Wordtrade.com

Averroes: His Life, Work by Majid Fakhry (Great Islamic Thinkers: Oneworld Publications) provides a comprehensive overview of the life, times, and achievements of Averroes, a twelfth-century Muslim philosopher whose ideas were so controversial that his books were burnt not once, but twice. This is a fascinating introduction that covers all the key issues and underlines the importance of Islamic philosophy as a vital component in contemporary Western culture.  Without Averroes, Thomas Aquinas would not have known Aristotle and a great Christian synthesis of Aristotelian realism with Christian theology would never have been completed. 

Averroës ("ibn-Rushd" is a more exact transliteration of the Arabic, while "Averroës" is the medieval Latin version) (c. 1126 –c. 1198), was the foremost figure in Islamic philosophy's period of highest development (700-1200). His pre-eminence is due to his own immense philosophical acuity and power and to his enormous influence in certain phases of Latin thought from 1200 to 1650.

Averroës was born in Córdoba into a family of prominent judges and lawyers; his grandfather, bearing the same name, served as the chief qadi (judge) of Córdoba, and there is a tradition that his father carried out the same duties. (In Muslim society a qadi's professional concepts and practical duties were simultaneously civil and religious. Thus, a "lawyer" had expert knowledge of divine law.)

There are, however, few other specific details about his life and career. Ernest Renan and Salomon Munk mention that he studied under the most learned teachers in theology and law (in the Muslim world the two disciplines are effectively the same). It has been suggested that he studied with such scientists and philosophers as ibn-Tufail (d. 1185) and ibn-Bajja (or Avempace, d. 1138), but the tenuous evidence would indicate that he became acquainted with the former only when he was past forty and that the death of the latter occurred when Averroës was only 11 or12 years of age. Thus, significant pedagogical influence by these personalities upon Averroës is doubtful..

There remain, nevertheless, scattered pieces of evidence and suggestions of dates delineating his career. Averroës himself mentions that he was in Marrakesh in 1153, on which occasion he observed the star Canope, not visible in Spain at that time. This sighting confirmed for him the truth of Aristotle's claim that the world was round. Some years later he seems to have been associated with the family of the Ibn Zuhr, traditionally physicians and scholars of medicine. He is reported to have been well acquainted with Alma Marwan ibn-Zuhr, perhaps the most outstanding member of the family, and when Averroës composed his medical handbook entitled Kulliyat (literally, "generalities," which became latinized to Colliget), he encouraged Alma Marwan to write a companion text concerned with the details of specific ailments.

Tradition next reports that Averroës came into the favor of the sultan of Marrakesh, a notable patron of scholarship and research, through the personal recommendation of his friend and presumed mentor, ibn-Tufail. His ready intelligence seems to have pleased the calif, who, according to a student of Averroes, subsequently encouraged the vast series of commentaries on Aristotle which became known in the West around 1200. It is generally conjectured that the association among ibn-Tufail, the calif, and Averroës can be dated between 1153 and 1169.

Through the califs offices, Averroës was appointed qadi of Seville in 1169, and he began his array of commentaries on Aristotle about that time. In 1171 he returned to Córdoba, probably as qadi, and eventually became chief qadi. He was, however, continually traveling to Seville and to Marrakesh, as the colophons of various of his writings attest. In 1182 he became physician to the calif of Marrakesh, continuing as a court favorite until about 1195. At that time he is supposed to have retired, possibly under a cloud as the result of religious controversy, or perhaps to be protected from conservative theologians, to a village outside Seville; details are not available. In any case, he soon returned to Marrakesh, where he died.

His death coincided with the virtual disappearance of the dynamic speculative tradition evidenced in Arabic thinking for the several centuries after 700. Interestingly, it also coincided with the bursting forth of a similarly active tradition in the Latin West, which was greatly stimulated by the translations of Aristotle and Greek science from Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts. All these events—the death of Averroës, the abrupt decline of Arab intellectual dynamism, the translation into Latin of Aristotle (notably the Metaphysics and De Anima about 1200), and the exponential acceleration of Western philosophizing—occurred virtually within two decades. These are perhaps neither radically causative nor dependent events, but their close association is historically remarkable.

