Psicologia e scienza dell'anima tra i secoli XII e XIII. Giovanni Blund e il Tractatus de Anima

The research is limited to the work of a master of the arts, John Blund, who lived from 1175 to 1240. The work on which converges the focus of the research is the Tractatus de anima, discovered by Father Callus which gave a complete critical edition in 1970. In an attempt to define an ambiguous notion as that of 'soul', attention is turned to Alfredo di Sareshel, Domenico Gundisalvi, to Avicenna and medical knowledge Arabic and Greek, the undisputed source for masters active between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Blund was one of the first to lecture on the new Aristotle, both at Oxford and Paris, and soon acquired a notable celebrities. However, we do not find much in his Tractatus Aristotle as his interpreters Arabic: al-Kindi, Avicenna, al-Farabi and Costa ben Luca. His treatise on the soul is thus evidence of penetration in schools, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, of theories of the Arab philosopher Avicenna, valuable guidance in the exegesis of Aristotle’s text. The work is divided, according to what is indicated by the index of the contents, in 27 chapters, but the last, the De divina providentia, is missing and we can not determine whether the author has left the work unfinished or if the 'last chapter has been deliberately omitted. The plan of the Tractatus is approximately that of the avicennian text. Except for the chapter xxvi on free will, significantly inspired by the free will of De Anselm of Aosta, Blund closely follows the Liber Sextus Naturalium, organizing, however, the matter freely. The Tractatus is not the work of a theologian, but of a master of arts. Even arguing issues such as the immortality of the soul or free will, not Blund ousts the theologian from his task, he doesn’t invade his territory. Tractatus de anima marks the entrance, in the Latin West, a new approach to the treatment of the soul because the metaphysical and theological considerations cleverly crosses physical and psychological arguments. [edited by Author]