Averroism

The claim

Scripture and demonstration cannot conflict, because both are true. Where the literal sense of scripture contradicts a demonstration, the scripture is to be interpreted — and only those trained in demonstration are competent to do it.

What it held

Ibn Rushd was a judge in Córdoba and wrote his philosophy alongside a career in Islamic law, which shows in how he argues. The Decisive Treatise is framed as a legal ruling on whether philosophy is permitted, and concludes that for those capable of it, it is obligatory.

His reading of Aristotle is austerely purist. He strips out the emanation scheme the Arabic tradition had inherited from Neoplatonism, rejects Ibn Sina's essence-existence distinction as a confusion of logic with metaphysics, and produces commentaries so thorough that Latin Europe called him simply the Commentator.

The doctrine that made him notorious is the unity of the intellect. If the intellect is immaterial, it cannot be individuated by matter, so there is one material intellect for the whole species in which individuals participate. Personal immortality does not obviously survive this, and Aquinas wrote a treatise specifically to refute it.

In Latin Europe the Averroists were accused of holding a double truth — one thing true in philosophy, another in faith. Ibn Rushd holds nothing of the sort; the charge is a caricature invented by opponents and it stuck for seven hundred years.

How it argued

Line-by-line commentary in three lengths — short, middle and long — on almost the entire Aristotelian corpus, plus independent works on the relation of philosophy to law.

What it was arguing against

Al-Ghazali, answered point by point in The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Also Ibn Sina, whose innovations he regarded as departures from Aristotle rather than improvements.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether the unity of the intellect leaves anything of the individual to survive death. Whether the Latin Averroists represented him at all.

Common misconceptions

The double-truth doctrine, which nobody demonstrably held and which was invented by the bishop who condemned it in 1277. Ibn Rushd's actual position is that there is one truth with two modes of access.

How it began

Commissioned by an Almohad caliph who wanted Aristotle explained, at a moment when al-Andalus could still support that request.

What became of it

Extinguished in the Islamic west almost immediately — his books were burned in his lifetime and he was briefly exiled. It survived in Hebrew and Latin translation, which is why nearly all the long commentaries exist in Latin and not in Arabic.

Lasting influence

Latin Averroism at Paris and Padua ran for four centuries and was repeatedly condemned. Jewish Averroism is a substantial tradition. Aquinas' entire treatment of the intellect is shaped by having to answer him.

Why it still matters

The argument about whether religious texts must yield to demonstration where the two conflict is not a settled question anywhere.

Put another way

A commentator so thorough that Europe forgot his name and called him only that.

Where to start

The Decisive Treatise. Forty pages, and it is a working judge arguing a case.

The surprising bit

Almost none of his long commentaries survive in Arabic. The philosopher who insisted on returning to the authentic Aristotle is himself preserved chiefly in translations made by Jews and Christians.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Falsafa, Peripatetic school (Aristotelianism)

Opposed by

Ash’arism, Avicennism, Thomism

Influenced

Jewish Aristotelianism

The verdict

The last great Aristotelian of the Islamic west, condemned there and canonised in Padua.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy