This paper moves from an analysis of the connection, in Dante’s Monarchia, between the activity of the Monarcha, who establishes the general Law, by which men can regain philosophical(-moral) virtue, and the multitudo, which includes all individuals and countries congregated in the political Empire. It is only in this universal political system that, according to Dante, humankind actualizes both intellectual and practical virtues. Possible only as a result of a righteous individual experience of life, in fact, virtue becomes actual if pursued within the collective experience of humankind as a whole, to be intended exactly as a unified and universal Monarchy. Dante can, therefore, show in the Latin treatise three stages of the human life on earth, where peculiar conditions of virtue are linked to specific political situations: 1. the individual, undermined by sin in his own rational nature, lives in a world where, since there is no universal authority, conflict prevails; 2. human beings can restore their potential of virtue and intellect, if they choose to follow the teachings of the Monarch; 3. this condition occurs when the human race, through a collective action, has reached the act of philosophy, living in a world ruled as a multitude. In defining such a harmonious project of the human wills (concordance in aims and purposes, which concerns all individuals ruled by the perfect philosopher/king), Dante’s treatise relies on the coeval Aristotelian sources. In particular, the author intertwines the fundamental Averroistic issues with the synthesis elaborated by Thomism thus creating an innovative theoretical frame that includes rational, ethical and theological aspects of human beings as political animals, intended by Nature (as a consequence of the will of Providence) to live together in perfect peace.
