The Intellectual Virtues (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI) in Three Works of Popularization of Aristotelian Thought

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse how the Aristotelian theory of the intellectual virtues (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI) is formulated in a corpus of three compendia of Aristotle’s Ethics and two anthologies of moral philosophy which circulated in Castile from the 13th to the 15th century. These texts belong to the multifaceted medieval literature of popularization, which hoped to offer students of the Faculty of Arts, and a larger circle of noblemen eager for knowledge, access to the doctrines of the authors of classical Antiquity, especially to those of Aristotle, “The Philosopher”, the first auctoritas studied in medieval universities. The object of my analysis will therefore serve as an illustration of a larger phenomenon: the transmission of Aristotelian doctrines through works of popularization, which constitutes one of the most interesting modalities of reception of the corpus aristotelicum in Europe from the 13th century onwards.