Abstract

This work studies how the teaching of moral philosophy changed in Italy between 1300 and 1600, and what especially contributed to that change. Ethics had become a philosophical discipline in the thirteenth century, thanks especially to the efforts of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. One of the points on which these philosophers insisted, however, was that ethics was not just to be studied, but to be practiced. An understanding of what virtue is, how it is acquired and exercised, and how it helps us to flourish, should move us toward becoming good. Fifteenth-century Italian humanists did not care for the view of ethics as a philosophical discipline, and tried instead to connect it with their own educational program, stressing the humanities as more proper studies and exalting the combination of wisdom and eloquence. They too, however, thought of ethics as having practical ends, and studied it avidly. It is the point of this book that these conceptions of ethics as a practical science were strongly challenged in the sixteenth century, especially as philology matured; and that developments within Florentine humanism were instrumental in making ethics the concern of an academic and specialized audience. ;Latin commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics are a good vantage point for observing these changes. Aristotle's work was the standard university text for teaching moral philosophy; commentaries from this context tell us both how professors thought the subject should be taught and how they went about teaching it. An examination of fifteenth-century Florentine commentaries, centering especially on that by Niccolo Tignosi, shows that clarity was one of the ideals most encouraged by the humanists in philosophical discourse. In the sixteenth century, however, the commentaries by Francesco Piccolomini , Claudio Betti , and Pier Vettori show that discussions of the Ethics increasingly failed to address the concerns of practical moral education as the Ethics became a regular university course