It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. . . If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself.
In other words, a penitent heart, a sincere desire to turn away from sinful thoughts and attitudes, and efforts towards the virtue of active neighborly love are part of the spiritual progress that will diminish doubt and increase her peace and contentment.
Thus, Dostoevsky, through the words of the elder, communicates the same idea observed in Dante’s Purgatorio: that the pursuit of happiness — understood as human flourishing — involves the biblical command to live in obedience to God and to acknowledge, lament, and repent of the inevitable failures along the path of sanctification. We need not worry about missing out on genuine pleasure; as Lewis famously put it in Mere Christianity, “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”
—Melissa Cain Travis holds a PhD in Humanities (Philosophy) from Faulkner University's Great Books program and an MA in Science and Religion from Biola University. She is a Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, where she teaches adult education courses related to the intersection of science, faith, and philosophy. To learn more about her publications and academic interests, visit melissacaintravis.com.