Dante’s Passionate Intellect: The Divine Comedy’s Journey of Desire – Prof. George Corbett

Prof. George Corbett presents Dante’s Divine Comedy as a transformative “journey of desire” in which the passionate intellect—shaped by Virgil (reason) and Beatrice (grace)—leads the sinner from the dark wood of sin and ignorance through Hell and Purgatory to the ordered love and beatific hope of Paradise.

This lecture was given on November 20th, 2025, at Trinity College Dublin.

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About the Speakers:George Corbett is Professor of Theology at the University of St Andrews, and the Director of Cephas (a Thomistic Centre for Philosophy and Scholastic Theology). He researches and teaches theology and the arts (with specialisms in Dante studies, sacred music, and theological aesthetics) and historical theology (with specialisms in medieval theology, Aquinas’s theology and its influence, and Catholic theology). His books include Dante’s Christian Ethics (2020), Dante and Epicurus (2013), and, as editor or co-editor, Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’ (2015-18), Annunciations: Sacred Music for the Twentieth-Century (2019), and Music and Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, and Christian Worship (2024).

Keywords: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Desire And Beatitude, Free Will, Inferno Purgatorio Paradiso, Passionate Intellect, Pilgrims Of Hope, Reason And Grace, Thomistic Readings Of Dante, Virgil And Beatrice, Virtue and Vice