Averroes
Averroes
Alfred Ivry
Abū’l Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd (1126–98) needs to
be known only as Averroes to be familiar to students of philosophy in
the West. Greatly respected as a commentator on Aristotle’s writings,
Averroes was also strongly attacked for what were perceived to be his
theologico-political and metaphysical views. He was accused of holding
a double-truth theory, in which religion had its own truths which could
contradict, though not invalidate, the truths of reason; and accused as
well of believing that our minds belong essentially, and return at death,
to a single eternal intelligence, a doctrine known as monopsychism.
‘Averroism’ came to be synonymous with these views, though the
‘double truth’ accusation is a distortion of his position. Averroes,
however, cannot be faulted for the particular view of him that the Latin
West had, which it chose to have, on the basis of the translations of his
work that it privileged. For Christian Europe may be seen to have been
so taken with Averroes as the disciple and interpreter of Aristotle, that
it disregarded his indigenous Islamic identity. The Muslim Ibn Rushd,
however, is very concerned to show that the teachings of philosophy
are not antithetical to those of Islam, that religion not only has nothing
to fear from philosophy, but that philosophy endorses its teachings as
a popular expression of its own. At the same time, Averroes’ argument
with his co-religionists may be seen as a plea for toleration of dissent
within Islamic society.
Averroes was able to take this stand because he was deeply rooted
in the religious establishment of his day. Born into a Cordoban family
of learned jurists, Averroes studied and wrote on Islamic law and
eventually became chief judge of Cordoba, following in the family
tradition. As a young intellectual he also studied theology, and his
familiarity with the writings of al-Ghazzālī (d. 1111) in particular were
critical to his later defence of philosophy against the latter’s criticisms.
In addition to mastering the traditional ‘religious sciences’ of
Islam, Averroes avidly studied the full range of the ‘secular sciences’
of his day. Besides Arabic poetry, these subjects were basically the
heritage of Greek learning (in Arabic translation), and featured
mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. He achieved
prominence as a physician, and wrote a medical treatise, known in
the Latin West as Colliget (from al-Kulliyāt, the Arabic for
‘generalities’ or principles).
Averroes’ major scholarly effort, however, went into the study of
philosophy, which for him meant the writings of Aristotle. For him, as
for others from Andalusian Spain (Maimonides, for example), Aristotle
was ‘the master of those who know’, and Averroes dedicated himself
to expounding peripatetic views. In so doing, he set himself against
both the competing influence of Neoplatonic ideas, which had made
considerable inroads in the Muslim East, and the domestic opposition
of anti-philosophical theologians, the mutakallimūn.
Averroes’ philosophical position attracted the Almohad caliph, Abū
Ya‘qūb Yūsuf (reigned 1163–84).1 The caliph, while apparently
interested in understanding and cultivating science and philosophy,
was no doubt also interested in having philosophers at court for reasons
of state, perhaps as a check on the influence of the more traditionallyoriented
theologians and lawyers. Averroes’ repeated criticism of these
people, and of al-Ghazzālī in particular, bespeak the author’s confidence
in royal support, which he in fact enjoyed for many years.
It was the Prince of the Believers, Abū Ya‘qūb himself, who (in 1168–
9) comissioned Averroes to summarize Aristotle’s corpus, and who
then appointed him to various high offices, first as a qadi and then,
from 1182, as court physician. Averroes remained at court during the
reign of Abū Yūsuf, the son of Abū Ya‘qūb, and was able to complete,
under apparently favourable conditions, what had become a
monumental task of philosophical exegesis.
In 1195, however, the caliph turned against Averroes and other
philosophers, apparently deferring to the conservative majority in his
regime. For a brief time the study of philosophy was prohibited,
Averroes was banished from court and placed under house arrest, his
books banned and ordered burnt. Having made his point, the caliph
then relented, and Averroes was a free and respected person when death
took him in 1198.
Islamic philosophy of the sort Averroes advocated died with him,
however, in a Muslim climate which had become increasingly
conservative. Averroes had no significant Muslim disciples, and his
books were largely ignored by Arab readers, some writings disappearing
in their original language. Fortunately, interest in Averroes and in
Aristotelian thought remained high among Jews and Christians; the
Jews reading him in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters) and
then Hebrew translation, the Christians in Latin. Averroes’
commentaries on Aristotle were read alongside the original works from
the thirteenth century on, and themselves engendered
supercommentaries; while a Latin (and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew)
Averroism emerged which claimed him as its progenitor.
