Interpretation of Aristotle in Melanchthon’s early ethical commentary

In this article, the author analyzes Melanchthon’s understanding of Aristotelian ethics. Melanchthon considered Aristotle to be the central pillar of philosophy and the school of the peripatetics - to be philosophy itself. Tus the crucial opposition in Melanchthon’s intepretation of Aristotle is between doctrina philosophiae and doctrina Christiana. Te distinction appears most obviously in the early commentaries of Melanchthon on the Nicomachean Ethics, published in Witenberg in 1529. One peculiarity of Melanchthon’s interpretation of Aristotelian ethics is the thesis about its externalist character. Ethics do not concern the essence of man, but describe only the external, socially important aspect of his being, which brings the school of the peripatetics beyond the realm of the discourse of the Reformation.