Abstract

Dante's treatise on world government claims that the universal and secular government of humankind, the "temporal Monarchy," does not depend on the authority of the Pope because it achieves its end solely with the guidance of philosophical teachings. However, these philosophical teachings considered world government to be impossible. The only authors to defend universal government were Dante's opponents , who attributed this rule to God and the Church. They thought Dante's claim was heretical because it asserted the self-sufficiency of human reason for achieving happiness. By contrast, modern scholars have emphasized the spiritual features of the treatise such as Dante's discussion of the justice of God's will. According to this reading, however, Dante deceived himself about the philosophical character of his inquiry and, thus, inadvertantly re-subordinated secular government to the Church. ;These conflicting interpretations are resolved by considering the dual purpose of the treatise: not all of the treatise is for revealing the timeless truth; it also has the timely objective of persuading the zealous to make peace with the Empire. The dissertation examines Dante's conclusions in light of his mixture of rhetoric, dialectic, and detached reasoning. For example, he defends the historical existence of the universal rule of the best man not in the chapters arguing from reason, but in the more polemical arguments from faith, as if reason told us only what the Monarchy would be if it could exist. The treatise operates contrary to our modern expectations: the seemingly non-political material is the most politicized discussion in the work, while the seemingly political material says less about the government of humans by the Monarch than about the government of the whole by a "naturing God." The ideal Monarchy is identified with the fallible Roman Empire only for the rhetorical end of persuading the zealous to depoliticize the Church; the theoretical discussion of the Monarchy does not describe an existing human government, but discloses the philosophical notions which are the conditions for a separation of Church and State