In this book the founder of object-oriented philosophy transforms one of the classic poets of
the Western canon Dante Alighieri into an edgy stimulus for contemporary continental thought.
It is well known that Dante's poetic works interpret love as the moving force of the universe:
as embodied in his muse Beatrice from La Vita Nuova onward as well as the much holier persons
inhabiting Paradiso. Likewise if love is the ultimate form of sincerity it is easy to
interpret the Inferno as a brilliant counterpoint of anti-sincerity governed by fraud and
blasphemy along with the innocuous form of fraud known as humor (strangely absent from all
parts of Dante's cosmos other than hell). In turn the middle ground of Purgatorio is where
Harman locates Dante's clearest theory of sincerity. Yet this is only the beginning. For while
Dante provides a suitable background for the metaphysics of commitment found in such later
thinkers as Pascal Kierkegaard Sartre and Badiou he also provides even more important
resources for overcoming two centuries of philosophy shaped by Immanuel Kant.
