Martin Tracey

Around 1250 Albert the Great made the Nicomachean Ethics the subject of lectures and disputations at the Dominican studium in Cologne. In doing so, he departed from the received curriculum at such studia. His decision appears to have alarmed certain of his confreres, who believed that the study of libri gentilium was neither profitable nor salutary for Christian students. Our study examines what the Super Ethica commentum et quaestiones reveals about the intellectual reasons Albert had for incorporating the Nicomachean Ethics into the curriculum at Cologne. ;Foremost among his intellectual reasons was his belief that it was important for students at Dominican studia to know what unaided human reason determines about human action, and his conviction that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics could serve as a peerlessly authoritative guide. ;This conviction about Aristotle's Nicomachean teaching comes to expression in Albert's replies to three questions in the Super Ethica. First, does Aristotle's Nicomachean teaching ever contradict Christian faith? Second, does it express scientific knowledge about human action? Third, is it "more rational" than Plato's teaching on comparable topics? His replies to all three questions are affirmative. Albert strives to manifest the unremittingly rational character of the Nicomachean Ethics by showing that it does express scientific knowledge de moribus, that in places it contradicts faith, and that its accounts of certain moral, psychological and metaphysical topics are rationally superior to Plato's