Today, Muslim scholars, particularly in North Africa, are
reclaiming Averroes for their culture, appreciating his contribution
to Western philosophy while viewing him within the social and
political context of Almohad Andalusia and the Maghreb. An
international consortium of learned societies is engaged in
publishing critical editions, with concordances, of his Aristotelian
commentaries in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, the languages in which
they circulated in the Middle Ages; they bring to fruition the project
first proposed by Harry Wolfson in 1931.
Averroes wrote thirty-eight commentaries in all, mostly two and
sometimes three per Aristotelian work.2 The commentaries differ in
length, and are called ‘short’, ‘middle’ and ‘long’ accordingly. The short
or ‘epitomes’ are free-standing summaries, apparently Averroes’ initial
effort to digest the arguments of Aristotle and his successors, both
Greek and Muslim, on a given text. There are only five long
commentaries, for the Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens,
On the Soul and Metaphysics, and they are exhaustively detailed and
uncompromising studies, quoting Aristotle in full and commenting on
his every sentence. Comparison of Averroes’ middle and long
commentaries on On the Soul and Metaphysics has raised the possibility
that the middle are abridgements and somewhat revised versions of
the long. It seems likely that Averroes wrote the long commentaries for
himself and the few who would have the training and patience to follow
him, while composing the middle commentaries in a relatively shorter
and somewhat more accessible and hence popular form, presumably
for the edification of the caliph and his educated retinue.
Besides these commentaries, Averroes composed a number of smaller
independent treatises, particularly on issues relating to epistemology
and physics, both terrestrial and celestial. He also wrote two defences
of philosophy, against the critical onslaught of al-Ghazzālī and the
theologians of Islam.
In these apologia, Averroes insists upon respecting the dogmas of
Islam, while presenting himself as a dedicated philosopher, and offering
a spirited defence of the religious obligation to pursue philosophy.
Refraining on principle from deliberating upon the truth value of articles
of faith in general, Averroes yet asserts the political and ethical necessity
of affirming traditional religious beliefs.
Though this non-judgemental attitude to religious claims may be
seen as disingenuous, it could as well be argued that Averroes was
simply applying the same criterion to religion that he applied to other
fields of enquiry, namely, that it had its own premisses, which, as
premisses, were non-demonstrable. Moreover, he knew that the
particular nature of the claims made in Islam, as in all revealed religions,
based as they were on a belief in miracles, did not comply with the
natural and empirical foundations which he saw as necessary for logical,
rational discourse.
Accordingly, the theology which Averroes allowed himself is of the
philosophical kind, in which the particular affirmations of Islam are
relevant only at the most universal and impersonal level, concerned
with the existence and nature of God, creation and providence.
Averroes’ God is thus the philosophers’ God, with no historical or
ethnic identification. As a medieval philosopher, however, Averroes
works within a modified Aristotelian view of the deity, such that God
relates to the world more directly and affectedly than Aristotle thought.
Averroes’ logical commentaries attest to the advanced state of the
art in the Islamic world by the twelfth century, with full understanding
of the technical aspects of syllogistic proof as well as of the political
purposes to which logical argument could be put. Viewing, with his
predecessors, the Poetics and Rhetoric as part of the Organon, Averroes
has less sympathy with poetry as a vehicle for expressing the truth
than he has for rhetoric, recognizing the common and even necessary
use of rhetoric in traditional religious discourse ([3.4] 73, 84). Dialectical
reasoning is both criticized, when used by the mutakallimūn as a selfsufficient
methodology; and praised, when treated by the falāsifah as
an effective stepping-stone to demonstrative proof. It is the
demonstrative proof, with its necessary premisses, which remains the
ideal form of argument for Averroes, though he may well have suspected
it was an ideal not often realized. As al-Ghazzālī insisted, foreshadowing
Hume, many of the philosophers’ physical and metaphysical premisses,
and hence proofs, were not necessarily true.
Nevertheless, Averroes’ physics and metaphysics follow Aristotle
mainly in integrating the principles of being in the sublunar and
supralunar spheres. As much as is possible, Averroes presents a uniform
picture of the universe. The same principles obtain in the celestial and
terrestrial realms, despite the matter of the heavens being considered
as eternal. Even where Averroes acknowledges the special properties
of the heavens, and even more so of God, and qualifies his descriptions
as ‘equivocal’, and ‘analogous’ language, it appears he believes in the
universal applicability and intelligibility of his ontological principles.
Developing Aristotle’s hylomorphic perspective, Averroes posits a
prime matter which, through its connection with an initial amorphous
‘corporeal form’, is conceived of as an existing substantive potentiality
([3.12] 51–4). This, because the corporeal form for Averroes is an
indeterminate tridimensional extension, an actual substance of sorts.
