Natural Law and Practical Reasoning in Late Medieval Scholasticism

Abstract

In this chapter, I should like to suggest that during the late thirteenth century, specifically between Aquinas and Scotus, there were some important developments in moral philosophy in which certain concepts were articulated which could be classified as more ‘modern’, and that these developments can be seen clearly in changing scholastic attitudes to the Aristotelian claim that there cannot be prudence (phronesis, also translated in this chapter as ‘practical wisdom’) without moral virtue