The book and its title -- Averroes' life and works -- The meaning of Averroes' work -- Being and language in the Decisive Treatise -- A sociology of language -- Averroes, the double truth and his heritage -- The Decisive Treatise on the connection between Islamic religious law and philosophy.

Al-Ghazālı̄ famously claims in the Incoherence of the Philosophers that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are unbelievers because they hold philosophical positions that conflict with Islam. What is less well-known, however, is that Averroës claims in the Decisive Treatise that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are not unbelievers; rather, al-Ghazālı̄ is the true unbeliever for writing the Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this paper, my aim is to present a sustained reconstruction of Averroës’ legal and philosophical argument for why al-Ghazālı̄ is an unbeliever. The (...) crux of Averroës’ argument is that al-Ghazālı̄ has expressed false allegorical interpretations of scripture to unqualified persons, which has led them into unbelief. By being causally responsible for other people’s unbelief, al-Ghazālı̄ is an unbeliever as well. (shrink)

Averroes is well-known for his controversial thesis that there is only one separate intellect for all humankind. This article provides a detailed analysis of Averroes’s Unity Argument from his Long Commentary on De Anima, which argues from unified intelligible concepts to a single transcendent intellect. I set out the Unity Argument in its textual and philosophical context, explain exactly how the argument works on a new interpretation of its infinite regress, and offer some brief suggestions as to how it might (...) be further evaluated in light of alternative ancient and medieval theories. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the Unity Argument is Averroes’s most important philosophical argument for his distinctive view of intellect. (shrink)

A bilingual edition of several of this influential twelfth-century philosopher’s greatest works.

_A bilingual edition of several of this influential twelfth-century philosopher’s greatest works._.

One contentious issue in contemporary interpretations of medieval Islamic philosophy is the degree of esotericism espoused by its proponents, and therefore the degree of interpretive effort required by its modem readers to ascertain the author's real beliefs. One philosopher who has been accused of esotericism is Averroes (Ibn Rushd), particularly because he is quite explicit in distinguishing among the different types of reasoning appropriate to different classes of people: philosophers, theologians, and laypersons. But on closer inspection Averroes appears to have (...) at his disposal some subtle strategies for achieving partial reconciliation between religion and philosophy, strategies which do not actually involve falsifying the views of either side, although that is how it might appear at first sight. These polemical devices appear most clearly in his exchanges with the theologians (mutakallimun) of the Ash'arite school, of which Ghazali is the most original representative. In this paper I will examine Averroes's position on two sensitive matters, the creation of the universe and the possibility of miracles, in order to illustrate the use of what may be called his "method of re-interpretation," whereby certain key terms are interpreted in such a way as to emphasize the agreements between the two sides while downplaying the differences. (shrink)

The theme of the pleasure of knowledge is central in Averroes’ aesthetical reflection of Aristotle’s Poetics, regardless whether we side with the logical or with the moral interpretation. The first one stresses the continuity between Averroes and previous commentators in his attempt to reconstruct the Poetics as an integral part of the Logic itself, whereby poetic discourse is conceived as a form of reasoning based on syllogisms. According to the latter perspective, however, pleasure is central in that poetry is a (...) tool towards the pursuit of happiness: in this perspective it is necessary to bear in mind some common themes present in other works by Averroes. The pleasure of contemplative knowledge must go hand in hand with the pursuit of communal happiness and therefore with the good and proper order of c... (shrink)

Averroës, the greatest Aristotelian of the Islamic philosophical tradition, composed some thirty-eight commentaries on the "First Teacher's" corpus, including three separate treatments of De Anima : the works commonly referred to as the Short, Middle, and Long Commentaries. The Middle Commentary--actually Averroës's last writing on the text-remains one of his most refined and politically discreet treatments of Aristotle, offering modern readers Averroës's final statement on the material intellect and conjunction as well as an accessible historical window on Aristotle's work as (...) it was interpreted and transmitted in the medieval period. (shrink)

"Because of the importance of Averroes, it is good to have Lerner's new and thoughtful interpretation, with lucid introduction, three helpful appendixes, glossary, and...