Writings. During the course of his active professional life as qadi, physician, scientist, and philosopher, Averroës found time to compose an impressive number of scientific, philosophical, and religious writings. It is possible that some of his appointments may have been, in part, preferments for the purpose of sustaining scholarship. Certainly in the medieval Latin West, many a Sorbonne scholar formally designated "canon of Rheims," for example, could rarely be found at Rheims fulfilling his canonic responsibilities.

Most of Averroës' writings that can be dated fall between 1159 and 1195. There is the medical encyclopedia Kulliyat (composed before 1162), along with expositions of and commentaries on such medical writers as the Greek Galen and the Eastern Islamic ibn-Sina (normally latinized as Avicenna). There are writings on astronomy. In religious philosophy there is the famous reply to the philosopher al-Ghazzali's attack on the pretensions of rationalism in matters of divine law (The Incoherence of the Philosophers); Averroës' response is titled The Incoherence of the Incoherence, in which he strongly affirms the solid adequacy of natural reason in all domains of intellectual investigation. There are many lesser writings, on problems of divine law, on logic, on natural philosophy, and on medicine. Finally, there is the massive set of commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus, which profoundly affected medieval Latin thought—sometimes with official ecclesiastical approbation, sometimes not.

Commentaries on Aristotle. The commentaries on Aristotle are of three kinds: short, often called paraphrases or epitomes; intermediate; and long, usually meticulous and detailed explications. These different versions may well correspond to stages in the educational curriculum.

The commentaries survive in many forms. For some writings of Aristotle, all three commentaries are available, for some two, and for some only one. Since Aristotle's Politics was not accessible to him, Averroës wrote a commentary on Plato's Republic, under the assumption that Greek thought constituted a coherent philosophical whole. He believed that the Republic contributed to this total philosophical construction. In still a further attempt to complete the presumed integrity of all Greek natural philosophy, Averroës supplemented Aristotle's Physics and De Caelo with a treatise of his own entitled De Substantia Orbis.

In supplementing Aristotle in this fashion, Averroës did violence to the original methodology of the Stagirite. For Aristotle the Physics and De Caelo investigated motions and processes according to two different perspectives—Physics, motion as such; De Caelo, motion in the particular context of the activities of the heavenly bodies. These investigations were not conceived as standing in any hierarchical order, reflecting any vertical order of being or reality; they were simply different investigations and must not be taken, as did many ancient and medieval commentators, in terms of category and subcategory. Averroës, with methodological dispositions akin to the Platonic, did take them in this way, and thus eventually he found it necessary to provide an all-comprehensive celestial physics—hence, the De Substantia Orbis.

Textual tradition. The actual textual tradition of Averroës' works is extremely complex. Some of the commentaries remain in Arabic versions, some in Hebrew translations from the Arabic, some in Arabic texts recorded in Hebrew script, and many in Latin translations. These categories are not mutually exclusive. Beginning in 1472 there appeared numerous printed editions of some, but by no means all, of the commentaries; the format usually consists of a paragraph of Aristotelian text followed immediately by Averroës' comments on and interpretation of that text. This was no doubt an apparatus designed for the practical needs of the teaching of natural philosophy in the Western Latin universities, for it is clear that Averroës' analyses had become influential by the first quarter of the thirteenth century, accompanying as they did the translations of Aristotle, and they remained influential in the traditions of the universities well into the seventeenth century.

Averroes' Philosophy

Averroës' own philosophical position can best be characterized as Aristotle warped onto a Platonic frame. He inherited Greek thought as a literary corpus and, like his Islamic philosophical predecessors, viewed this corpus as an intellectually integrated totality. Aristotle, his commentators (such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius) and such thinkers as Plotinus and Proclus were all understood as parts dovetailing into a single coherent philosophical system. Al-Farabi (died c. 950) is an eminent example of this syncretism: he composed a work entitled The Harmony between Plato and Aristotle, and Averroës himself, lacking Aristotle's Politics, found little difficulty in incorporating Plato's Republic within his compass of speculation.

