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Ibn Bājja, Abū Bakr ibn al-Sāʾiġ (Avempace)

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Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

Ibn Bājja was one of the main representatives of the falsafa in the Muslim West between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. He was the precursor of Averroes, on whom he had a decisive, if indirect influence. Known in the Latin world under the name of Avempace, he wrote several commentaries on Aristotelian writings of logic and natural philosophy, although his knowledge of them does not rest on a direct study of the works of Aristotle, but rather on Graeco-Arabic abbreviations or comments by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Philoponus, etc. Toward the end of his life he focused on ethics and political philosophy: in the Regimen of the Solitary, he maintained that the philosopher should isolate himself intellectually from the corrupted community, in order to attain the ultimate happiness of theoretical life; in another short writing, The Conjunction of Intellect with Man, he maintained that this ultimate happiness consists in the highest perfection of the human intellect.

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Geoffroy, M. (2011). Ibn Bājja, Abū Bakr ibn al-Sāʾiġ (Avempace) . In: Lagerlund, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_220

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