“Now the kind of philosophy under which we proceed in the whole and in the part is moral philosophy or ethics; because the whole was undertaken not for speculation but for practice.”

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 40), as translated by Charles Latham in A Translation of Dante's Eleven Letters (1891), Letter XI, §16, p. 199.
Epistolae (Letters)

Original

Genus vero philosophie, sub quo hic in toto et parte proceditur, est morale negotium, sive ethica; quia non ad speculandum, sed ad opus inventum est totum et pars.

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Dante Alighieri 105
Italian poet 1265–1321

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