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The Inferno highlights many categories of sins and varieties of pains yet it has another unifying theme. From the earliest descriptions of Christian monastic discipline to the Benedictine Rule and beyond, “inner death” inspired contemplatives to confront the hell that awaits them if they succumb to pride, give way to sloth (acedia), or lack humility. Scholastic theologians (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure) developed the notion, and mendicant preachers brought it to laypeople like Dante Alighieri. Inner death has ironic force in the Inferno because it contradicts the inscription on the gates of hell: “Abandon all hope you who enter”. Yes, one must abandon all hope upon entering hell unless, through the cultivation of inner death, one does so “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (midway in the journey of our life—Singleton), while alive. Here is the irony; here is inner death. If living persons contemplate the consequences in hell of their faults in life, they transcend them and escape. Full article

The concept of functional beauty is characterized by including an aesthetic appreciation of objects that evaluates their efficiency in terms of satisfaction of attributions. As opposed to the concept of free beauty, which includes an appreciation of perceptual qualities for their own sake, the knowledge of functions is a necessary condition for the aesthetic experience itself. The aim of this paper is to reintegrate the medieval tension between these two conceptions, which has been surprisingly neglected in contemporary aesthetic reflection. We start from the hypothesis that the modern opposition between functional beauty and free beauty is rooted in the medieval controversies concerning the role assigned to sensitive beauty. If this is true, it would open a path of interlocution for contemporary aesthetic and theological thought that, based on Patristics, runs through the whole of the Middle Ages. We focus on three tensions which constitute three turning points: (1) the categorical distinction between beauty and appropriateness through St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), who raise the question in the tradition of Latin Patristics; (2) the opposition between aesthetic judgment based on function satisfaction or one based on the free and mere appearance of the object, as can be seen in the foundational thought of St. Basil the Great (330–379), whose influence is not only extraordinary in Greek Patristics, but also in the Latin world; finally, the controversy about practical value of aesthetic attitude, through texts by Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and Suger of St. Denis (1081–1151). The conclusions reveal the irreducible aesthetic value of functional beauty in medieval period and the extraordinary difficulties in accommodating a free and autonomous notion of beauty, as well as the practical benefits of its everyday treatment. In fact, the consideration of a free beauty as a good in itself persists in medieval thought, which is important not only for History of Philosophy, but also for the contemporary concern shared by Philosophy of Religion and Aesthetics about the role of sensitive beauty in the life of human being. Full article