The Mountain To Climb - What Can Dante Alighieri Tell Us About Self Improvement?
How Does One Self-Improve?
What does it mean to grow as a person? Although this simple question lacks a simple answer, every human culture depends on how that question is answered. In modern American society, opposing schools of thought on personal growth and self-improvement abound. What one school of thought presents as personal growth, another designates as corruption. To analyze different modes of self-improvement, we can divide the concept of self-improvement into two parts: means and ends. Thus, we can boil down the question of “What does it mean to grow as a person?” into the defining the end result of development and the path taken.
To answer this question, we look to the philosophy of Dante Alighieri that he outlined in his poem Purgatorio, part of his larger work The Divine Comedy. For purposes of discussion we use the five stages of recovery to draw parallels between those stages and Dante’s journey out of Hell, through Purgatory, and into Heaven.
The five stages of recovery are a useful model of self-improvement because they outline the psychology of self-improvement. Traditionally used for addiction recovery, this model generalizes to any negative behaviors one may be trying to change. In order, the five stages are
Denial - the individual is unaware of or refuses to see (usually out of irrational fear) the thoughts, actions, and emotions associated with the behavior. They are stuck in rationalizing, denying, or flying into defense mechanisms.
Contemplation - the individual is willing to look at detrimental thoughts, actions, and emotions and consider whether these are worth changing. They are still snagged by defense mechanisms.
Acceptance - the individual has assessed the thoughts, actions, and emotions and come to accept and own them as they are. There may still be some defense mechanisms, but these mechanisms are transcended for a short time.
Action - the individual is motivated enough to engage in action to change the destructive thoughts, actions, and behaviors. This involves an active change in their behaviors as well as deeper insight into the issues with their behavior and healing the underlying thoughts and emotions.
Maintenance - the individual has worked through the dysfunctional behavior to the point where they can manage the behavior and notice when they are slipping up. At this point, the emphasis is placed on making sure they don’t slip back.
Why do we use Purgatorio as a lens to flesh out the five stages? Dante Alighieri’s purpose for writing the Divine Comedy was complex, but part of it was to make statements on fundamental aspects of human nature that can be applied to our day to day life. If Inferno discusses the nature of suffering and the results of sin, then Purgatorio meditates on transcending one’s suffering and personal flaws to create a better life for themselves and more just society for those around them. We can discard the Christian aspects of the poem and reduce the ideas to universal aspects of human nature if we go in with the assumption that such universal Truths exist and are expressed in different forms through various religions. This allows us to find a notion of the “source code” of humanity with purgation loosely tying to debugging the existing code.
I: Denial
Still plugged into the matrix, an individual in the state of denial is oblivious to the need for change. Most people live in this state with respect to their destructive behaviors, not as a result of laziness, but from a predilection for the comfort of the familiar. Denial connects to Dante’s Inferno more than Purgatorio since the suffering that a sinner endures is the result of the individual not realizing that they act upon vices that harm society and themselves. In this state of mind, there is only suffering. Inferno chronicles Dante’s allegorical journey through Hell; our framework maps that Hell to the internal state of mind of someone in denial. Christian damnation becomes equivalent to the reality that one will continue to suffer until they attempt to change their ways, and the impetus for change must come from within.
A discussion of the concepts of Inferno and the state of denial can be found in my essay on culture and sin.
II: Contemplation
Just as Dante emerges from Hell with his guide Virgil, the representative of reason, an individual enters the stage of contemplation when they apply reason to explain dysfunction in their life and consider the possibility that they are the source of the problem. Thus, a mapping between The Divine Comedy and the five stages necessitates that Virgil’s philosophical statements throughout Inferno parallel the stage of contemplation.
Dante Alighieri drew inspiration from Aristotelian ethics to understand the nature of sin. He chose Aristotle due to his reverence of the Classics and the focus on reason. Vice results from the lack of moderation, while virtue arises from the pursuit of moderation. For example, courage is the virtue that results from a moderation of the vices of rashness and cowardice.
In my essay on Inferno, I commented on how self-awareness and critical thought are necessary to liberate one from their own suffering.
Virgil’s presence and actions communicate that reason allows one to transcend destructive action and begin the path towards peace.
As readers, we can understand that one creates and maintains their suffering by losing awareness and cognitive faculties.
From these two ideas, we can build structure into the contemplation stage of self-improvement by taking inventory on the areas of our lives that are causing us harm and applying reason and self-awareness to do a critical assessment of whether we are acting through virtue or have allowed our actions to be driven by vice. An honest critical assessment of the personality is necessary to begin our metaphorical journey through Purgatory, which begins at the stage of acceptance.
