Heroic virtue in the commentary tradition on the Nicomachean Ethics in the second half of the thirteenth century.

ISBN : 978-90-04-16316-4International audienceThe purpose of my lecture is to show how the so-called 'Averroist' commentators have comprehended the first chapter of Nicomachean Ethics VII, in particular the Aristotelian doctrine of the virtus heroica, that is, the virtue that Aristotle opposes to the vice of bestiality. I would like to point out how the doctrine developed in these texts tries to connect, in the virtus heroica, the intellectual perfection with the perfection of will. First of all, I will analyse the concept of virtus heroica in the commentaries attributed Radulphus Brito and Giles of Orléans, and in the anonymous commentaries of Erlangen (Universitätsbibl. 213), Paris (BnF lat. 16110) and Erfurt (Amplon. F 13). Second, I will try to show the relations between the ideas of the Averroist commentators and the doctrines on virtus heroica presented by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas in their commentaries on the Ethics, as well as by Godfrey of Fontaines in his Quodlibet XIV