jlsperanza@xxxxxxx wrote:
In a message dated 1/24/2010 4:14:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jwager@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
My ethics gradebook has a cover illustration of the "gate" to
Inferno,
with a slight change in wording:
"Abandon all hope, ye who are entered here."
It seems contradictory to me to have that grandiose sounding motto in a DOOR-LESS gate. I'm getting more and more familiar with the gated-communities, which I hate. And I am told 'gated' is a misnomer _there_. They are jails!Dante's main insight, I think, is that "hell" is not a punishment. It's NOT a jail. The ONLY thing keeping someone there is their lack of hope; they have some serious flaw and no hope of changing. So no "gate" is needed; you keep yourself in the hell of your own making. (This comes, I think, from Aquinas' view of the lack of reality of evil, which is an absence of something that ought to be there and is not.
