Sacred and Profane Love Episode 31: The Hellish Desires of Dante's Inferno

2021 marks the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's death in Ravenna. This is the first of three episodes exploring Dante's The Divine Comedy, with Professor Matthew Rothaus Moser (Theology, Honors College, Azusa Pacific University). In this episode, we discuss Dante's vision of Hell as a place where the truth of one's desires are finally revealed to oneself. In Dante's Hell, people get what they really want and deserve; since what they want is a distortion of what is truly good, the realization of their desire doesn't make them happy or fulfilled, but perpetually miserable. In this initial conversation, we discuss who Dante was, the structure of his poem on the whole, and how Christians and secularists alike can approach and benefit from reading Dante's famous poem.