Now I Think I'm Kant

"Out of the crooked timber of man, no straight thing was ever made."
(At least it's not Dostoyevsky. And there will be no picture for either because neither of them are French.)

I was thinking about purgatory tonight. Specifically the Purgatorio by Dante. And here's the thing about that: at the top of the seven tiered mountain, each tier representing one of the deadly sins, just above Lust, is Eden. There Virgil takes his leave and Beatrice becomes our narator's guide. So I was wondering what that means. Medieval literature, more than almost any other, is laden with sybolic meaning in every image. There's a reason for that, but that reason is properly the subject of a dissertation, not a blog post. Click below for more.


I have thought up two good explanations. The first is that through the expiation of sins humanity slowly climbs the mount unto Paradise and ultimately the Prime Mover, the Divine Presence. The other, though, is much more apt, I think. And that other is this: Eden is built upon our most venial sins. Paradise is the icing on the human cake--a seven tiered wedding cake. There is no Eden but through our Avarice, and our Envy, and our Sloth. The idea of paradise is meaningless without or transgressions. And besides, why would you want to get to Eden unless you had that spark of sin in you? Unless you envied paradise, unless you sought a life of slothful repose, unless you lusted after warm breezes and luxury, then wherefore Eden?
I guess it is ultimately that hoary old argument that there is no light without dark. But I think it is more nuanced than that. Eden is built on Sin. Paradise is founded upon Purgatory, based itself as the cosmological inverse of the Inferno.