Averroes is the Andalusian philosopher, jurist, and physician whose careful commentaries on Aristotle became the standard medieval interpretation of the corpus in both Hebrew and Latin transmissions — the figure the Latin scholastics simply called The Commentator.
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The Andalusian philosopher whose extensive commentaries on Aristotle became the standard medieval interpretation in Latin scholasticism and whose defense of philosophy against al-Ghazālī's critique was the major Andalusian philosophical synthesis.
Dates well attested. Born in Córdoba, al-Andalus; died in Marrakesh, Almohad Caliphate.
Introduction
Averroes — the Latin name for Abū'l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rushd — is the Andalusian philosopher, jurist, and physician of the twelfth century whose careful commentaries on Aristotle became the standard medieval interpretation of the Aristotelian corpus in both the Hebrew and Latin philosophical traditions. To the Latin scholastics he was simply the Commentator (Aquinas calls Aristotle the Philosopher and Averroes the Commentator throughout the Summa Theologiae), a designation that captures the central role his readings played in the medieval Western reception of Aristotelian thought.
The commentary work is the body of Averroes's philosophical writing. He composed three kinds of commentaries on the major Aristotelian texts: short commentaries (epitomes) that summarized the Aristotelian arguments in their broad outlines; middle commentaries that paraphrased the text more closely; and long commentaries (the tafsīr) that gave the most detailed line-by-line engagement. The long commentary on the Metaphysics, the De Anima, and the Physics are particularly extensive and were continuously engaged in the Latin tradition.
Beyond the commentaries, Averroes produced original philosophical work, the most important being the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), the systematic reply to al-Ghazālī's Incoherence of the Philosophers, and the Faṣl al-Maqāl (Decisive Treatise), the short juridical defense of the legitimacy of philosophical inquiry from within Islamic law. The original works integrate Averroes's philosophical work with his juridical career.
Life
Averroes was born in 1126 in Córdoba, the cultural center of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), to a distinguished family of jurists. His grandfather had been qadi (chief judge) of Córdoba; his father held similar positions; Averroes himself eventually served as qadi of Seville (1169–1171) and then of Córdoba (1171–1184). The juridical career was central to his identity; the philosophical work was carried out alongside the legal and administrative responsibilities.
Averroes's philosophical career began through the recommendation of his friend Ibn Tufayl (the author of the philosophical novel Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān) to the Almohad caliph Abū Ya'qūb Yūsuf, who reportedly complained that the existing Greek philosophy was obscure and asked Ibn Tufayl to produce clearer commentaries on Aristotle. Ibn Tufayl recommended Averroes; the commission to produce the commentaries dates from this period (probably the 1160s) and occupied Averroes for the next thirty years.
The political fortunes of Averroes followed the politics of the Almohad caliphate. The early years were favorable; he served as physician to Caliph Abū Yūsuf Ya'qūb al-Manṣūr and continued the commentary work. But in the late 1190s, the caliph turned against philosophy in response to political and religious pressure; Averroes was exiled to the village of Lucena outside Córdoba in 1195 and his philosophical books were burned. The exile was relatively brief; Averroes was rehabilitated and brought to Marrakesh, where he died in 1198 at age 72.
The immediate Andalusian reception of Averroes's philosophical work was limited; the Almohad reversal effectively ended serious philosophical work in the western Islamic world for several centuries. The lasting reception was through the Hebrew and Latin transmissions, which made Averroes one of the most consequential figures in medieval European intellectual life.
The problem he worked on
Averroes's central project was the restoration of Aristotle to his proper place in philosophy. The Arabic philosophical tradition by his time had become Neoplatonist in orientation, treating Aristotle through Plotinian and post-Plotinian lenses (especially through the misattributed Theology of Aristotle, in fact an Arabic paraphrase of Plotinus). Avicenna's synthesis had integrated Aristotelian and Plotinian elements but at the cost of moving beyond Aristotle's actual positions; al-Ghazālī's Incoherence had attacked the resulting falāsifa synthesis as religiously dangerous.
Averroes's response was the careful return to Aristotle's actual texts and arguments. The commentary work was designed to recover the genuine Aristotelian framework against the various accretions; the original works (especially the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut) defended philosophy against the Ghazalian critique by distinguishing what Aristotle actually argued from the Avicennian developments al-Ghazālī had attacked. The combination produced one of the most rigorous Aristotelian programs in the medieval philosophical tradition.
