The structure of the soul, intellectual virtues, and the ethical ideal of Masters of Arts in early commentaries on the "Nicomachean Ethics"

BEJCZY, ISTVAN P.; BUFFON, VALERIA; ZAVATTERO, IRENE; TRACEY, MARTIN; MÜLLER, JÖRN; HOFFMANN, TOBIAS; PERKAMS, MATTHIAS; COSTA, IACOPO; TOSTE, MARCO; LAMBERTINI, ROBERTO; BLAZEK, PAVEL; FLÜELER, CHRISTOPH

Virtue ethics in the middle ages. Commentaries on Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", 1200-1500

Brill

Lugar: Leiden; Año: 2008; p. 13 - 30

A study on the character and function of the intellectual virtues in the early commentary tradition. I argue that the commentators justified the Aristotelian division between intellectual and "customary" (moral) virtues through the two-faced soul theory founded by Plotinus as a metaphysical concept, adapted by Avicenna to psychology, and applied by the commentators in the field of ethics. The function of the intellectual virtues is to produce a joyful knowledge or contemplation of the highest good or the First principle (Primum).