AVERROISM

As a designation applicable to a tradition or mode of philosophizing, "Averroism" cannot be used in any account of Arabic thought after the death of Averroes (c. 1198). After that, in a most unusual intellectual situation, Averroes's influence is to be found not in Muslim thought but in Western Latin philosophy between 1200 and 1650, for the dynamic speculative activity vital for five centuries in the Arabic tradition, which was founded in large part on Greek writings in philosophy and science (Aristotle's in particular), disappears after 1200, reappearing almost immediately in Western Latin thought. Throughout the century 1150–1250 a vast number of translations of most of Greek and Alexandrian philosophy and science were made from Arabic and Hebrew into Latin. This literary corpus, which had made its way around the Mediterranean littoral translated from Greek into Syriac and thence into Arabic and Hebrew, caught the attention of Latin scholars and such patrons of scholarship as King Frederick II of Sicily and Archbishop Raymond of Toledo. As a consequence, by about 1200 the indefatigable efforts of many translators working in many locations had made Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle, available to Latin thinkers. The impact of this solid and integrated corpus of natural science on the Western intellectual world was enormous, coming as it did into a climate where for centuries scholars eager for knowledge had had to content themselves with thirdhand encyclopedic compilations of inadequately developed science and scientific methodology.

Averroes's Commentaries

The translations of the Greek writings were normally accompanied by many Greek and Arabic commentaries. Commentaries by Alexander of Aphrodisias and by Simplicius were frequent, but those by the Arab Averroes on the Aristotelian works were ultimately the most influential. During a long and varied career as judge, teacher, philosophical and medical adviser to several Muslim rulers, Averroes found time to compose a series of glosses and commentaries on Aristotle's works. These fall into three categories—short (often called epitomes), intermediate or middle, and long, a differentiation which probably corresponds to stages in the academic curriculum. The particular argumentation of certain passages of Aristotle presented by Averroes in the mass of commentary had strong appeal for many Western Latin thinkers, and the reflection of his interpretations in their own philosophical analyses gave rise to attitudes which were first termed (by Christian scholars suspicious of their novelties) Arabic and later more specifically called Averroist.

initial impact in the west

Upon translation the Greek writings, with their attendant commentaries, were rather quickly absorbed into Western Latin scholarship, but not without some formal opposition. These writings were banned at the University of Paris in 1210 and 1215, deemed usable only if corrected in 1231, and not officially introduced into the curriculum until 1255. This literature was nevertheless being intensively read during these years; the philosophical writings of Albertus Magnus (active at least as early as 1230), William of Auvergne (d. 1249), and Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), to name only three prominent examples, reveal an intimate acquaintance with the recently acquired corpus of Greek science. Similarly, in England the philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (bishop of Lincoln, died 1253) shows strong influences derived directly from the newly inherited Greek literature. In Italy, too, the Greek tradition was rapidly assimilated into the scholarly milieu, but the Italian intellectual atmosphere was either medical, as it had been at the University of Salerno for several centuries, or else legal, as at Bologna. There do not appear proscriptions by Italian ecclesiastical authorities as stringent as those made at the University of Paris throughout the thirteenth century, and the possible intellectual conflicts raised by the introduction of these writings into a context of Christian philosophy do not seem to have been seriously felt.

Intellectual conflicts became extremely explicit, however, when the Aristotelian writings were conceived to be in direct confrontation with doctrines of Christian faith. Aristotle asserted, for example, the eternity of the world, the unlikelihood of individual immortality, the possibility of man's attaining ethical perfection in this life, and other theses incompatible with tenets of Christian belief. The appearance of such philosophical conclusions, apparently well reasoned and buttressed by Arabic commentary, occasioned some severe crises for Western Christian philosophy.

The chief agents presenting these, as well as other, renderings of Aristotle were the commentaries of Averroes. For centuries he was called simply the "Commentator" in Latin writings, and his expositions of the Aristotelian corpus were read into the seventeenth century. Cesare Cremonini (d. 1631), the last of the self-proclaimed Averroists, used these commentaries, and even at that late date he was considered unorthodox enough to be included in an array of formal proceedings along with Galileo Galilei himself. Unorthodoxy makes strange bedfellows when the resolute claimant of Aristotelianism and the architect of a scientific rupture with Aristotelian Scholasticism are included in the same condemnatory document.