Prime matter thereby represents being in a perpetual state of
becoming.
At the other end of the spectrum of being—and part of that spectrum
for Averroes—the first mover or God is conceived as an immaterial
substance, both fully actual and the very principle of actuality, the
actual state of every being deriving ultimately from him. In this way,
while representing the very principle of being, God functions to facilitate
continuous change and becoming in the world.
Every substance in the universe in this view is regarded as the product
of these eternal formal and material principles of being, and each
substance exists in actual and potential states. At the extremes there is
no absolutely separate existence either, prime matter not being found
without a corresponding ‘corporeal form’, and God’s very existence
‘proven’ only in relation to the motion of the heavens, for which he is
a first and necessary cause.
Averroes gets this view of God partly from Aristotle, together with
Aristotle’s conceptualization of the first mover as an immaterial and
intelligent being: a mind the essential being and sole activity of which
is thought, treated in the post-Aristotelian tradition as equivalent to
knowledge. For Averroes, as for his Muslim predecessors, this divine
knowledge is not purely self-referential; in thinking himself, God was
believed to think and hence to know the essential forms (i.e. the species)
of all beings ([3.9] 155). While not subscribing to a Neoplatonic
emanationist view, and instead believing that all forms are intrinsic to
the substance in which they appear, Averroes yet believes that the
actualization of each form depends ultimately on the first cause.
For Averroes, the physical dependency of the world upon God is
couched not only in terms of intelligence and knowledge, but also desire
and even love ([3.9] 154). The heavenly bodies were each thought to
have intellects which functioned as their immaterial, formal principles.
For Averroes this meant that each intellect ‘knew’ the place and role of
its sphere in the cosmos, both in relation to the other spheres, and to
the unmoving first cause itself. This knowledge could also be expressed
as a desire in the intellect to realize itself as perfectly as it could, which
for the spheres took the form of perfectly circular and hence eternal
motion.
Averroes does not seriously posit the existence of a soul in addition
to an intellect for each sphere, believing he had no need for a second
immaterial principle to explain the motion of the planets ([3.9] 149).
For him, the intellect alone could both think or know its object, and
desire or love it, desire being the external manifestation of its knowledge,
intellect in action. Moreover, the intellects of the spheres could be said
to ‘know’ events on earth, inasmuch as their movements, and
particularly the heat of the sun, affected the generation of substances
here. This knowledge Averroes judged ‘accidental’ or incidental to the
‘essential’ knowledge or function of the spheres, which was to maintain
their own, more immediate perfection, expressed by perfect circular
motion ([3.9] 38).
Averroes clung to the Aristotelian model of circular planetary motion,
though aware that astronomical theory had long since modified it. He
thereby shows his fundamental if anachronistic loyalty to Aristotle as
the arbiter of scientific truth. At the same time, Averroes modified his
Aristotelian stance, or appears to have done so, as circumstances
required. A striking example of this occurs in his treatment of the process
of intellection, at the juncture where mortal and immortal intellects,
transient and eternal thoughts, supposedly meet.
This is a subject about which Aristotle was notoriously vague in On
the Soul 3.5, and for which the post-Aristotelian tradition had proposed
a number of theories. The fundamental question was whether the
potential human intellect, being formed and informed by the imaginative
and sensory faculties of the soul, could transcend these physical origins
and become an independent and hence immortal substance. Averroes
formulated different responses to this question throughout his life
([3.31] 220–356), and it appears his final position is that the individual
intellect is only ‘accidentally’ related to the other corporeal faculties of
the soul, belonging ‘essentially’ to a universal immaterial ‘Agent
Intellect’. Put another way, the Agent Intellect is ‘essentially’ a single
immaterial actual substance, ‘accidentally’ related, as a potential or
material intellect, to many corporeal beings.
The Agent Intellect for the peripatetic post-Aristotelian tradition is
that intellect which is the last of the heavenly intelligences, its sphere
of operation our earth. For Averroes, it acts in much the same way that
God does in the universe as a whole, as the actualizing principle for all
innate forms, including and especially the form of human beings, their
intellects. The Agent Intellect thus actualizes the potential and natural
intelligibility of all objects here, and the potential knowledge of all
persons who exercise their minds. The philosopher’s knowledge, his
‘acquired intellect’, may be considerable indeed, when directed towards
and conjoined with the Agent Intellect, his ultimate goal; yet this
conjunction does not, for Averroes, render the individual intellect itself
immortal. Its truths are not personal, though its knowledge is its own,
as long as the person lives. The immortality that the individual may
anticipate is as part of the sum of universal truths, identified with the
Agent Intellect. For Averroes this knowledge, however inadequate it
may seem to the person seeking a personal immortality or mystical
union with the deity, yet provides the philosopher with a sense of great
felicity and fulfilment.
