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In his Life of Plotinus, Plotinus' pupil Porphyry lists the authors whom Plotinus read in the philosophical group gathered around him in Rome between AD 245 and BC 269. This list includes various Platonist and Aristotelian commentators of the Roman imperial period (the Aristotelians Aspasius, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Adrastus are named). This chapter discusses the nature of happiness and the distinction and relation between higher and lower virtues. It begins, however, with a passage where Plotinus speaks of ethics as a part of philosophy. In the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.), Aristotle qualifies the life of practical virtue as secondarily happy. To understand this better, one should clarify the relation between theoretical and practical virtue. Aristotle's ethics appear to develop fairly independently of his own metaphysics, moving in the sphere of common human experience, of common opinions and their critique.
This chapter concerns the persistent preoccupation with the boundaries between inquiry and faith, as they appear in the context of the liberal arts in the high and in the later Middle Ages. Augustine's main argument is that the Israelites, when they fled from Egypt, were advised by God to take foreign gold and silver vessels with them. Justified by such arguments, the liberal arts found their way into the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. Thierry of Chartres, who since about 1142 was chancellor of the bishop of Chartres, dedicated a book to the seven liberal arts, which he calls Heptateuchon. Frequently the proscribed opinions derive from the ideas of Aristotelian commentators, as is the case for Averroes' doctrine on the unity and uniqueness of the intellect. As Roger Bacon puts it, the new learning introduced by the Aristotelian and Arabic writings must not be neglected at all, but has to be reclaimed for the faith.
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