Latin Averroism

Historically, Averroism is a designation applied to certain interpretations of Aristotelian doctrine by Western Latin thinkers. (There are medieval Jewish philosophers holding positions close to these, but the epithet itself does not seem to have been applied to them.) It was originally a term of opprobrium; no one called himself Averroist until possibly John of Jandun (c. 1286–c. 1328), who was followed by Urban of Bologna (fl. 1334) and Paul of Venice (d. 1428). During the thirteenth century Averroists were the object of violent philosophical attack and severe authoritarian action.

Averroes insisted upon, and many scholars in the Western faculties of arts concurred in, the reliable logic of Aristotle's argumentation. Thus, there was clearly the necessity of the purely rational acceptance, given Aristotle's premises, of such "unorthodox" conclusions as have been mentioned. Acceptance is, however, intolerable for serious Christian thinkers, and so such conclusions were taken to be erroneous and thus subversive when pronounced in the schools. When thirteenth-century arts masters taught Aristotle in this fashion, they were awarded (by their opponents) the pejorative title Averroist, and official action often resulted. Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and Bernier of Nivelles, masters in the faculty of arts at Paris, were all named in condemnations of the 1270s. This special mention seems to have had limited effectiveness; although these particular masters disappeared from the intellectual scene, countless commentaries on Aristotle dating from the last quarter of the thirteenth century offer similar interpretations and similar caveats as to the logical validity, if not truth, of these interpretations. No recorded disapprovals have been found.

Incidentally, this represents another aspect of the history of intellectual conflict. Explicit authoritarian condemnations were more often the result of a refusal to accept organizational discipline than of a genuine philosophical error or ideological heresy. This can be illustrated in the careers of Gottschalk (d. c. 868), Peter Abelard (1079–1142), and Roger Bacon (c. 1214/1220–1292), all of whom were subjected to ecclesiastical punishment although little of their thinking was drastically at variance with established or recommended philosophical systems.

The "Double Truth" Problem

Every exposition of Averroism must examine the problem, arising in the thirteenth century, of the "double truth." The masters of arts, reading Aristotle and following his rigorous logic to conclusions incompatible with certain propositions held by faith, tried to resolve apparent contradictions by including in their commentaries reservations of this nature: "Although this conclusion has been reached according to the method of Aristotle and the Commentator, nevertheless faith and truth declare otherwise." While proclaiming logical rigor and precise validity for Aristotelian arguments, they conceded the final determination of truth itself to the Christian faith.

In this historical context it has often been maintained, both in the thirteenth century and in contemporary scholarship, that such thinkers were actually practicing a system of "double truth," in which a proposition can be true in natural philosophy but contradict a proposition true in theology and conversely. But, as Étienne Gilson and other scholars have convincingly pointed out, no master of arts has yet been found explicitly holding such a radical position. Regardless of the apparent persuasiveness of Aristotelian argument, the truth itself was always the dominant prerogative of Christian faith. In the face of such overwhelming requirements, the limitations and inadequacies of natural reason were recognized by the arts masters.

Attempted Solutions

Thus, an intellectual crisis of the first magnitude appeared in Western scholarship in the early thirteenth century. The attempts to deal with this conflict between important arguments in Greco-Arab philosophies and Christian-oriented intellectual systems fall into several main categories.

reason not apodictic

First, the masters of arts, whose primary professional obligation was teaching natural philosophy, the core of which was Aristotle and his commentators, resorted to the attitude that although such science was orderly and rigorous, the unreliability of reason and the merely probable nature of its results suggested that conclusions based on such unaided reason must always yield, with respect to truth, to the apodictic proclamations of the faith. Such masters never claimed "truth" for a proposition of natural philosophy in conflict with a proposition of faith; they insisted on its logical validity, however, and conceded the determination of truth-value to faith. In this manner they endeavored to handle an intractable intellectual dilemma and at the same time to avoid subjecting themselves to overt charges of intellectual and ideological inconsistency.