The uncompromising teachings of Averroes’ commentaries are
modulated in the works he composed in his own name in defence of
philosophy. The Faṣl al-Maqāl, paraphrased in English as ‘Averroes on
the harmony of religion and philosophy’,3 was probably written about
ten years after Averroes received his mandate from the caliph to explain
and summarize Aristotle’s works, i.e. in a period when Averroes enjoyed
the caliph’s support and felt confident in presenting philosophy’s claim
to religious legitimacy before its detractors.
The Harmony has a logical and legal focus, Averroes arguing before
his fellow jurists that while rooted in the Qur’ān, Islamic law is as
much of an innovation or post-Qur’ānic development within Islam as
is philosophy, and that therefore both are equally permissible
expressions of the faith. For Averroes, the Qur’ān demands that one
reflect upon, hence study the world, which he takes as an obligation to
pursue philosophy, for those capable of it. This means, in effect, those
who appreciate the difference between demonstrative and nondemonstrative
arguments, people (i.e. philosophers) who can argue
apodictically ([3.11] 45).
Persons such as these are relatively few in any society, Averroes
recognizes, and he readily accepts the use of the less conclusive and
more popular forms of religious discourse, expressed dialectically and
rhetorically. Averroes believes the Qur’ān appeals to people on all
three levels, though its demonstrative arguments may only be alluded
to, and that only by understanding the text allegorically. Averroes has
no hesitation in doing so, his philosophical—here metaphysical—
convictions dictating his interpretation of God’s word ([3.11] 58).
The Harmony is in this respect a dogmatic assertion of the superiority
of scientific, i.e. demonstrable, philosophical discourse, to all other
forms of reasoning. Averroes could scarcely expect to persuade his
critics of the virtues of philosophy in this manner, and his writing simply
attests to his complete conviction and self-confidence.
Averroes’ claims for philosophy are buttressed in this book by a
brave de facto attack upon one of the institutions of Islamic faith, the
concept of ijmā‘ or consensus, which when invoked has the status of
law. To his critics, there is a consensus in Islam that philosophy is an
irreligious and hence unacceptable pursuit. Averroes, in response, claims
that a unanimous consensus does not exist on this issue, simply because
there may always be private reservations to positions publicly declared,
undermining theoretically the seeming unanimity; while this is true in
many areas, it is particularly so for philosophy, which has always had
an esoteric tradition of its own ([3.11] 52).
Averroes in fact insists upon the private nature of philosophical
instruction, claiming it wrong to teach the masses philosophy or the
allegorical meaning of Scripture, since they would misunderstand the
philosophers and be led to unbelief. It is better to have them believe in
ideas which approximate and imitate the truth, thereby preserving
society and their own (and the philosophers’) well-being ([3.11] 66).
While it would be too much to claim that Averroes is fully preaching
toleration, within the limits of his society he may be seen as advocating
a fair measure of freedom of speech. He is not beyond branding as
heretics disbelievers in creation, prophecy and the afterworld, but insists,
without going into much detail, that the traditional understanding of
these concepts should not be the only permissible ones.
Averroes addresses these particular issues more fully in the Tahāfut
al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), his major defence of
philosophy against the theological attack of al-Ghazzālī. Here the
polemical side of Averroes takes a back seat to his gift for philosophical
argument, his sights set on Avicenna (d. 1037) as much as on al-
Ghazzālī. For it is Avicenna’s philosophy which al-Ghazzālī had first
summarized, in his Maqāsid al-Falāsifah (The Intentions of the
Philosophers), and then attacked, in his Tahāfut al-Falāsifah (The
Incoherence of the Philosophers).
The incisiveness of al-Ghazzālī’s attack may well have contributed
to the declining fortunes of philosophy in the Muslim East, and
eventually in the Muslim world as a whole. In Andalusia, however, the
rational philosophical tradition lived on through the twelfth century,
and Averroes’ Incoherence may be seen as a last hurrah for a rigorous
Aristotelianism within Islamic culture. Averroes may have hoped that
in discrediting Avicenna’s Neoplatonically inclined approach to
philosophy he could defuse al-Ghazzālī’s critique of philosophy in
general, not appreciating the fact that if Avicenna’s more religiously
compatible philosophy was refuted, his own more uncompromising
approach would be even more at risk in Islamic society.