Reliance on Neoplatonism. The doctrinal positions of Greek and Alexandrian thinkers were, in fact, often quite divergent and even incompatible, and to complete the final union of their philosophies into a single intellectual system the Arab philosophers made use of a writing called the Theology. Late ancient tradition attributed this treatise to Aristotle, but modern scholarship has established that the Theology is fundamentally a compendium based on Plotinus' writings. This work was taken uncritically by Arabic philosophers as the capstone of all Greek speculative thought and, as such, was employed by them to effect the unity of ancient philosophy.

"Mystical" knowledge. There were at least two reasons for the eager Islamic approval of the Theology. First, it strongly reflected the Neoplatonic emphasis especially evident in Plotinus' Enneads, on the culminating "mystical" experience at the apex of human knowledge. This experience involved a passing from a condition of ordinary logical ratiocination over into a condition of nondiscursive (although quasi-rational) grasp of ultimate reality. Such an attitude is strongly sympathetic to the Islamic conception of ultimate religious experience, in which there is an analogous passing from individuality into an impersonal fusion with a Whole or Divine Essence.

Hierarchy of reality. Correlative to its reflection of Neoplatonic "mystical" knowledge, the Theology reflected the Neoplatonic methodological conception that is ordered in an organic hierarchy, with interlocking levels indicating superordinate and subordinate dependency. Such relationships involve levels of being and, concomitantly, sources and receivers of being. Such an intellectual structure might be visualized as a series of pyramids successively superimposed, with the pre-eminent pyramid pointing to an ultimate One which simultaneously comprehends being as such and is the culmination of human reflective experience. This structure is, moreover, dynamic and not static, with a continuing flow of creativity downward and a continuing activity of noetic discovery upward.

Analysis of the soul. The general methodology described above is evident in many specific places in Averroës' philosophy. In his analysis of the soul, for example, Aristotle's original doctrine undergoes a transformation. Whereas Aristotle's insistence on the physical principle that every form separate from matter is one in species leads to a presumption against the possibility of individual immortality, Averroës takes the obverse: separate forms or substances can subsist in the general hierarchy of being, and thus immortality, in a purely impersonal sense, is possible.

Scientific knowledge. The case in natural science is similar to that of the soul. In Aristotle the various sciences are diverse and not necessarily reducible to one another in any formal sense: the Physics views natural behavior from one perspective and in accordance with one set of working principles, while the De Caelo, in contrast, uses another perspective and another set of principles. Aristotle's natural sciences are irrefragably diversified. In the Metaphysics he goes so far as to say that similar terminology is employed in the several sciences; however, this apparent unity of the sciences is qualified by his insistence that the use of the most general metaphysical language is, in disparate domains, only analogous and not semantically equivalent. The particular subject matter that a science encompasses controls the precise significance of the terms and logic used in the analysis and description of that science; the term "being" as it is used in the Physics does not possess the same meaning as "being" used in De Anima.

For Averroës, however, such differentiations among the sciences were not the case. "Being" had a univocal significance, not equivocal, as it had for Aristotle; and Averroës viewed nature and reality as exhibiting a single coordinated and coherent structure, proceeding in orderly hierarchical fashion from levels that are lesser (both metaphysically and noetically) to greater and richer levels of being. Aristotle's horizontal and discrete conglomeration of sciences became a harmonious order of vertically structured science with dependent and causative relationships.

Active and passive intellects. From Aristotle, Averroës understood that the knowing process in man comprised a passive aspect—adumbrant concepts capable of being fully activated—and an active aspect—a power of dynamically activating such concepts. This power, termed during the medieval period the "active intellect," was taken to operate against a "passive intellect" to actualize concepts and thus constituted the thinking activity; and the resulting fusion of function was termed the "acquired intellect." This terminology applicable to the noetic process was based on Aristotle's De Anima, and appears, with minor variations, in Greek and Arabic thought down to the time of Averroës. God, as the First Intelligence, provides through the next subordinate level of intelligences—the celestial bodies, upon which he exercises immediate control—activating power for the active intellect controlling man's thought.

