Quaestiones de anima

This new edition of the Quaestiones disputatae De anima, intelligent and well produced, is based primarily on the Oxford manuscript, Balliol 49, which is of Parisian origin and contains pecia indications throughout. Thus this edition represents the university tradition collated with three other manuscripts (from Paris and the Vatican) of the same
type. (Robb examined 50 manuscripts of the text and found that 41 are based on university exemplars. The other 9 belong to a different tradition, sometimes called the “conventual” tradition – meaning the text preserved in religious houses and copied by religious. This second tradition differs significantly from the first.)

The Quaestiones – twenty-one in all – on the nature of the soul, were probably disputed in Paris early in 1269 – certainly after the prima pars of the Summa theologiae. The subjects were ones then being disputed in the schools of Paris and represent an important stage in the development of Thomas’ ideas on the subject as well as a glossary of non-classical words.