augustinians

Second, masters of theology—for example, Bonaventure, Peter John Olivi, and, in the first decade of the fourteenth century, John Duns Scotus—employed a methodology often termed Augustinian. Their attempt to resolve the difficulties entailed, essentially, an assimilation of Aristotelian natural philosophy into a hierarchical scheme of knowledge. Such a resolution provided a coherent and orderly vertical relation among the several sciences, proceeding from the less perfect to the more perfect, from the less well known to the more surely known, from the less exact to the more exact. Such a structure, culminating in God himself, the ultimate source of perfection, knowledge, and precision, could be coherent and consistent and could accommodate both Christian doctrine and a qualified, because essentially incomplete, natural philosophy. But the achievement of this coherence was purchased at the cost of Aristotle himself, for his scheme of the sciences does not envisage a vertical, or hierarchical, ordering, whereby lesser sciences derive their logic, meaning, and reality from superior sciences. His sciences are basically ordered horizontally, diversified methodologically, and irreducible to any single set of common and univocally meaningful fundamental principles.

thomas aquinas

Third, the preeminent theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1224?–1274) attempted a massive resolution maintaining the logical integrity and autonomy of Aristotelian natural philosophy while setting forth a supplementary and compatible structure of Christian theology. The two disciplines run in parallel courses, with differences based on distinctive premises and arguments, but there are many points where the propositions in each discipline are the same and are concluded to be true in both domains. These points were taken by Thomas to ensure the compatibility of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Christian theology, and by this means Thomas sought to sustain a consistent intellectual whole comprehending Greek philosophy and Christian truth.

The carefully poised system of Thomas was not, however, influential in his own time, and most of his immediate successors in the theological faculties preferred to continue in the Augustinian methodology. By the early fourteenth century, moreover, both approaches—the Augustinian assimilative technique and Thomas's sophisticated and delicately poised structure of complementary systems—were abandoned. This becomes explicit in the philosophy of William of Ockham, in whose thought natural science and systematic theology are totally independent domains.

Insofar, then, as the masters of arts, reading Averroes in close conjunction with Aristotle, tended to bring forward the incompatibilities between the two systems, it is possible to affirm the judgment of Gilson that "the rupture of Christianity is from this moment an accomplished fact."

Italian Averroism

As a designation Averroism disappeared in the intellectual history of the University of Paris after the first quarter of the fourteenth century, although there are many manuscripts making explicit these crucial difficulties; however, their overt dependence on and acknowledgment of Averroes's commentaries diminish. From about 1300 to 1650 the term Averroism —assumed favorably by some thinkers and in a derogatory fashion by others—is found associated with philosophical activity in the Italian universities, Bologna and especially Padua.

Renan wished to establish a dichotomy between Averroist and Alexandrist Aristotelianism in Italy at this time. This distinction was based on alternative interpretations of Aristotle's De Anima. The Averroist view emphasized that personal, individual immortality could not be established in Aristotle's writings. In this interpretation the soul, when separated from the body, loses all individuality—a conception congenial to the Muslim doctrine of complete impersonal fusion at the apex of noetic experience. In purely Aristotelian terminology this is known as the theory of the unity of the active intellect—that is, that any form distinct from matter is one in species and never individuated. The Alexandrist analysis likewise denied the possibility of individual immortality but argued against the separate subsistence of the soul under any conditions whatsoever; when the soul-body composite dissolves, nothing remains.

This distinction is an oversimplification of the complexities of Italian Aristotelianism between 1300 and 1650, but it was employed by the scholars themselves and may thus be used with appropriate reservations. However, whether or not these thinkers were designated Averroist or Alexandrist, they all did agree in affirming the logical integrity of Aristotelian natural philosophy, even though some conclusions reached in this philosophy appeared in radical contradiction to dicta of Christian faith.

Although it would be misleading to speak crudely of an Alexandrist tradition in the later Middle Ages, there were eminent philosophers who, though thoroughly convinced of the logical autonomy of Aristotelian thought as such, did not adhere to the letter of Averroes's rather Platonic or Augustinian interpretation. Jean Buridan (d. c. 1358) at Paris and Pietro Pomponazzi (d. 1525) and Jacopo Zabarella (d. 1589), both at Padua, can be taken to fall within the non-Averroist but still naturalistic method of Aristotelian natural philosophy.

