The Place of the Will in the Inner Framework of the Soul according to the First Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35305/cf2.vi21.261Keywords:
Voluntas, Will, Action, Structure of the Soul, Nicomachean Ethics’ ReceptionAbstract
The reception of Aristotle among Masters of Arts at the University of Paris entails, from its beginnings, the need to establish some coherence among the works. For this reason, some commentators on the Nicomachean Ethics believe that it is necessary to determine the structure of the human soul as a moral agent. Thus, in several places, especially interpreting the first chapters of Book III, they outline a structure of the soul with the help of their interpretation of the Aristotelian psychology. In this paper, we examine the structure presented by the anonymous De anima et potentiis eius and two commentaries on the NE including similar frameworks. There we have identified two senses of will (voluntas). One sense suggests that the will is a faculty of the soul, though not in a very determined way as in posterior texts. The other sense is a desire or a willing, which is the traditional meaning of voluntas. We think that the definitive determination of the first sense of will appears when a specific term for the second sense is created, which will happen in the next generation.
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