The goal of the book is to provide an anthology covering the reception of Plato's Republic in the Islamic world, with a focus on Averroes's outstanding but underappreciated commentary on Plato's most famous dialogue. Despite the publication of Ralph Lerner's excellent English translation almost 50 years ago, very few scholarly studies have been written on it. We propose the following chapters, keeping in mind that some might be changed owing to collaboration with contributors.

"An indispensable primary source in medieval political philosophy is presented here in a fully annotated translation of Averroes' discussion of the Republic. Averroes' book played a major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in the West."--Goodreads.

This article explicates Averroes's understanding of human knowing and abstraction in this three commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima. While Averroes's views on the nature of the human material intellect changes through the three commentaries until he reaches is famous view of the unity of the material intellect as one for all human beings, his view of the agent intellect as 'form for us' is sustained throughout these works. In his Long Commentary on the De Anima he reveals his dependence on (...) al-Fârâbî for this notion and provides a detailed critique of the Farabian notion that the agent intellect is 'form for us' only as agent cause, not as our true formal cause. Although Averroes argues that the agent intellect must somehow be intrinsic to us as our form since humans are per se rational and undertake acts of knowing by will, his view is shown to rest on an equivocal use of the notion of formal cause. The agent intellect cannot be properly our intrinsic formal principle while remaining ontologically separate. (shrink)

Averroes held the controversial thesis that there is only one separate material or possible intellect for all humans. This paper analyzes a passage from his Long Commentary on the De Anima which has been thought to constitute a primary philosophical argument for the view. It is called the Determinate Particular Argument, because it contends that the material intellect cannot be a determinate particular if it is to be the ontological receptacle of universal intelligible forms. After defending one crucial premise, it (...) will be shown how the key term “determinate particular” must be qualified to avoid an inconsistency with Averroes’s metaphysics and his position on the species membership of separate substances. Given this qualification in the face of competing views, the paper concludes that the Determinate Particular Argument should not be taken as a sufficient and independent argument for Averroes’s full thesis on the intellect. (shrink)

This volume contains a critical edition and annotated translation of three previously unpublished and virtually neglected commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle. The edition is based on the two extant Judaeo-Arabic MSS which were collated with the thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of Jacobben Makhir and the sixteenth-century Latin translation. In addition, there is an introduction that includes a discussion of the teaching of the text and indices of names and titles and technical terms. The latter index also functions as an English-Arabic glossary. (...) This important book is published under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science. (shrink)

This volume contains a critical edition and annotated translation of three previously unpublished and virtually neglected commentaries of Averroes on Aristotle. The edition is based on the two extant Judaeo-Arabic MSS which were collated with the thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of Jacobben Makhir and the sixteenth-century Latin translation. In addition, there is an introduction that includes a discussion of the teaching of the text and indices of names and titles and technical terms. The latter index also functions as an English-Arabic glossary. (...) This important book is published under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science. (shrink)

This article examines two medieval thinkers—Averroes and Aquinas—on the kind of causation exercised by the agent intellect in “abstracting” or producing intelligibles from images in the imagination. It argues that abstraction in these thinkers should be interpreted in causal terms, as an act whereby images in the imagination, through the power of the agent intellect, educe their intelligible likeness in a receptive intellect. This Averroan-Thomistic causal approach to abstraction offers an intriguing alternative to the usual approach to abstraction as an (...) epistemological content-sorting. The article also demonstrates the extensive common ground uniting these thinkers’ cognition theories, despite Aquinas’s well-known rejection of Averroes’s theory of separate Intellects. (shrink)

Descartes’s Discourse on Method proposes a radically democratic goal, science on behalf of the common good of humanity, and an equally radical elitism, wherein strong minds, possessed of true virtue, direct the efforts of weak minds. In this respect the argument of the Discourse entails what we might call a “revised Averroism”: a distinction between the few and the many intended not to protect the faith of the many, but to suborn it on behalf of the new science Descartes proposes. (...) The goal of this essay is henceforth threefold. First, the essay attempts to show how a distinction between strong and weak minds emerges in the argument of the Discourse; second, it indicates the use toward which Descartes puts this distinction; and finally, it attempts to clarify Descartes’s own relationship to both strong and weak minds. The essay concludes with some thoughts concerning the significance of Descartes’ “revised Averroism.”. (shrink)