Averroism as a term designating a tradition, type, or method of philosophizing is difficult to make precise. Thinkers of varied methodological persuasions—for instance, Siger of Brabant and John of Jandun—have been called Averroist. Averroism can, however, be solidly connected with Latin Aristotelianism where Latin Aristotelianism is taken to include philosophies that agree on the logical rigor and systematic autonomy of natural philosophy as exemplified in Aristotle's writings. Since such arguments appear to lead to conclusions inconsistent with truths of Christian faith, Averroism in its earliest usage was pejoratively employed. But the demands of reason, working with the Aristotelian corpus, were insistent, and by the middle of the fourteenth century philosophers began to proclaim themselves openly Averroist. Gilson has suggested that Averroism was essentially conservative and sterile, but it is clear that it was an integral part of the tradition of Aristotelian scholasticism and that its disappearance in the seventeenth century coincided with the demise of medieval Scholasticism itself.

See also Augustinianism; Averroes; Averroism in Modern Islamic Philosophy; Thomas Aquinas, St.

Bibliography

latin averroism

Ernest Renan's pioneering work on Averroism, Averroès et l'averroïsme, rev. ed. by H. Psichari (Paris, 1949), originally published in Paris, 1852, is now out of date. See rather Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition. Sources. Constitution and Reception of the Philosophy of Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), edited by G. Endress and J. A. Aertsen (Leyden-Boston-Köln: Brill, 1999); Averroismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, edited by F. Niewöhner, L. Sturlese (Zürich: Spur Verlag, 1994); and L'Averroismo in Italia, Atti dei convegni Lincei, 40 (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1979). For new manuscript evidences on Hebrew and Latin translations of Averroes's commentaries and their impact in the West, see Carlos Steel and Marc Geoffroy, La béatitude de l'âme (Paris: Vrin, 2001); Colette Sirat and Marc Geoffroy, L'Original arabe du Grand Commentaire d'Averroès au De Anima d'Aristote (Paris: Vrin, 2005). On Boethius of Dacia, Siger of Brabant, and the "double-truth" problem, see Luca Bianchi, Censure et Liberté intellectuelle à l'université de Paris (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999); J. F. Wippel, "The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris," Journal of Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977): 169–201. On Aquinas, see Aquinas against the Averroists, on there being only one intellect, translated by R. MacInerny (West Lafayette, in Purdue University Press, 1993).

jewish averroism

Leaman, Oliver. "Jewish Averroism." In History of Islamic Philosophy, edited by S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman. London: Routledge, 1996.

Zonta, Mauro. La filosofia ebraica medievale. Storia e testi. Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 2002.

arabic aristotelianism

The major figures of Arabic Aristotelianism are al-Kīndī (d. 873), al-Farābī (d. 950), ibn-Sīnā (Latinized Avicenna, d. 1037), and Ibn-Bajja (Latinized Avempace, d. 1138). See The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, edited by Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: CUP, 2005); Storia della filosofia nell'Islam medievale, edited by Cristina D'Ancona Costa (Torino: Einaudi, 2005). These important works provide references to many other valuable and supplementary studies. For a reader, see Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, edited by Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Cambridge: CUP, 2005). For al-Ghazzali's Incoherence of the Philosophers see The Incoherence of the Philosophers: English Translation of Imam Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falasifa, translated by Michael E. Marmura (Brigham Young University's Islamic Translation Series), (Brigham Young University Press: 2000). For Averroes' reply, see his Incoherence of the Incoherence, translated by Simon Van Den Bergh (Gibb Memorial Trust, 1978). In this debate the term philosophers is a translation of the Arabic falasifa, which is in turn a transliteration of the Greek philosophoi. Falasifa thus has the special meaning of "thinkers following the Greek tradition" and not the general sense of philosophers as such.

transmission of greek and arabic philosophy

Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale: traductions et traducteurs de l'antiquité tardive au XIVe siècle, edited by J. Hamesse and M. Fattori. Louvain: Brepols, 1990.

The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe, edited by C. E. Butterworth and B. A. Kessel. Leiden: Brill, 1994.

Stuart MacClintock (1967)

Bibliography updated by Alain de Libera (2005)