Abstract
The article offers an edition of the prologue to the Lectura in Ethicam ueterem of the so-called «Commentary of Paris». This is one of six surviving commentaries on the first three books of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics translated into Latin by Burgundio of Pisa. The «Commentary of Paris» was probably composed around 1235-1240 by an anonymous master of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. The prologue survives in one manuscript from the Abbey St.-Martial of Limoges and describes the purpose of moral philosophy. This science is necessary for human beings since it enables them to acquire virtues and directs the practical intellect, which comprises two parts: a superior part, which is always oriented toward the good, and an inferior one, which needs ethics in order to reach its perfection.