Averroes
| Era | Medieval Philosophy |
|---|---|
| Region | Middle Eastern Philosophers |
| School | Averroism |
Main interests | Islamic Theology, Islamic Law, Mathematics, Medicine |
Notable ideas | Reconciliation of Aristotelianism with Islam |
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126 – December 10, 1198) was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher and physician, a master of philosophy and Islamic law, mathematics, and medicine. He was born in Córdoba, Spain, and died in Marrakesh, Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism.
His name is also seen as Averroès, Averroës or Averrhoës, indicating that the o and the e form separate syllables. In Arabic (the language in which he wrote), his name is Abu Al-Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن محمد بن احمد بن احمد بن رشد or just Ibn Rushd. In modern Tamazight (the language of the Almohad kings) it would be Muḥemmed mmis n Ḥmed mmis n Muḥemmed mmis n Ḥmed mmis n Rucd.
Biography
Averroes came from a family of Maliki legal scholars; his grandfather Abu Al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was chief judge of Cordoba under the Almoravids. His father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the coming of the Almohad dynasty in 1146.
It was Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of Yusef al-Mansur, who introduced Averroes to the court and to Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr), the great Muslim physician; both men became friends. In 1160 Averroes was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville and Cordoba, and in Morocco during his career.
He wrote commentaries on Aristotle and a medical encyclopedia. Jacob Anatoli translated his works from Arabic to Hebrew in the 1200s.
His most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy against al-Ghazali's claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), himself arguing against the earlier Aristotelian, Avicenna, that it was self-contradictory and an affront to the teachings of Islam.
With the wave of fanaticism that swept Al Andalus at the end of the 12th century following the Almohads conquest, his high connections could not preserve him from political trouble and he was banished to an isolated place near Cordoba and closely monitored until shortly before his death (in Morocco). Many of his works in logic and metaphysics have been permanently lost in the ensuing censorship. Much of his work has only survived in Latin or Hebrew translation, not in the original Arabic.
System of philosophy
Averroes tried to reconcile Aristotle's system of thought with Islam. According to Averroes there is no conflict between religion and philosophy. He held that one can reach the truth through two different ways: philosophy or religion. He believed in the eternity of the universe and the existence of pre-extant forms. In contrast with Islam and in similarity with Buddhism, he believed that the soul was not eternal, and that in fact all beings share one soul.
Significance
Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West. Before 1150 only a few translated works of Aristotle existed in Latin Europe, and they were not studied much or given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of Aristotle was recovered in the West.
Averroes's work on Aristotle spans almost three decades, and he wrote commentaries on almost all of Aristotle's work except for Aristotle's Politics, to which he did not have access. Hebrew translations of his work also had a lasting impact on Jewish philosophy. Averroes's ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others (especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition which valued Aristotelian logic. Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed him to be so important they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him "The Commentator" and calling Aristotle "The Philosopher." Averroes left no school in the Islamic world, and his death marks the eclipse of liberal culture in Moorish Spain.
In his work Fasl al-Maqāl (translated a. o. as The Decisive Treatise), Averroes stresses the importance of analytical thinking as a prerequisite to interpret the Qur'an; this is in contrast to orthodox Muslim theology, where the emphasis is less on analytical thinking but on extensive knowledge of sources other than the Qur'an.
Ibn Rushd was one of those who predicted the existence of a new world beyond the Atlantic Ocean.[1]
Jurisprudence and Law
Averroes is also a highly-regarded legal scholar of the Maliki school. Perhaps his best-known work in this field is "Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid," a textbook of Maliki doctrine in a comparative framework. He is also the author of "al-Bayān wa’l-Taḥṣīl, wa’l-Sharḥ wa’l-Tawjīh wa’l-Ta`līl fi Masā’il al-Mustakhraja," a long and detailed commentary based on the "Mustakhraja" of Muḥammad al-`Utbī al-Qurtubī.
Cultural influences
Reflecting the respect which medieval European scholars paid to him, Averroes is named by Dante in the Divine Comedy with the other great pagan philosophers whose spirits dwell in "the place that favour owes to fame" in Limbo.
Averroes appears in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, entitled "Averroes's Search", in which he is portrayed trying to find the meanings of the words tragedy and comedy.
He is briefly mentioned in Ulysses by James Joyce alongside Maimonides.
He is also the main character in Destiny, a Youssef Chahine film.
The asteroid 8318 Averroes was named in his honour.