Ask someone you know what their ultimate goal in life is and the answer will be unanimous: "to be happy". According to Aristotle, Aquinas, and Dante, a state of contentment is the ultimate goal of all beings. This is how they define happiness: a state of being fully. Happiness and the means by which human beings can achieve it is the main theme of Dante's poem, The Comedy. In this poem Dante begins his journey into Hell where he sees the souls of those who have rejected the possibility of happiness by not knowing or refusing to know God. He then ascends to Purgatory, where he observes the souls who want to be happy, but must purify themselves from sins to reach it. In the final episode, Il Paradiso, Dante meets the souls of truly happy people. However, there is a peculiar characteristic in Dante's version of paradise, namely that the souls are arranged in a hierarchy. The implications of a happiness hierarchy would be that some people's achievement is lower than that of others, meaning that some people have less potential to be happy than others. If there really was a hierarchy of human potential, then this would certainly contradict Catholic principles such as divine grace and justice. Therefore it could be said that there is no hierarchy in heaven. Before understanding Dante's motivations behind hierarchy and why it makes no sense, it is first necessary to understand the philosophical tradition behind Dante's writings. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle proposed that there were two powers that make humans human. The first is what he called the possible intellect, or the ability to know. To satisfy the intellect as possible, one should know everything. Also according to Aristotle……half a sheet……and consequences of what he was writing. However, until Paradise Dante's themes come together beautifully, with his imagination of Hell and Purgatory perfectly complementing his Western philosophical background and his Catholic theology. So Dante probably knew what he was doing when he created the hierarchy. It seems that the most likely reason Dante used it is because it would have been very boring to read 33 cantos about a paradise with no difference between the level of humans. It would probably be incredibly boring to read and difficult for Dante to write. So it is possible that the hierarchy is simply a literary device intended to enliven Dante's poetry. Regardless of the cause, it seems that Dante's hierarchy of happiness is a creation that should be left behind when studying philosophy, as it contradicts many of the things that philosophy itself is based on..