But if we remain open to the possibility that an author...

But if we remain open to the possibility that an author canonical in his importance may yet be uncanonical in his thinking, we will find that the Western tradition contains enough tensions, contradictions, and conflicts within itself to keep even the most skeptical scholar occupied for a lifetime.

And we will also find that the Western canon already incorporates non-Western components--to the point where an Islamic philosopher can find an honored place among the sages of ancient Greece and Rome in that most canonical and yet uncanonical of all works, Dante's Divine Comedy. University of Virginia Previous…