As does his Harmony, Averroes’ Incoherence daringly insists on the
legitimacy, if not necessity, of his interpretation of creation, providence
and the afterworld, though realizing the philosopher’s political and
moral obligation to uphold conventional beliefs in these issues.
Accordingly, he gives sufficient lip-service to traditional religious
locutions to permit wildly divergent assessments of his views on these
matters in contemporary scholarship.
Averroes’ Incoherence of the Incoherence is a detailed response to
al-Ghazzālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers, containing a verbatim
transcript of the former work. As such, it offers, among other things,
Averroes’ proofs for the eternity of the world, so presented as to be
compatible with the notion of God as creator; Averroes’ utilization of
positive predication of divine attributes in the one God; and Averroes’
rejection of the Avicennian distinction between essence and existence,
as well as of the Neoplatonically inspired emanationist ontogony which
Avicenna adopted. In place of Avicenna’s scheme, Averroes advocates
a more immanentist role for God in the cosmos, modifying thereby
Aristotle’s self-centred deity.
Averroes’ physics, both celestial and terrestrial, is basically
Aristotelian, as is his closing defence of the logical necessity for believing
in causation, directed against al-Ghazzālī’s Occasionalism. Averroes’
final remarks defending his views on immortality of the soul and
resurrection are very abbreviated, and perhaps indicative that he knew
how difficult it was to make them acceptable to his critics, though
ostensibly he claims these are not topics amenable to philosophical
investigation.
For al-Ghazzālī, the notion of the eternity of the world poses two
main difficulties: it challenges God’s role as sole creator of the
universe, and pre-empts the exercise of his free will. Al-Ghazzālī thus
attempts both to discredit the notion of eternal motion and the
philosophers’ use of the concept of divine will. He claims, using
arguments which may be traced to John Philoponus, that the different
rates of motion of the supposedly eternal heavenly bodies would
create disparate and hence impossible infinite numbers; while a divine
will in an eternal universe would have to act for that which already is
and always has been existent, chaining its will to necessity and
thereby rendering it otiose.
Averroes’ response to the problem of different infinities distinguishes
between actual and potential states of being; as all actual movements
are finite, infinity is predicable only of non-actual or potential
movements, which as such are non-quantifiable ([3.18] 10). As for the
divine will, Averroes acknowledges that its action is indeed eternal and
necessary, but that it is nevertheless a real will, not the same as ours,
though equivocally predicable ([3.18] 90).
‘Creation’ for Averroes is the term for an eternal process in which
God is the agent directly responsible, as the first and final cause, for
the motion of the heavenly bodies; and indirectly responsible,
through those motions, for the formal and efficient causality which
determines the nature of all objects. Even matter may be said to come
within God’s purview, through the forms with which all matter is
connected ([3.18] 108).
This eternally created world is viewed as the willed effect of God’s
knowledge, which ‘knowledge’ is tantamount to the creative act itself.
God thus ‘knows’ the world, in so far as he is its creator. This knowledge
is of the world as it is, the actual world, with its corresponding real
potentialities, integral to the nature of every actual being. God’s
knowledge accordingly is of that which is necessary, being actual,
though full knowledge of that entails, for Averroes, knowledge as well
of non-necessary or possible alternative states of being.
Averroes’ assurance in the divine awareness of logically possible
alternative orders in the universe encourages him to speak of the divine
will as ‘choosing’ to act in the manner which he does, though the choice
is eternally foreknown and necessary. The divine will is thus, for
Averroes, the external realization of a theoretically more comprehensive
divine knowledge. These and other attributes may be predicated of
God, since as immaterial properties they pose for Averroes no
quantifiable challenge to the divine oneness ([3.18] 188, 212).
Nor do such distinct notions as knowledge and will, or power and
life, for example, introduce differentiation into the divine essence for
Averroes, since in that essence they are undifferentiated ([3.18] 257). It
is we who, assessing the multiple effects of God’s presence in the world,
attribute diverse faculties to him. God’s nature remains unique, though
it is not necessary therefore to strip it of all meaningful predication,
and to distance God from the world physically and logically. God’s
involvement in the world is thus a necessary part of his very being,
even as the full nature of every object includes the effect it has upon
others.
Averroes is, accordingly, more willing than other medieval
philosophers to detail God’s manifold presence in the world, a presence
which allows him to speak even of God’s knowledge of individuals,
though such statements must not be taken without qualification ([3.18]
207). A frequent form of qualification for Averroes, used in many
contexts as we have seen, is the distinction he employs between
‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ states of being, though both are necessary
for the full description of the object discussed. Thus, it may be said
that God’s knowledge is essentially one (or single) though accidentally
many (or diverse).
