Description

In Western theology, at least since Augustine, human happiness was considered something that, if at all, can only be achieved after the end of earthly life. When Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics became known in the High Middle Ages, Christian theologians were confronted with a convincing philosophical theory of earthly happiness that did not have a perspective on the afterlife. How should Christian theology deal with this? The answers to this question varied. The attempt at mediation and harmonization by the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) proved to be particularly lasting. This volume contains the early version of this mediation approach, which has been translated into German for the first time and which is contained in Thomas' Commentary on the Sentences (1252-1256).