The Enaction of Embodied Metaphors in Dante’s Phenomenology of Evil

Abstract

Recent developments in metaphor theory stress its embodied character. This article brings together these transformational insights and considers them through the lenses of Dante’s approach, which we may call proto-phenomenological, to the phenomenon of evil. Despite the substantial work on different aspects of Dante’s oeuvre, concerning philosophy, theology and poetry, there has been little reflection on his specific phenomenological hermeneutics of the body and its importance for the whole poetic project. The article responds to this neglect with an analysis of the logic of embodied metaphor in relation to a specific, pre-modern context. Hence, the conceptual apparatus of embodied cognition and enactive phenomenology is used here as a method to support the thesis that the language of embodied metaphors grounds a new approach to ontological, epistemological and ethical aspects regarding the phenomenon of evil, which are already apparent in Dante’s work. Therefore, another important outcome of this research is the validation of the primacy of poetry on the grounds of this new (embodied) epistemology.