Vtrum contingat hominem errare respectu boni: Or the Importance of Human Error for the Existence of Ethics

BUFFON, VALERIA ANDREA

Río de Janeiro

Simposio; 6th Rio Colloquium on Logic and Metaphysics in the Later Middle Ages, When Things go Wrong : Failure and Error in the Later Middle Ages; 2021

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

In a panoply of error-related concepts to be considered in Ethics, we can mention for example the error in attributing the name Happiness to something that is not actually so. As Aristotle himself states, one may think that happiness is in honours or wealth, but this is an error. This is abundantly discussed but it did not seem truly relevant to me for our meeting but rather some other issues, more fundamental to Ethics, such as the mechanisms of error. This central issue is: is there an error in our actions? Can we be mistaken in what we do? Because if we do not, Ethics would not be necessary. This would be astonishing for Aristotle, who does not ask himself whether we can do wrong, because we do wrong. However, the logic of the Aristotelian redaction leads them to this question.I am focusing in this paper on one main text, a course on the Nicomachean Ethics, which is written about 1241-1244 most probably by a Master of Arts giving his lectures in the Paris Faculty of Arts (it was by a later hand ascribed to John Peckham). As some other writings from the same period (i.e. 1230-1250) they all relay and comment on the Latin version of Burgundio of Pisa (dated ca. 1150) which circulated at the University of Paris in two fragments, one fragment called the Ethica Vetus (containing books II and III) and another fragment called the Ethica Noua (containing book I). I will be considering two other commentaries today which are from this same period: Kilwardby’s, Sententia super libros Ethicorum, ca. 1245Anonymous from Paris, Lectura in Ethicam Nouam et Veterem (1230-1240)Anonymous Lectura from Avranches