Averroes’ political philosophy is known to us from a variety of
sources, not least his commentary on Plato’s Republic.4 This work is
particularly intriguing, being included, presumably intentionally, within
the corpus of his Aristotelian commentaries. Admittedly, Averroes’
choice of the Republic was determined in part by his unfamiliarity
with Aristotle’s Politics, a text which was unavailable to him in Spain,
and largely unknown throughout the Islamic world. However, that
fact may itself indicate the status which the Republic enjoyed among
the Muslim falāsifah, particularly Averroes’ predecessor, al-Fārābī (d.
950). As the pre-eminent textual representative of Greek political
philosophy, the Republic thus had to be included in the canon of
philosophical texts which Averroes was charged to present, with his
commentaries, to the caliph.
The paraphrase of the Republic which Averroes offers his readers is,
however, imbued with Aristotelian perspectives, and shows the influence
of the Stagirite’s Organon as well as his Nicomachean Ethics ([3.30]
17–45). The metaphysical and dialectical underpinnings of the Republic
all but disappear, and the examination of personal and civic virtue
which Plato describes is pursued by Averroes for essentially instrumental
purposes. Political philosophy is treated primarily as a practical science,
though surely Averroes knew the kind of state Plato advocated was
impractical and totally unrealistic for a Muslim society.
Though it is not necessary to believe Averroes endorsed everything
he reports Plato as recommending in the Republic, it is quite clear that
he is sympathetic to many of Plato’s teachings there. Averroes’ own
affinities can be discerned from the style of his composition, both in
his omissions and elaborations, as well as in his comparisons of Plato’s
teachings with references to the situation obtaining in the cities or states
of his own time.
Averroes omits the opening and closing Books of the Republic, with
their dialectical, poetic and mythic emphases, and omits also the
discussion of the Ideas and of the divided line in Book 6 of Plato’s
work; substituting for it an attack upon the world view and methods
of the mutakallimūn, a critique which may be seen as an indirect way
of affirming Aristotelian nominalism and logic. There as elsewhere in
this commentary, Averroes emphasizes Aristotelian distinctions between
demonstrative and non-demonstrative forms of reasoning. While
preferring demonstrative arguments, Averroes acknowledges the
necessity of presenting philosophical truths to the masses in less rigorous
ways. Suspicious of the dialectical arguments of the mutakallimūn and
of the themes and excesses of much of poetic discourse, and recognizing
the limited scope of demonstrably necessary argument in this field,
Averroes would apparently consider the métier of political discourse,
if not of political philosophy in general, to be rhetoric.
This non-literal interpretation of Averroes’ approach to the Republic
may help the reader understand his stunning indifference to the
conventions of Muslim society. Daringly, Averroes follows Plato in
considering religion from a political perspective only. It is seen as a
structural component of all societies, part of the legal and moral
composition of each city, with Islam and its Prophet accorded no special
priority ([3.13] 48). Prophecy as an institution is not placed above the
leadership and laws bestowed by the philosopher-king or imām (the
one Muslim term which Averroes uses, though treating it as a mere
synonym for Plato’s ideal leader) ([3.13] 72). Nor is Averroes
particularly sensitive to the strictures of Islamic law, in apparently
advocating equal rights and responsibilities for both sexes, and in
seeming agreement with Plato’s views on the engendering and
upbringing of the guardian class.
Again, Averroes does not hesitate to convey and apparently concur
with Plato’s remarks about the necessity for political leaders to lie to
their subjects on occasion, presenting abstract or impersonal truths in
fictive dress. While Averroes is sympathetic to the particular teachings
of popular Islam, with its personal and providential God, and afterworld
beliefs, he considers them only from a neutral political perspective,
risking thereby the wrath of his community ([3.13] 24). Here it would
appear that his philosophical zeal has overwhelmed his political
prudence.
On the other hand, a conventional Islamic influence on Averroes
may be discerned in his treatment of Plato’s views on warfare ([3.13]
12). Unlike the Greek philosopher’s defensive (if pre-emptive) military
strategy, which Averroes sees as a racially biased attempt to keep the
barbarians at bay, the war which the Cordoban faylasūf advocates is a
jihād or ‘holy war’; this is intended, however coercively, to bring the
virtues of good government and civilization to all those capable of
being educated, particularly the young.5 Averroes, we could thus assume,
did not ponder the destabilizing effects upon society of a permanent
state of warfare, and this despite the ample evidence from the cities of
his own time.