However, the active intellect is not personalized because it is Aristotelian form, and each such form is a species and never an individual. Nor is the passive intellect, in its nonnoetic status apart from participation in the acquired intellect—a further pressing of Aristotle impelled by Platonic dispositions. In Averroës' philosophy, consonant with Muslim theology, it is thus a domain of reality which looks upward to God for its sustaining power and with which individual souls strive to fuse impersonally, in knowledge and ultimately in immortality. Thus Averroës, and certainly his medieval interpreters, believed in the unlikelihood of individual immortality—the active intellect with which man hopes to unite at death being a single undifferentiated form—and the soul, as individuated in this life, cannot subsist without the body.

Metaphysics, natural philosophy, science. Averroes' metaphysics, natural philosophy, and science can be classified as a moderate Platonism, tempered with a profound appreciation of Aristotle. Unlike many of his Islamic predecessors, Averroës accepted Aristotle's rigorous rationalism wholeheartedly, although at various crucial points his renderings of Aristotle's laconic texts are governed by his own Platonic methodological predispositions. Against the latter, he held the principle of the univocality of being, flowing downward from a Supreme Principle. God's existence is established from the Physics, in that the eternity of motion demands an unmoved mover, which is in itself pure form. In addition to being the source of motion, such pure form is also Intelligence as such, operating not only as the source of the celestial bodies and all subordinate motions but also as the creative originator and sustaining force behind all lesser intelligences.

Theology and natural philosophy. In the Christian intellectual environment of the thirteenth century, apparent conflicts between argumentation in natural philosophy and argumentation in matters of theological doctrine became exceptionally acute. The newly introduced writings from the ancients—Greek philosophy and science, accompanied by Arabic and Hebrew commentary—rigorously set forth propositions alien to fundamental dicta of Christian faith: for example, the eternity of the world, the impossibility of individual immortality, and the radical noncontingency of existence as such. Averroës' rendering of the Aristotelian writings contributed heavily to these conflicts. Aristotle was read in the medieval faculties of arts as the staple of natural philosophy and science, and Averroës was read as his primary interpretive adjunct. In fact, in later medieval writings Averroës is merely referred to as "the Commentator." Thus, since he put forward analyses understanding Aristotle to deny the creation of the world in time, personal immortality, and the contingency of existence, such views attained wide currency among masters of arts.

The response from the theological side was early and direct. "Arabic" commentary was forbidden to be read in 1210 and 1215, and permitted only with censoring in 1231, at the University of Paris. Albert the Great published a treatise, Contra Averroistas, and Thomas Aquinas wrote about 1269, at a time of great intellectual controversy at Paris, a Tractatus de Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas.

"Double-truth" doctrine. The replies to Averroës were reasoned and moderate, but they seem to have been accompanied by many contemporary declarations that the

"Averroists" were actually maintaining a doctrine of "double truth," according to which conclusions in natural philosophy were said to be true, while simultaneously conclusions affirming the contrary in theological argument were held true—presumably an intolerable intellectual situation. Thus there were official condemnations of "unorthodox" doctrines at the University of Paris in 1270 and 1277, including specific injunctions against two standards of truth. It is not, however, clear that any philosophers in the thirteenth century explicitly held such a theory of "double truth"; in the writings that survive, philosophers faced with these conflicts take great pains to concede truth itself to the declarations of faith and say of Aristotelian writings only that they have been properly arrived at according to Aristotle's methods.

