16 - JEAN BURIDAN: Questions on Book X of the Ethics

Summary

Introduction

Jean Buridan's dates of birth and death are uncertain, but he is known to have been active in the University of Paris between 1328 and 1358. He spent his whole working life as a Master of Arts (unlike many other wellknown medieval philosophers, who were theologians). He wrote on logic and produced commentaries in question form on many texts of Aristotle. His questions on Aristotle's Ethics break off at the beginning of Question 6 of Book X and may be his last work.

The questions on Book X are concerned with two main topics, freedom and happiness. The connection is that freedom in one sense, namely, ‘freedom of final ordering,’ is to be attributed to the activity that is the ultimate end of human life, which is also happiness. Freedom of final ordering is not what philosophers these days mean by free will. ‘Final ordering’ means ordering or directing toward an end (finis); freedom of final ordering is characteristic of something that is an end in itself and not a means ordered to some further end. We can understand why this is called freedom by considering Aristotle's understanding of the difference between free persons and slaves: Free persons live for themselves, slaves exist for the benefit of others. Hence Aristotle's description of ‘the free’ as that which exists ‘for its own sake and not for the sake of another.’ The act in which happiness consists will be free with freedom of final ordering since it is not for the sake of anything else.