Dante and Martineau: A Report of Changing Values

Abstract

ANY philosophers, sociologists, and M historians have been concerned with changes in the rank order of values in different historical periods. Unfortunately; it has been difficult to obtain definite evidence regarding the way in which men of the past rated values; in consequence, investigators usually have been forced to base comparisons upon their own estimates of the value structure of a given historical period. There are from the past, however, at least two recorded instances of values placed in rank order which can make some claim to being representative of a particular historical time and place, and which therefore may be compared with the way in which men of today rank their values. A ranking of vices may be derived from the structure of Purgatory as portrayed in Dante's Divine Comedy (ca. 1314), and a ranking of the moral worth of motives may be found in James Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory (1885). As an indication of shifts in values which have taken place, it is possible to compare the rank orderings made by Dante and by Martineau with an evaluation of the same vices and motives by persons in the present. The results of one such comparison are reported in what follows.