Averroës himself composed the short treatise On the Harmony Between Religion and Philosophy; his main effort in this work was to establish that there is but one truth to which there are several modes of access—the rhetorical, open to any man through the persuasions of teachers; the dialectical, available for some to explore the probability of truths of divine law; and the philosophical, to be used only by those few capable of exercising pure ratiocination with the fullest competence. Such a variety of methods insures for each man, depending on his individual capability, the possibility of grasping ultimate realities. The fact that in this work Averroës distinguishes between such modes of access to truth has, by many historians, been taken to adumbrate the theory of the "double truth," as attributed to many thinkers in the thirteenth century, but this is not probable. First, this work of Averroës was not available to medieval Latin scholars and thus obviously cannot have been directly influential; second, the doctrine of alternative modes of access to truth is hardly the same as that of maintaining incompatible truths in disparate domains.

Thus, the attribution of a doctrine of "double truth" to medievals cannot be sustained by any writings of Aristotle accompanied by Averroistic commentaries, nor can it be justified explicitly from any Christian medieval master. The oppositions between Aristotelian – Averroist argument and basic Christian doctrine constituted a fundamental intellectual dilemma within Christian speculation—one never resolved by the masters of arts in an explicit proclamation of a logical contradiction between two domains of reflection but always by an absolute accession of truth to faith. Averroës did not contribute specifically to the discussion arising from this dilemma, except insofar as his rigorous analysis of Aristotle made necessary certain conclusions in natural philosophy.

Averroës stands as a philosopher in his own right, but his influence was felt essentially in Western Latin philosophy from 1200 to 1650. His commentaries on Aristotle, an integral part of the educational curriculum in the faculties of arts of western European universities, shaped several centuries of Latin philosophy and science. Despite institutional criticism and even formal condemnation, his powerful statements of Aristotelian doctrine were sustained among Latin scholars and thinkers well into the mid-seventeenth century.          

Faith And Reason In Islam by Averroes (Abu’l-Walid ibn Rushd), translated by Ibrahim Y. Najjar, introduction by Majid Fakhry (OneWorld) Available for the first time in a complete English language edition, this is first annotated translation of a key work by the twelfth-century Muslim philosopher, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), whose translations and interpretations of Aristotle led to the flourishing of high scalasticism in Europe.

Acknowledged as the leading transmitter of Aristotelian thought, Averroes also held controversial views about the relationship between faith and reason, arguing that religion should not be allowed to impose limits on the exercise of rational thought. His theory of rationality, along with others on language, justice and the interpretation of religious texts, is clearly presented here, in a work that provides the most comprehensive picture available of Averroes' great intellectual achievements. His views were not as widely disseminated in the East and in many ways his adoption by western intellectuals helped set the groundwork for western secular rationalism. This work gives us his views how the existence of God can be demonstrated by reason. Proving conclusively that the dispute between reason and religion is a far from new phenomenon, this important book is essential reading for scholars, students, and all those interested in the development of Islamic philosophy and its effect on the modern intellectual world.

Author introduction: Ibn Rushd's Exposition of Religious Arguments contains sufficient evidence to motivate the reader to reexamine many popular views about Ibn Rushd. I will briefly draw the attention to some of the issues in the book where such a re‑examination is called for. Some believe that Averroes is an Aristotelian rationalist who was bent on undermining or subverting religion, albeit while upholding the harmony between religion and philosophy or faith and reason. It is also believed that having accepted the Aristotelian metaphysics and the place of the Unmoved Mover in it Ibn Rushd could not believe in the creation of the world, revealed religions and the hereafter. The reader of The Exposition, however, will be surprised to find Ibn Rushd offering one argument after another in support of a different position. While maintaining the harmony between religion and philosophy, Averroes shows that neither discipline is in need of subverting the other. They are both legitimate human endeavors with clear lines of demarcation. They work in harmony with each other rather than in conflict. This is evident in the crucial issue of the separation between clear religious texts and vague or ambiguous ones. While no disagreement arises about clear religious texts and their acceptance is required of all believers upon faith, ambiguous texts call for interpretation and the interference of reason. One obvious requirement is that interpretations cannot come into conflict with clear and unambiguous texts. Reason is necessary, and without it the understanding of religious texts remains incomplete.

