ABSTRACT
The passage from ethical theorizing to ethical practice is one of the main concerns of certain Renaissance writers; moreover the general insistence in the early modern period on the cultivation of judgement and all prudence is a sign of both the delicate nature of this passage and of its urgency. One area in which ethical theory opens to practice, or at least invites reflection on its application, would seem to be the commentary. Aristotle's ethical theory is relevant not to men in general, but to those men who are in need of moral theory. The problem of friendship with God also involves the need for a friend on the part of someone perfectly content, which both God and the virtuous man are. The connection between Aristotle's thought and Segni's, Ardinghelli'sandFilippo del Migliore's behaviour involves the application of an ethical maxim in Aristotle's work to the behaviour of the three friends in sixteenth-century Rome.