III: Acceptance
Purgatorio begins at the stage of acceptance since the acceptance of one’s own faults and destructive behaviors parallel the repentance individuals must show to be given the chance to ascend to Heaven in Dante’s theology. Dante starts Purgatorio on the shores of Mt. Purgatory, trying to find entrance into the terraces of purgation. Cato, an ancient Roman senator, sends Dante and Virgil up the mountain to find the gate. As the two hike up, they encounter souls who prepare for the process of purgation. These souls serve as a means for Dante to comment on the preparation for change, including the emotional and philosophical nature of self-improvement.
In the first section of the poem, Dante prepares for his journey up the mountain and contemplates that one must set aside worldly pleasures during the process of purgation. The poet develops this idea by emphasizing the beauty of earthly life that exists in the area leading up to the terraces of purgation on the mountain. This fleeting appreciation for material life and the wistful understanding that he must give up attachment to the material world mirrors the mental attitudes one has in acceptance, which involve understanding how one’s attachment to material existence prevents them from attaining the virtue required to find inner peace. Just as Dante’s journey up Mt. Purgatory begins with detachment from material life, our own task of self-improvement must begin with letting go of material pleasures that we may be attached to so that we may act in a more principled manner.
Detaching from the material is neither simple nor quick. Throughout Purgatorio, the souls Dante encounters marvel that he retains his human form, which causes them to long for their former human bodies and lives. In Purgatory, the souls take on a shade form in which they have the shape of a human body but are not material. This shade form changes throughout the process of purgation depending on which vice the soul is in the process of purging. While the shade form takes on a human image, its immaterial nature reveals a “soul” existing within the human body meant to find union with God. This soul exists in a different realm than the material one. If we decouple this idea from Christian theology and put it in the context of a unified theory of theology and human experience, we may make connections to concepts of enlightenment from many Eastern traditions and say that the soul of Christian theology is the Self from Eastern traditions. In the context of the five steps, the longing for the human body represents how acceptance requires one to grieve their dysfunctional lifestyle and its function as a coping mechanism to fully embrace change. Grieving allows one to accept that they have moved on to a new phase of life and allows one to let go of what they used to identify with so that they may make space for something new. For a book that discusses grieving as a means of personal growth, see The Wild Edge of Sorrow.
Proper grieving makes way for the realization that we as humans are imperfect and meant to work at self-improvement throughout our life, both for our own happiness and for building a better society. In the tenth canto, Dante enters the first terrace of purgation and sees many souls crouched over as they bear massive rocks on their back. He asks Virgil what the purpose of the suffering is and Virgil tells Dante not to focus on the suffering itself that the souls endure but the purgation of the vice. He then comments:
Do you not see that we are born as worms,
Though able to transform into angelic butterflies
that unimpeded soar to justice?
Virgil’s statement reflects the Christian notion of original sin and the need to give oneself to a higher ideal (God) to achieve salvation, but this idea has parallels to other spiritualities as well. In Hindu theology and philosophy, there is a concept of karma that is carried on between lives that must be fulfilled, and it is through fulfilling one’s duty that one may attain enlightenment and be free of the cycle of reincarnation. From the secular point of view, this statement is an acceptance that we as individuals are never fully aware of our consciousness and motivations for the actions we take and are unable to criticize ourselves objectively. It is often our unconscious thoughts that cause us suffering and hurt the world around us, thus it is right that we undertake the process of self-improvement. The silver lining to this understanding that we are not perfect is that it frees us from harsh perfectionism that causes suffering and prevents growth. We create space to forgive ourselves and others.
From Purgatorio, we may deduce that the stage of acceptance is best done through giving up material attachments to the behavior we are trying to change, grieving any associated loss, and then appreciating our own imperfection and forgiving ourselves. From this base, we may take action.
IV: Action
Action is when the bulk of the work happens. Here, the individual takes the necessary steps to free themself of the destructive behaviors and enacts significant changes in their lifestyle. In Purgatorio, this is the process of purgation that the mountain is known for. After passing through the gates at the entry to Purgatory, Dante and Virgil walk through the seven terraces of purgation. Each terrace corresponds to one of the seven vices. Souls climb up the mountain, purging themselves of vice as angels guide them and make their way towards Heaven so they may reach salvation.
Just as how the punishment fits the sin in Inferno, the purgation fits the vice in Purgatorio. Souls on the terrace of envy have their eyes sewn shut and hear opposing opinions of people, which is opposite to the inclinations the vice draws. On the terrace of gluttony, the shades must endure insatiable hunger and malnourishment even though they eat constantly. Purgatory is set up so that every vice is made even through punishing work of the opposite nature. We may draw the parallel that the actions taken during this stage of self-improvement must be opposite to the destructive behaviors and thought patterns that we are trying to break free of. This serves the purpose of pushing us away from the vice and pulling us towards virtue.
