Knowledge and Wisdom. Aristotle, King Solomon and Dante

Dante’s conception of the world is represented by Aristotelian science re-aligned by Christianity. The Aristotelian explication of cosmic motion - the first Unmoved Mover moves by being loved - naturally meets the love essence of the Christian God. What is the consequence of the Christian conception of love on the Aristotelian idea of science? In the first book of the Convivio, Dante begins by quoting the natural desire for knowledge affirmed in Metaphysics, I, 1, i. e. in strict Aristotelian terms - a mechanic impulse that actualizes human potential. In the third book, however, he reveals to the reader the real essence of Aristotelian knowledge, that is, the Wisdom beloved by Solomon in the Bible. In Aristotelian terms, he says, Love is the «form» of the relationship between man and Knowledge because Wisdom loves the one who loves her (III xi). Thus, the desire for knowledge quoted by Dante at the beginning of the Convivio is not a mechanic impulse leading to an actualization of human potential, because the essence of Science revealed in the third treatise is the personal, mutual relationship between the knowing subject and the object known. This radically new essence of Science proposed by Dante is based upon the Love-Knowledge conceived by Saint Paul in I Cor 13, 12 («Si quis autem diligit Deum, hic cognitus est ab eo … ; tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum» [«who loves God is known by God … ; then I will know him as I am known by him»]) in opposition to Greek philosophy. Paul’s love-knowledge involves a revolutionary substitution: it is not an action with a subject acting and an object undergoing, but a mutual action enacted by two subjects-objects. That is the case of the relationship between God and man described in the Pauline passage just quoted. Actually ,Dante’s journey in the Commedia ends with the vision of «l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle», the Love essence of God which is the aim of human knowledge.