Irene Zavattero

Au début du XIIIe siècle, les maîtres de la Faculté des arts de l�Université de Paris furent les premiers à commenter les trois premiers livres de l�Ethique à Nicomaque d�Aristote, qui venaient d�être traduits en latin par Burgundio de Pise. Ils y rencontraient des conceptions diamétralement opposées à celles de la doctrine chrétienne dont leur culture était imprégnée. Alors que la théorie aristotélicienne du bonheur (eudaimonia) attribue à l�homme un rôle décisif dans la réalisation de son bonheur, les maîtres ès arts de cette époque préfèrent insister sur la perfection du bonheur transcendant et incréé. Pour commenter l�Éthique à Nicomaque, ils puisent aux sources néoplatoniciennes et dans le fonds théologique chrétien

The commentaries on the Ethica nova and the Ethica vetus written by some masters of the arts – presumably operating in the Paris faculty – in the first half of the thirteenth century expound in an original way the doctrine of the virtutes consuetudinales which Aristotle, at the end of the first book of his Ethica (I 13), distinguishes into the two main classes of the “moral virtues” and the “intellectual virtues”. The present paper aims at highlighting the particularly important task which is assigned to the intellectual virtues in these early commentaries: joining man to God directly, through a contemplation which becomes love. The masters of the arts maintain that the moral virtues, in spite of the definition given by Aristotle (habitus a quo quis bonus est et opus eius bene reddit), are not sufficient alone to bring man to perfection, but that other more perfect virtues, namely the intellectual ones, are needed in order to make him know and love the supreme good. Having no knowledge of the sixth book of the Ethica, in which Aristotle deals in particular with the intellectual virtues, our masters know only their general description and are concerned with clarifying their relationships with the moral virtues, compared to which they appear to be sometimes really distinct and sometimes united to them in sharing the recta ratio, so much that they may constitute a double virtue. Although the masters of the arts seem to be well-informed about the teaching of the theologians – which they often cite without opposing to it, albeit stressing their own philosophical point of view –, it is significant that no reference whatsoever is made by them to the theological virtues and that they have recourse to the themes of Avicennian mysticism such as the doctrine of the two faces of the soul. Besides presenting the commentaries on the Ethica vetus from a general point of view, I will focus on the Paris commentary in Ethicam veterem (Paris BN lat. 3804A, ff. 152ra-159vb, 241ra-247vb; Paris BN lat. 3572, ff. 226ra-235ra), of which I am preparing a critical edition. The Paris commentary contains in fact a special and original discussion of the doctrine of the virtutes intellectuales.

The article offers an edition of the prologue to the Lectura in Ethicam ueterem of the so-called «Commentary of Paris». This is one of six surviving commentaries on the first three books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa. The «Commentary of Paris» was probably composed around 1235-1240 by an anonymous master of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. The prologue survives in one manuscript from the Abbey St.-Martial of Limoges and describes the purpose of moral philosophy. This science is necessary for human beings since it enables them to acquire virtues and directs the practical intellect, which comprises two parts: a superior part, which is always oriented toward the good, and an inferior one, which needs ethics in order to reach its perfection.