We know, however, from his legal compendium Bidāyat al-Mujtahid
wa-Nihāyat al-Iqtiṣād (which may be loosely translated as The Proper
Rational Initiative of a Legist), written for the most part well before
his Republic commentary, that Averroes had considered jihād in all its
ramifications, including the advisability, under duress, of declaring a
truce, in effect making peace. His remarks in the Republic commentary
should therefore not be taken as a realistic assessment of or prescription
for Islamic society, but as a commentary on an ideally imagined state,
as loosely Muslim as Plato’s was Greek.
This commentary, like many other commentaries of his, leaves the
reader wondering which of Averroes’ remarks are meant to be taken
as truly his, and to what degree we must see him adopting a rhetorical
stance, and for what ultimate purpose. Fundamentally, Averroes has
an appreciation for the philosopher-king model of leadership, with all
its stratification and manipulation for the common good; and he has
an elitist but apparently egalitarian view of society. It would be
surprising if he did not know that this Platonic political philosophy
was anything but a practical or implementable document, and that
therefore this commentary, as all his philosophical writings, were
primarily intended for theoretical reflection, the path to happiness for
him best reached through intellectual pursuits.
NOTES
1 Cf. the description of Averroes’ momentous encounter with the caliph, as given
by Hourani [3.11] 12.
2 Cf. the inventory of these commentaries assembled by Harry Wolfson [3.29].
3 The full title more literally would be ‘The Book of the Distinction of Discourse
and Determination of the Connection between Religious Law and Philosophy’,
cf. Hourani [3.11] 1.
4 Averroes’ commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics is only partially extant; for
his paraphrase of Plato’s work see Ralph Lerner [3.13].
5 Cf. Rudolph Peters [3.14] 21 (the chapter on Jihād from Averroes’ legal handbook
Bidāyat al-Mujtahid).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is an abbreviated bibliography, owing to the large number of editions, translations
and studies of Averroes’ philosophical writings. A complete listing to date may be
found in the Rosemann and Druart-Marmura entries given in the bibliographical
section below.
Complete Editions of Arabic Original, and of Hebrew and Latin
Translations
3.1 Aristotelis opera cum Averrois Commentariis, 9 vols and 3 supplements,
Frankfurt-On-Main, Minerva, 1962. Reprint of Aristotelis omnia quae extant
Opera…Averrois Cordubensis in ea opera omnes, qui ad haec usque tempora
pervenere, commentarii, Venice, 1562.
3.2 Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Ongoing series, published
by the Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, Mass. until 1974, Arabic
editions since then published in Madrid and Cairo, Hebrew editions in
Jerusalem, and Latin editions in Cologne, under the auspices of learned
academies in each country. Nine editions published to date, three each in
Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.
The American Research Center in Egypt has sponsored the publication of various
Arabic commentaries on the Organon, edited by C.Butterworth et al.
Editions and Translations of Single Works
3.3 Bland, K. (ed. and trans.) The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with
the Active Intellect by Ibn Rushd with the Commentary of Moses Narboni,
New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982.
3.4 Butterworth, C. (ed. and trans.) Averroes’ Three Short Commentaries on
Aristotle’s Topics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, Albany, NY, State University of New
York Press, 1977.
3.5 ——(trans.) Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and De
Interpretatione, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1983.
3.6 ——(trans.) Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, Princeton,
NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986.
3.7 Davidson, H. ‘Averrois Tractatus de Animae Beatitudine’, in R.Link-Salinger
(ed.) A Straight Path, Washington, DC, Catholic University of America Press,
1988, pp. 57–73.
3.8 Freudenthal, J. and S.Fränkel, ‘Die durch Averroes erhaltenen Fragmente
Alexanders zur Metaphysik des Aristoteles untersucht und übersetzt von
J.F.Mit Beiträgen zur Erläuterung des arabischen Textes von S.F.’,
Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin aus
dem Jahre 1884; repr., New York, Garland, 1987.
3.9 Genequand, C. (trans.) Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics, Book Lam, Leiden, E.J.Brill,
1984.
3.10 Goldstein, H. (trans.) Averroes’ Questions in Physics, Dordrecht, Boston and
London, Kluwer, 1991.
3.11 Hourani, G. (trans.) Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy,
London, Luzac, 1961; repr. 1976.
3.12 Hyman, A. (ed. and trans.) Averroes’ De substantia orbis, Cambridge, Mass.
and Jerusalem, Medieval Academy of America and Israel Academy of Sciences
and Humanities, 1986.
3.13 Lerner, R. (trans.) Averroes on Plato’s Republic, Ithaca, NY and London, Cornell
University Press, 1974.
3.14 Peters, R. (trans.) Chapter on Jihād from Averroes’ legal handbook Bidāyat almujtahid,
in Jihad in Mediaeval and Modern Islam, Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1977,
pp. 9–25.
