Happiness in Life and Death. Discussions around Nicomachean Ethics I.10 in some thirteenth Century Commentaries

BUFFON, VALERIA

A Question of Life and Death Living and Dying in Medieval Philosophy

Brepols

Lugar: Turnhout; Año: 2022; p. 21 - 44

The problem of the exact relationship of happiness with death is discussed from the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle recalls the famous adage from Solon after considering the case of Priam, whose happiness was taken away by the end of his life... “Must no one at all, then, be called happy while he lives; must we, as Solon says, see the end?” (NE I.10 1100a10-11). About this passage and the following lines, many questions are raised in the first commentaries on the NE by the Parisian Arts Masters. In contrast, those questions are reduced to one or two in the last commentaries of the 13th century. In this paper we will examine some of the questions raised by the first commentaries, such as: “if happiness resides in the dying” (Vtrum morienti insit felicitas); “if the good and evil actions of the descendants affect the dead’s happiness” (Vtrum bona filiorum et mala proueniant ad patres mortuos); “if the dead know the good and evil that they did” (Vtrum propria mala que fecerunt in uita cognoscant et similiter bona que fecerunt). In all these questions but principally in the first, corruption is an important topic connecting to the death of the body; this can be related with several other questiones, which discuss corruptibility of our actions’ knowledge and of the separated soul’s virtues. It is important for the masters to indicate to which parts of the human being extends corruptibility, and how things belonging to the body such as action and virtue arising from it can be known by, be a part of, or affect the separated soul’s happiness. Along the 13th century, the discussion on the permanence of happiness as operatio after death remains, as well as that on the influence of the living’s actions on the dead’s happiness. However, some other such as the discussion on the happiness of the dying and after death disappear. The reason for this disappearance may just be practical, for as the masters began considering the NE in its entirety, they had to reduce the questions raised. Some other reasons for this will be explored in this paper.