Through this process of taking action, we come to realize that previously we viewed life in survival terms, treating everything as a zero-sum game. Viewing life as a non-zero-sum game gives us a more hopeful view of human existence and security in the virtue that we are cultivating. Virgil introduces this idea in Canto XV in his criticism of Dante setting his sights towards material things that must be divided to benefit people. Instead, Virgil suggests that Dante turn his sights towards heavenly things as there is an infinite amount of good that may come. The material world must be divided up and therefore becomes a zero-sum game, but virtue and principles are abstract and thus need not be divided. Bringing this idea back to a secular reality, we see this idea reflected in people who get the thing they were chasing and still remain unhappy. The saying “money can’t buy happiness” comes from the false promise of fulfillment in becoming rich, as becoming rich is nothing more than a way to meet some internal need that hasn’t been fulfilled in a healthy manner. Instead, these needs can be met by cultivating a principled and virtuous character. Attachments to material need then disappears.
Letting go of these material attachments is difficult. Our personalities contain fragmented selves that attempt to meet our emotional needs through attachment to the material world, manifesting in dysfunctional coping mechanisms. For this reason, taking action is painful because we grieve and dissolve parts of ourselves. The dissolving process is similar to death, as we’re allowing fragments of the ego to die. In Canto 27, Dante is close to finishing his journey through the terraces of purgation, but one final column of fire blocks him from his salvation. Virgil says to Dante:
You must believe that if you were confined
In the very belly of this flame a thousand years
It would not singe a single hair upon your head.
Virgil encourages Dante to step into the fire because he understands that the fires of purgation do not harm the material body and only burn away the parts of the ego that are unvirtuous and dysfunctional. Dante’s fear of stepping into the fire reflects our fear of taking action and enacting change since part of us must “die” if we are to grow. We can turn to the wisdom of Purgatorio in these moments and remind ourselves that through all of the pain and initial discomfort, we are making way for a better life for ourselves if we can get past the initial confusion and difficulty.
The process of action is difficult and continues the emotional challenges that remain from acceptance. Upon its completion, we find that life is better and that we do not wish to return to our dysfunctional behaviors and thought processes. The challenge then shifts to the maintenance of what we’ve cultivated.
V: Maintenance
Maintenance is the final stage of the five steps, though it is different in that it does not have an endpoint. Instead, the virtues and positive habits that we cultivated through the previous steps become reinforced into our character and habits. While this stage corresponds better to the final part of The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Dante’s time in the Garden of Eden gives some clues as to what the stage of maintenance may be like in the beginning.
In the final canti of the poem, Dante meets Beatrice in The Garden of Eden, where he confesses his own sins and vices while learning what it means for him to be on the virtuous and holy path. Beatrice serves as a redemptive mechanism for Dante. She lays out the nature of Dante’s vices and chastises him for straying from the holy path she laid out for him while she was still alive.
Dante’s stay in the Garden of Eden ends with witnessing the Apocalypse, which is described in The Book of Revelation. At the time of writing this article, I’m not sure how the Apocalypse fits into any sort of secular reading of the Bible outside of some notion of what happens in the end stage of society. I won’t attempt to write about it here but will leave the question open to future essays.
In any case, a future essay on Paradiso will provide more insight into the stage of maintenance and what it entails.
Why The Five Stages?
There’s nothing unique about the five stages of recovery addiction as a model for self-improvement. We chose to look at that model since fleshing out the model used to heal the most extreme types of problems one may face in life would generalize to less existential and severe problems. There are a variety of other models that exist for mapping the journey of self-improvement, and none of them hold dominion over the actual practice.
The one commonality among successful models for self-improvement is the focus on a beginning point, an identification of an endpoint, and a path taken. In the context of The Divine Comedy, these can be seen as Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory respectively. Any successful attempt at self-improvement requires moving through these three stages and changing the concept of “self” throughout the entire process. Christianity does not hold a monopoly on this idea either, many other religions create their own similar path. In Buddhism, one may identify Hell as the mind that is attached and unaware of the attachment and its link to suffering. The process of detaching then acts as a purgation and the subsequent state of enlightenment that results from complete detachment is the arrival into Heaven.
The desire to create mappings such as these is a project to find the “source code” to the human experience and what constitutes the actual journey a person takes while alive. While many would say that religions are distinct from each other and offer their own exclusive views on human existence, there is ample evidence that suggests each religion stems from the same core set of knowledge that is interpreted and acted upon differently. This project of mapping religions to each other and reconciling them with secular notions of growth suggests that the human experience is universal and all notions of God are the same once we get past the language each religion uses. Similarly, we may look at notions of God from philosophers such as Spinoza and attempt to reconcile them with ideas of God we arrive at from our investigation of religion.
In any case, we need not wait for a fleshed-out idea of the “source code” of humanity before we attempt to improve our lives. We may take the lessons from any philosophy and theology that makes sense to us and apply them in our own lives as we see fit in whatever framework we choose. The mapping between Purgatorio and the five stages of addiction recovery in this essay just gets us started on this process.