We are once again back to the faculty of arts and to Siger of Brabant, and we are concerned to set forth his attitude toward the problem of the soul in Aristotle, not paraphrasing it, as was done earlier, but giving it in terms of the analytical discussion of the preceding two sections. A vitally important point must be made at the outset: Siger is not consciously attempting to accommodate Aristotle to the Faith. He is interested only in reconstructing the (...) Stagirite's own argument in a systematic and coherent manner, regardless of whether the conclusions come into conflict with Christian doctrine or not. Admittedly, he recognizes that these conclusions are sometimes at variance with Christian teachings, and he makes no attempt to blink these variations, but there is not in Siger any of the Thomist conviction that reason, properly exercised, cannot do otherwise than confirm the truths of faith. No--Siger reluctantly finds that properly employed reasoning can sometimes produce conclusions in conflict with truths of faith. His analysis of the Aristotelian doctrine of the soul, as presented in his De anima intellectiva, leads him to conclude that the rigorous application of systematic reasoning to the given premisses could have led to no other answers than the ones that Aristotle seems to reach. Bonaventure, faced with this dilemma, assumed that Aristotle's reasoning was proper and therefore concluded that his premisses must have been wrong; Aquinas agrees with Siger that the premisses were correct and therefore decides that the reasoning was faulty or perhaps merely inadequate, since the conclusions reached fail to confirm the truths of the Christian Revelation. Siger, however, finds both the premisses and the reasoning proper, and thus he is ultimately forced to the device of calling the resulting conclusions only "philosophical" and saying that they are always replaceable by the apodeictic certainties of the Faith. The recent research on Siger--Gilson, Van Steenberghen, and Nardi--has recognized that he was by no means insincere, or deliberately controverting the Faith; these commentators well understand that he is trying carefully and dispassionately to set forth the Aristotelian argument in all its consistency. When the conclusions reached appear to be contrary to Christian doctrine, he can do no more than say, as he does. (shrink)

The situation after the 13th century, however, badly needs to be clarified by additional detailed research. Bruno Nardi and Anneliese Maier have exhibited a nice understanding of the extraordinary complexities surrounding the question of what "Averroism" might be during this later period, but they stand nearly alone in this knowledge; even Gilson is content to dismiss, with a few strokes of the pen, the entire "Averroist" tradition as authority-bound, sterile, and doomed to early extinction through sheer stagnation. But the very (...) history of philosophy attests to the vitality of the tradition, whatever it may consist of, or at least to the vitality of the designation, for Cremonini in the 17th century was still preferring the commentaries of Averroes to all others, and late in the 16th century Marcantonio Zimara was commonly known as an "Averroist"--to name but two obvious cases. From before the time of Siger of Brabant through to the 17th century Averroes was read as the Commentator on Aristotle, and every generation throughout this period reveals its quota of philosophers who are, or who could easily be, dubbed "Averroists." It is here being asked: what do all these thinkers share, if anything? A common attitude toward the nature of the intellective soul? A common sympathy toward Averroes' Neo-Platonic rendering of Aristotle? A common blind reproduction of the Commentator's interpretation of the Stagirite? An unwarranted trust in the capacities of unaided reason, as manifested in a constant opposition of the conclusions of natural reason to the doctrines of the Christian Revelation? A common tendency in the direction of doubt, insincerity, heresy, and even atheism? It is here suggested that, far from taking "Averroism" as an obsolescent and disappearing species of subversive thinkers, it would be more enlightening to consider the tradition as symptomatic of the essential inability of Christian thinkers to assimilate Greek philosophy without modifications which would profoundly alter the fundamental character of that philosophy. Or, to phrase it somewhat differently, throughout the mediaeval period, when the domain of natural reason was being radically separated from the domain of faith, the rigorous rendering of Aristotle that Averroes presented maintained a steady appeal, which waned only when new translations from the Greek pointed up the Neo-Platonic predispositions of the Commentator, and revealed that the original spirit of the Stagirite was rather different than the flavor that Averroes introduces to the texts. (shrink)