Contributions
The commentaries on Aristotle
Averroes's commentary work spans almost the entire Aristotelian corpus. The three-tier system (short, middle, long commentaries) provided different levels of engagement for different audiences: the short commentaries are accessible introductions; the middle commentaries are paraphrases suitable for serious students; the long commentaries are dense line-by-line analyses for the most committed readers.
The commentary work is distinguished from earlier Arabic engagement with Aristotle by its philological care and by its willingness to challenge prevailing interpretations. Where the earlier tradition had read Aristotle through Plotinus, Averroes read Aristotle through Aristotle, supplementing with Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simplicius, and other ancient Greek commentators where their work was available. The result is one of the most rigorous Aristotelian programs of the medieval period.
The Latin reception was decisive. The commentaries were translated into Latin from the 1220s onward, primarily by Michael Scot and Hermannus Alemannus; by the mid-thirteenth century they were the standard tool for engaging Aristotle in the European universities. Aquinas's commentaries on Aristotle were composed in dialogue with Averroes throughout; the Latin Averroists (Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia) read Aristotle through Averroes with fidelity and produced positions that the bishop of Paris condemned in 1270 and 1277.
The Incoherence of the Incoherence
The Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence, composed in the 1180s) is Averroes's most extensive original philosophical work. It is a sustained reply to al-Ghazālī's Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers, c. 1095), which had attacked twenty theses of the philosophical tradition (especially the Avicennian version) as incompatible with Islamic orthodoxy.
Averroes proceeds by quoting al-Ghazālī's arguments and responding to them seriatim. The systematic defense of philosophy distinguishes positions that al-Ghazālī had attacked as religiously dangerous (especially the eternity of the world, divine knowledge of particulars, and bodily resurrection) into those that Aristotle actually held, those that the Avicennian tradition had added, and those that the Ghazalian polemic had misattributed. Averroes argues that the proper Aristotelian positions are defensible (against al-Ghazālī's charge of incoherence) and that the points where Aristotelian philosophy and Islamic orthodoxy genuinely conflict can be navigated through proper interpretive practice.
The work has been continuously contested in its claims about how philosophy and revealed religion should be related. The double truth doctrine sometimes attributed to Averroes — that there could be one truth in philosophy and another in revealed religion — is more an artifact of the Latin reception than a position Averroes himself held; his actual position is that philosophy and revealed religion teach the same truth in different modes appropriate to different audiences.
The Decisive Treatise
The Faṣl al-Maqāl (Decisive Treatise on the Connection Between Religion and Philosophy, composed before the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut) is the short juridical-philosophical treatise that argues, from within Islamic legal reasoning, that the practice of philosophy is not merely permitted but obligatory for those qualified to undertake it. The text deploys the categorical structure of Islamic legal reasoning (the five categories of obligation, recommendation, permission, dislike, and prohibition) to argue that systematic reflection on the world using philosophical methods falls under religious obligation for those with the requisite capacity.
The Decisive Treatise has been continuously consequential. It provides the juridical framework within which philosophical inquiry can be defended against religious objections; it also provides the framework for the doctrine of ta'wīl (interpretation), by which scriptural passages that conflict with demonstrative philosophical conclusions are to be interpreted figuratively rather than literally. The position has been influential in subsequent Islamic philosophical defenses of rational inquiry.
The unity of the intellect
Averroes's most contested specific philosophical doctrine is the unity of the material intellect. On Averroes's reading of Aristotle's De Anima, the material intellect (the principle by which human beings think) is a single, separate substance in which all human intellects participate rather than a power of the individual soul. The doctrine has the consequence that individual human beings, considered in their own right, are not properly the subjects of thought; thought happens to them in their connection with the single material intellect.
The doctrine was the most controversial point of Averroes's reception in the Latin West. The Latin Averroists (Siger of Brabant especially) embraced it; Aquinas attacked it sustained‐ly (De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas, 1270). The Paris condemnations of 1270 and 1277 included propositions associated with Averroist positions; the Latin Averroist tradition persisted at Padua and elsewhere into the seventeenth century but was always controversial.
