GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE SPLIT 133
the philosopher speculate, the artist create, or the scientist
pursue research, if his tranquillity is threatened by the
bandit who may at any moment slit his throat, or assault
his wife. Peace, then, Dante saw, is the condition of all
other goods, and peace can best be secured by the inclusion
of all mankind in a single World State. The nearest
approach to such a World State that Dante knew was
the Holy Roman Empire. Aware as he must have been
of its deficiencies, he nevertheless looked to it as the germ
from which the World State might develop. Dante's hopes
in this direction depended, or so he thought, for their
fulfilment upon the absolute supremacy of the monarch in
the temporal sphere. If the monarch was to become a world
monarch, he must, from the first, be an absolute monarch.
To the obvious objection that this is to entrust a single
individual with dangerous powers, Dante replies that a
universal monarch would be exempt from most of the
temptations to- misrule that beset a national one. Having
no rival to fear, for he would be the world's sole ruler,
and no ambition to pursue, for there could be no earthly
condition higher than his, he would have no incentive to
rule otherwise than in accordance with the deliverances
of wisdom and the dictates of justice. Dante's universal
monarch, in fact, resembles one of Plato's Guardians
transferred from the stage of the Greek City State to that
of the world. Under such an one, Dante maintains, man's
true freedom can alone be achieved; but as a condition
of its achievement, his dominion must be universal and
his power absolute.
Holding these views, it was inevitable that in the struggle
between the Empire and the Papacy Dante shoqld range
himself on the side of the former. Although credit must be
given to Dante for being one of the first to envisage the
idea of world government as the ultimate solution of the
quarrels that divide and the wars that devastate mankind,
he does not develop his proposals for world government
in any detail. It remains for him at best a shadowy
ideal, the sole way of escape from the perpetual strife