Antiutilitarismo di Dante

Abstract

It is a widespread opinion that the historical and political vision of Dante has highly conservative or even reactionary characteristics. In brief, Dante's polemics against avarice and cupidity hides a radical refusal of modernity and the new socio-economic reality that was taking place in his time, in the name of a return to «good old days» and to the immobile and closed world of tradition. This article demonstrates that, on the contrary, the hypothesis elaborated by Dante was everything but conservative. He proposed, instead, a revolutionary society founded on the value of the present and of caritas, as opposed to utilitarianism that had been imposed, since then, as a guideline of Western civilization.