Dante Alighieri · Philosophy

Love, the Engine of Everything

The doctrine at the heart of the <em>Purgatorio</em>: that every action a creature performs springs from love, so that virtue is love rightly ordered and every sin is love gone wrong - misdirected, too weak, or too strong. To be saved is not to love less but to love rightly.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that in the Purgatorio Virgil teaches that love is the seed of every virtue and of every act that merits punishment, and that the mountain is organized by three kinds of disordered love: love perverted (aimed at a neighbour&rsquo;s harm), love deficient (too little zeal for the good), and love excessive (t…

Leads to Augustine of Hippo.

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