3.15 Puig, J. (trans.) Averroes, ‘Epitome in Physicorum Libros’, Madrid, Instituto
Hispano-Arabe de Culture, 1987. (Pages 14–24 contain a bibliography.)
3.16 Rosenthal, E. (ed. and trans.) Averroes’ Commentary on Plato’s Republic,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956; repr. with corrections 1966
and 1969.
3.17 Van den Bergh, S. (trans.) Die Epitome der Metaphysik des Averroes, Leiden,
E. J.Brill, 1924 (repr. 1970).
3.18 ——(trans.) Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence),
London, Luzac, 1954 (repr. 1969, 2 vols).
Bibliographies
3.19 Cranz, F.E. ‘Editions of the Latin Aristode accompanied by the commentaries
of Averroes’, in E.Mahoney (ed.) Philosophy and Humanism. Renaissance
Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, Leiden, E.J.Brill, 1976, pp.
116–28.
3.20 Druart, T.-A. and Marmura, M. ‘Medieval Islamic philosophy and theology:
bibliographical guide (1986–1989)’, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 32,
ed. SIEPM (1990): 106–11.
3.21 Rosemann, P. ‘Averroes: a catalogue of editions and scholarly writings from
1821 onwards’, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 30, ed. SIEPM (1988):
153–215.
3.22 Vennebusch, J. ‘Zur Bibliographie des psychologischen Schriftums des Averroes’,
Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 6 (1964): 92–100.
Surveys
3.23 Badawi, A. Histoire de la philosophie en Islam, II: les philosophes purs, Paris,
Vrin, 1972, pp. 737–870.
3.24 Cruz Hernández, M. Abu-l-Walîd Ibn Rušd (Averroes): Vida, obra, pensamiento,
influencia, Cordoba, Caja de Ahorros, 1986.
3.25 Fakhry, M. A History of Islamic Philosophy, London and New York, Longman
and Columbia University Press, 1970, 2nd edn 1983, pp. 270–92.
3.26 Gätje, H. ‘Averroes als Aristoteleskommentator’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 114 (1964): 59–65.
3.27 Jolivet, J. (ed.) Multiple Averroès, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1978.
3.28 Schmitt, C., ‘Renaissance Averroism studied through the Venetian editions of
Aristotle-Averroes (with particular reference to the Giunta edition of 1550–
2)’, in L’Averroismo in Italia, Rome, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1979,
pp. 121–42.
3.29 Wolfson, H. ‘Revised plan for the publication of a Corpus Commentariorum
Averrois in Aristotelem’, Speculum 38 (1963): 88–104; 39 (1964): 378,
corrections.
Studies
3.30 Butterworth, C. ‘Ethics and classical Islamic philosophy: A study of Averroes’
Commentary on Plato’s Republic’, in R.Hovannisian (ed.) Ethics in Islam,
Malibu, Calif., Undena, 1985, pp. 17–45.
3.31 Davidson, H. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect, New York and
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 220–356.
3.32 Hourani, G. ‘Averroes on good and evil’, Studia Islamica 16, (1962): 13–40.
3.33 Hyman, A. ‘Aristotle’s theory of the intellect and its interpretation by Averroes’,
in D.O’Meara (ed.) Studies in Aristotle, Washington, DC, Catholic University
of America Press, 1981, pp. 161–91.
3.34 Jolivet, J. ‘Divergences entre les métaphysiques d’Ibn Rušd et d’Aristote’, Arabica
29 (1982): 225–45.
3.35 Kogan, B. Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, Albany, NY, State
University of New York Press, 1985.
3.36 Mahdi, M. ‘Averroes on divine law and human wisdom’, in J.Cropsey (ed.)
Ancients and Moderns, New York and London, Basic Books, 1964, pp.
114–31.
3.37 Merlan, P. Monopsychism—Mysticism—Metaconsciousness, The Hague,
Nijhoff, 1963, 2nd edn, 1969, pp. 85–113.
3.38 Sabra, A.I. ‘The Andalusian revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy: Averroes and
Al-Bitrûjî’, in E.Mendelsohn (ed.) Transformation and Tradition in the
Sciences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 133–53.
3.39 Wolfson, H. ‘Averroes’ lost treatise on the Prime Mover’, Hebrew Union College
Annual 23, 1 (1950/1): 683–710.
3.40 ——‘Avicenna, Algazali, and Averroes on divine attributes’, Homenaje a Millás-
Vallicrosa, Barcelona, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, vol. 2
(1956): 545–71.
Routledge History of Philosophy.
Taylor & Francis e-Library.
2005.