Understanding and Acting: Deliberation, the Practical Intellect, and Moral Science at the University of Bologna (Gentile da Cingoli, Angelo d'Arezzo, and Cambiolo da Bologna)

The essay examines how the Bolognese masters of arts dealt with the nature of moral action and centrally with its being the result of key elements of the process of moral action: namely, deliberation and practical intellect. In particular, this psychological and noetic study connects their analyses of the relation between knowledge and action in the famous case of future contingents that they faced commenting Aristotle's Peryermenias (De interpretatione). Through the texts of Gentile da Cingoli, Angelo da Arezzo and Cambiolo da Bolgona, the study will explain the kind of approach to the will and its action that grew up in the Bolognese framework in the first half of the fourteenth century.