Key works
- Long Commentaries on Aristotle (composed 1170s–1190s). Especially on the Posterior Analytics, Physics, De Anima, Metaphysics. The major scholarly works.
- Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence, c. 1180). The systematic reply to al-Ghazālī.
- Faṣl al-Maqāl (Decisive Treatise, before the Tahāfut). The juridical defense of philosophy.
- al-Kashf 'an manāhij al-adilla (The Exposition of the Methods of Proof). The systematic theology.
- Bidāyat al-Mujtahid (Distinguished Jurist's Primer). The major juridical work.
- Various medical works including a commentary on Galen.
The standard scholarly editions of major works are produced by various Arabic and Western projects. The English translations include George Hourani's translation of the Decisive Treatise (Liverpool, 1961; reissued Brigham Young 2001), Charles Genequand's translation of the Tahāfut (Brill, 1984; subsequent editions), Richard Taylor's Long Commentary on the De Anima (Yale, 2009), and the various commentary translations in the Brigham Young Middle Eastern Texts series.
Influences and influenced
Influenced by: Aristotle (the fundamental framework); Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius (the late ancient Greek commentators); the earlier Arabic Aristotelian tradition (al-Fārābī especially); Avicenna (whose synthesis Averroes modified through his return to a more pure Aristotelianism); al-Ghazālī (the immediate philosophical antagonist); Ibn Tufayl (the Andalusian friend and mentor).
Influenced: The thirteenth-century Latin reception was substantial: Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, the Latin Averroists (Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia), and through the Paris condemnations of 1270 and 1277, the entire subsequent history of Latin scholastic engagement with Aristotle. The Jewish reception through Maimonides and the medieval Hebrew Averroist tradition was substantial. The Renaissance Aristotelian tradition at Padua (Pomponazzi, Zabarella) continued the Averroist engagement into the early modern period. The modern scholarly recovery, especially through Ernest Renan's Averroès et l'averroïsme (1852), Etienne Gilson's mid-twentieth-century work, and the contemporary work of Charles Genequand, Richard Taylor, Oliver Leaman, and Catarina Belo has restored Averroes as a major figure in the history of philosophy.
Reception
The immediate Andalusian reception was limited by the Almohad turn against philosophy. The Latin reception, beginning in the 1220s and continuing through the seventeenth century, was decisive. Averroes was the standard commentator on Aristotle throughout this period; his readings shaped Aristotle's reception in ways that Aristotle's own texts could not. The Latin Averroist controversy of the later thirteenth century produced major philosophical work both in development of Averroist positions and in critique; the controversy is one of the major events in the history of medieval philosophy.
The Renaissance and early modern reception was at Padua and elsewhere; Pomponazzi's De Immortalitate Animae (1516) is an extended engagement with Averroist positions on the soul. The Enlightenment treatment was often dismissive (Averroes was sometimes treated as the source of a covert atheism within medieval thought); the modern scholarly recovery has been more nuanced and more positive.
Continuing engagement
Major recent scholarly work includes Oliver Leaman's Averroes and His Philosophy (1988; revised 1998), Charles Genequand's editions and studies, Richard Taylor's Long Commentary on the De Anima (2009) and broader scholarship, Peter Adamson's engagement (including Great Medieval Thinkers: Averroes, in preparation), Catarina Belo's Averroes on God's Knowledge of Particulars (2007), and the work of Alfred Ivry on the Hebrew reception. The Aquinas-Averroes relationship is the subject of contemporary monographs (especially the work of Maria Burger and others). Active scholarly debates concern the precise interpretation of the unity-of-the-intellect doctrine, the relation between Averroes's commentaries and his original works, the question of his actual position on the relation between philosophy and religion, and the historical assessment of the Latin Averroist tradition.
Further reading
- Islamic Philosophy — the tradition Averroes shaped
- Aristotle — the philosopher Averroes spent his career commenting on
- Avicenna — the major Islamic philosophical predecessor whose synthesis Averroes modified
- Aquinas — the Latin scholastic who engaged Averroes most extensively
- Scholasticism — the Latin tradition Averroes shaped
The Andalusian philosopher whose careful commentaries on Aristotle became the standard medieval interpretation in Latin scholasticism. The figure the scholastics simply called The Commentator.