ABSTRACT
Dante Alighieri begins De vulgari eloquentia (DVE), just as he does the Monarchia by insisting on the utility and necessity of his enterprise, its novelty and originality, and on the need to resort to reason, in the absence of authorities on which he can rely. Furthermore, in the Politics, Aristotle explains that man and animals use their voices to express what is pleasant or painful, in a similar way. But only man, as a species, can and has to express what is just or unjust, since only man can recognize what is good or bad. To share these values allows life in the family and in the city. Confusion corresponds to the divine punishment. Its consequence is that man forgot his first tongue, but was left with the possibility of reinventing his speech according to his will, from the first three tongues given by God. The philosophical and historical context of the principle deserves to be fully appreciated.
