‘EUDAIMONIA’ ARISTOTELICA E DOTTRINA NEOPLATONICA DELL’ANIMA AGLI INIZI DELLA FILOSOFIA ARABA

At the beginnings of the philosophical literature in Arabic, the Aristotelian topic of eudaimonia as the goal of human life has been combined with the Platonic and Neoplatonic topic of imitation of God. This is especially apparent in al-Kindí, whose direct acquaintance with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was ruled out in past scholarship by the assumption, based on the K. al-Fihrist, that the Arabic translation of this work had been provided only later on, by Isüâq ibn Üunayn. The demonstration offered by Manfred Ullmann that an earlier translation of the Nicomachean Ethics made by Usýâõ was available to al-Kindí suggests a closer inspection of the way in which he combines Aristotle’s ethics and the Neoplatonic doctrine of soul. A passage of the so-called Summaria Alexandrinorum, a compilation based on the Nicomachean Ethics, contains a description of man reminiscent of a theme typical of the Neoplatonic texts of the “circle of al-Kindí”: that of the human soul “on the horizon” between the intelligible and the visible worlds. Passages like this help understanding how did al-Kindí bridge the gap between Aristotle’s eudaimonia and the Platonic homoiosis to God as the goal of human life