Dante Alighieri’s Idea of Justice

Abstract

Dante Alighieri lived in a turbulent time marked by war, hatred and exile that forged his personality and his political thinking. From his exile from Florence, he begins a journey to a personal gibelism that was captured in the Divine Comedy, which catapulted him to History. However, the treaty that compiles all his political thinking was the Monarchia, which includes, among others, aspects that we will treat here, as his idea of Universal Monarchy. In relation to this, Dante portrays a Universal Monarch who will guarantee Justice, Peace and Happiness. Humanity, developing the proper use of the intellectual virtues and reason, could achieve Happiness on Earth. Due to the time in which it was written, and despite the strong secularism shown in this work, Dante couldn’t escape the influences that religion and the Church were still playing at this time, so he also exposes his idea of Natural and Divine law and, by extension, of Divine Justice.