The Uncanonical Dante: the Divine Comedy and Islamic Philosophy

Chapter Three I cannot hope to settle the issue of Dante's Averroism, a subject that has been contentiously debated from his day down to ours. For the record I should state that the consensus among modern Dante scholars is that he was not an Averroist.32 I myself believe that he was, but that is not the issue here. Our topic is Dante and the Western canon, and for what I want to show it is sufficient to have established Dante's debt to Averroës. The importance of a central Islamic philosopher to such acanonical European author as Dante in my view puts to rest many of the arguments typically made against the Western canon and especially its supposed Eurocentrism. Dante was evidently far more knowledgeable about non-Western authors than many of their champions today. I wonder how many of the critics of the Western canon have even heard of Averroës, let alone read any of his works.

The case of Dante shows that the simplistic opposition between Western and non-Western cultures often set up today cannot bear careful scrutiny. The sequence Aristotle-Averroës-Dante may serve as an emblem of the complex interactions that have taken place over the**[End Page 147]** centuries between Western and non-Western cultures. Islamic culture is certainly categorized as non-Western in today's debates, but as shown by the case of Averroës (as well as other Islamic philosophers such as Alfarabi), Islamic thought was profoundly rooted in the very Greek world that is at the fountainhead of Western culture. Indeed, in his so-called Decisive Treatise, Averroës displays a remarkable tolerance for ancient Greek thought, even though he recognizes that in Muslim terms it is the work of infidels:

But if someone other than ourselves has already examined that subject, it is clear that we ought to seek help toward our goal from what has been said by such a predecessor on the subject, regardless of whether this other one shares our religion or not. . By "those who do not share our religion" I refer to those ancients who studied these matters before Islam. 33

With this defense of studying ancient philosophy, Averroës proved to be one of the central conduits of Greek thought to the European Middle Ages. The implications of this fact for our understanding of Western culture are still largely unexamined, but at a minimum it shows that the roots of European culture in its classical past are fundamentally intertwined with what we think of as non-Western sources. In short, the Western culture that is often branded today as Eurocentric in fact already incorporates a strong Islamic and hence non-Western component, even in such acanonical author as Dante. And Dante's case is by no means unique. Careful examination of another classic of the Western canon,Don Quixote , would similarly show that Islamic thought played a great role in shaping Cervantes's vision. Recall that in Cervantes's fiction the ultimate source of the details of Don Quixote's story is an earlier text said to be by an Arab narrator, Cide Hamete Benengeli.

To today's opponents of the canon, I would thus say: "Instead of rejecting the Western canon, study it carefully, and you will find that it is not exclusively Western after all. The situation is in fact far more complex than you realize, and studying classics like theDivine Comedy orDon Quixote may well introduce you to issues that have been quite central in what you

yourselves think of as non-Western cultures, issues to the understanding of which non-Westerners have made major contributions."

But I have a caution to the defenders of the Western canon as well: [End Page 148] do not defend it by reading it canonically. Authors may becanonical in the sense of being essential to the understanding of our culture without beingcanonical in the sense of being orthodox proponents of something monolithically designated as the Western tradition. As I have tried to show, it is only by reading Dante noncanonically that we become aware of the full richness and complexity of his thought, especially the way he is open to countercurrents of ideas within the supposedly rigid orthodoxy of the Middle Ages. We do no service to the Western tradition when we present itscanonical authors as one monument to orthodoxy after another. Such a rigidification of the canon only invites adventurous students and scholars to search elsewhere--outside the canon--for the excitement and novelty of independent and subversive thought. But if we remain open to the possibility that an authorcanonical in his importance may yet be uncanonical in his thinking, we will find that the Western tradition contains enough tensions, contradictions, and conflicts within itself to keep even the most skeptical scholar occupied for a lifetime. And we will also find that the Western canon already incorporates non-Western components--to the point where an Islamic philosopher can find an honored place among the sages of ancient Greece and Rome in that mostcanonical and yet uncanonical of all works, Dante'sDivine Comedy.

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