Another issue dealt with in The Exposition is the central belief in the existence of God and the related problem of the creation of the world. Ibn Rushd's position on both counts is clear and his arguments are quite elaborate, simple and straightforward. He takes the theologians to task, especially the Ash'arites, scrutinizing their arguments and maintaining that their attempt to prove the creation of the world is flawed. He distinguishes two proofs offered by this school: the first is adhered to by the majority of this group and the second is held by Abu al-Ma'ali alJuwayni, the illustrious teacher of Abn Hamid al-Ghazali. The first argument rests on three premises: that substances are always found inseparable from accidents, that accidents are created; and that what cannot exist separately from created accidents is itself created. The crux of Averroes' criticism of this argument is that it fails to apply to the world as a whole, even though it might apply to individual substances in it. As far as Abu al-Ma'ali s argument is concerned, it is based on two premises: that the world with everything in it is contingent, i.e., it could have been other than what it is, and that whatever is contingent is created. Ibn Rushd rejects this argument, pointing to its Avicennian origins and maintaining that its first premise is merely rhetorical and factually incorrect, and that its second premise is not demonstrable; the two great philosophers Plato and Aristotle took opposite views regarding it. Abu al-Ma'ali's proof misses its point; instead of pointing to the wise creator of the world, it repudiates the principles of causality, thus abandoning the world to the vagaries of coincidence.

According to Ibn Rushd, there are two arguments that prove the existence of God and that everyone accepts: the argument from invention, Dalal al-Ikhtira` and the argument from design, Dalil al-'Inaya. Observation shows that everything in the world is ordered according to a fixed causal pattern which is conducive to serving the universal goal of the existence and well‑being of mankind, as the Qur'an itself asserts in a series of verses. Likewise, observation, supported by many verses in the Qur'an, shows that there are created or invented substances in the world, like the coming of life out of inanimate objects and the creation of sensations and cognitions. The Precious Book (the Qur'an) also contains many verses that refer to the two arguments combined. Averroes maintains that when rational beings find objects in nature possessing the definite characteristics referred to by these two arguments ‑ namely the utility and purposefulness of their parts to human purposes ‑ they infer the existence of a wise Maker or manufacturer behind them. Similarly, when one contemplates the world with its existing entities and sees how well they are ordered and causally related, and observes their conduciveness to life and the well‑being of mankind, it becomes rather impossible not to attribute the existence of the world to a wise Maker who is God. Ibn Rushd does not believe that there are deductive arguments that can prove the existence of God, but his two inductive arguments are the only arguments the human mind is capable of offering to prove the existence of God. Chapter one and the first part of chapter five of this translation offer a full discussion of these two arguments.

As for the widespread belief that Averroes held a position maintaining the superioritv of philosophers to the ordinary people and the dialectic theologians, Ibn Rushd provides a detailed argument to show that in The Exposition he does not subscribe to this position. All people, he maintains, are equal in their rationality and capacity for understanding. Where they differ is in the degree to which they are prepared to deal with highly abstract issues and detailed arguments that could not be understood except after a long period of arduous study. Unlike the common people and the theologians, the philosophers take the needed time and acquire the appropriate skills for understanding such arguments. What sets the philosophers apart is not the superiority of their intellect and innate competence, but rather their preoccupation with such matters over a long period of time. Philosophers are experts in their field like physicians in the field of health; the common people and the theologians are like patients who receive treatment and follow the advice of the expert doctors. The philosophers differ from other people in the degree and detail of their knowledge, but not in intellectual ability. The concluding part of chapter one offers support for this position.

On the issue of life after death, Ibn Rushd's discussion in section five of chapter five is very interesting, but basically he holds it upon faith, allowing himself to speculate only on the manner in which people survive after death. His discussion of God's attributes in chapter three is refreshing and the theory that he proposes for understanding religious texts is illuminating. Particular attention should be given to Ibn Rushd's discussions of God's unity in chapter two and God's justice in section four of chapter five.

 

Headline 3

insert content here

WT Main | About WT | Review Links | Contact | Review Sources | Bookstore | Critical Theory Bookstore | Search