The paper analyses Averroes's and Aquinas's different reconstructions of Aristotle's ontology in the central books of the Metaphysics. The main claim the paper argues for is that Averroes endorses an explanatory criterion of substantiality, while Aquinas favours an independent existence criterion. The result of these different choices is that the Arabic commentator believes that the forms of sensible objects are more substances than the objects of which they are the forms, while the Dominican Master sticks to the traditional picture that (...) sensible objects hold some kind of priority over their ontological constituents in general and over form in particular. For Averroes, therefore, the central books of the Metaphysics mark a major departure from the Categories ontology, where particular sensible objects are regarded as fundamental entities and so primary substances. On Aquinas's reconstruction, by contrast, sensible objects are still thought of in the Metaphysics as primary substances in spite of their being analysable into matter and form. (shrink)

Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics reveals the original version, previously considered lost, of a landmark work in Arabic philosophy. Undoubtedly authored by the Cordovan thinker Averroes (1126-1198), this "middle" commentary is distinct from the Long Commentary and the Short Commentary in method, several doctrinal elements, and scope (it includes books M and N of the Stagirite's treatise). These points and the transmission of the Middle Commentary at the crossroads of Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin traditions are addressed in the introduction, (...) which also establishes that the work was extensively quoted by the mystical philosopher Ibn Sab'in (XIIIth c.). The edition of the text and the facing translation follow. At the end of the book are Ibn Sab'in's quotations, along with extensive indexes. (shrink)

La prima parte dello studio verte sulla dottrina metafisica di Bate, caratterizzata dall'idea di conciliare la dottrina di Platone e di Aristotele. La seconda parte indaga l'idea metafisica di forma, essenziale per capire la cosmologia batiana, la cui fonte principale è individuata in Averroè. La discussione è centrata sul concetto di materia nelle forme separate, sull'identità fra forma separata e atto puro, sull'idea di dio come forma delle forme.

A critical edition, with translation and notes, of Samuel's 14th century Hebrew translation, otherwise available only in Mantinus' 1539 Latin translation from the Hebrew. The translator's English is surprisingly intelligible in view of the difficulties of the text which are helpfully indicated and discussed in the notes. The commentary itself is especially interesting as an instance of the influence of Aristotle on the Medieval Platonic tradition. Republic I and X are explicitly ignored as containing "no proof except by accident" and (...) as not "necessary for this science," respectively; the Divided Line passage is adumbrated beyond recognition and its position taken by an Aristotelian discussion of the Good after the Nicomachean Ethics.--R. P. (shrink)

Averroes defended philosophy by returning to the true Aristotle. For this purpose, Aristotle's book in which he explained the eternity, uniqueness and movement of the universe, occupied a place of special importance. But the Aristotelian philosopher had a hard time holding his own in the face of contradictions within the book and with respect to Aristotle's later works. In his early Compendium, later Paraphrase, and final Long Commentary of De Caelo, Ibn Rushd continued the efforts of the Hellenistic commentators in (...) order to integrate all the elements of his doctrine into a unified system, to harmonize his early cosmology with his later Metaphysics and to uphold his models of homocentric planetary spheres against the mathematical paradigm of Ptolemaic astronomy. By insisting throughout on demonstrative arguments based on rational principles, he asserted the philosophers' claim to irrefutable truth. (shrink)

Nella prima parte dello studio l'A. esamina i tre tipi di commentari averroisti ad Aristotele: i cosiddetti «brevi», «medi» e «lunghi», evidenziandone le specifiche caratteristiche. Viene poi brevemente esaminato il rapporto fra il commento medio e quello lungo al De anima, sottolineando la dipendenza del primo dal secondo. La seconda parte dello studio tratta del commentario breve al De anima. L'A. sottolinea gli elementi di peculiarità di questo testo, in particolare l'interesse per l'aspetto fisiologico dell'anima e le relazioni anima-corpo. Lo (...) studio dei sensi, della sensibilità, del medium, dell'immaginazione, della ragione, dell'intelletto, dell'Intelletto Agente e il problema dell'intelletto materiale sono i principali argomenti su cui verte il commentario. (shrink)

This book contains the first English translation of an important medieval treatise on Aristotle's Metaphysics. The original Arabic text was composed around 1160 by the famous Andalusian philosopher Averroes.