La socialità naturale dell’uomo nei commenti all’Ethica Nicomachea

Abstract

The article investigates how the topic of the

naturalness of human sociability is discussed in the medieval

understanding of the Nichomachean Ethics, starting

from the first commentaries on the so-called ethica

nova and vetus up to the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-

century commentaries. This partial excursus shows

that, first of all, a great gap separates the earliest commentaries

from the latest ones: the knowledge of the full

text of the NE, as well as the translation of the Politics,

deeply impacts on the relevance that the readers of the NE

give to this issue. However, the inquiry into this naturalness

does not reach in the exegesis of the NE the depth of

analysis and the centrality of interest found in the commentaries

on the Politics or on De animalibus. In addition,

the masters of the arts, authors of the so-called ‘Averroists’

commentaries, have little consideration for the

role of language and its naturalness and attribute a secondary

role to political life, considering it as instrumental to

the achievement of contemplative life.