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Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Averroes

Publié le 09/01/2010

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averroes

Ab*’l Wal(d Muh. ammad ibn Ah.mad 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

« relatively shorter and somewhat more accessible and hence popular form, presumably for the edification of thecaliph and his educated retinue.Besides these commentaries, Averroes composed a number of smaller independent treatises, particularly on issuesrelating to epistemology and physics, both terrestrial and celestial.

He also wrote two defences of philosophy,against the critical onslaught of al-Ghazz&l( and the theologians of Islam.In these apo!ogia, Averroes insists upon respecting the dogmas of Islam, while presenting himself as a dedicatedphilosopher, and offering a spirited defence of the religious obligation to pursue philosophy.

Refraining on principlefrom deliberating upon the truth value of articles of faith in general, Averroes yet asserts the political and ethicalnecessity of affirming traditional religious beliefs.Though this non-judgemental attitude to religious claims may beseen as disingenuous, it could as well be argued that Averroes was simply applying the same criterion to religionthat 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 sawas necessary for logical, rational discourse.Accordingly, the theology which Averroes allowed himself is of the philosophical kind, in which the particularaffirmations of Islam are relevant only at the most universal and impersonal level, concerned with the existence andnature of God, creation and providence.

Averroes' God is thus the philosophers' God, with no historical or ethnicidentification.

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 whichlogical 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, recognizingthe common and even necessary use of rhetoric in traditional religious discourse ([3.4] 73, 84).

Dialectical reasoningis both criticized, when used by the mutakallim*n as a self¬sufficient methodology; and praised, when treated bythe fal&sifah as an effective stepping-stone to demonstrative proof.

It is the demonstrative proof, with itsnecessary premisses, which remains the ideal form of argument for Averroes, though he may well have suspected itwas an ideal not often realized.

As al-Ghazz&l( insisted, foreshadowing Hume, many of the philosophers' physicaland metaphysical premisses, and hence proofs, were not necessarily true.Nevertheless, Averroes' physics and metaphysics follow Aristotle mainly in integrating the principles of being in thesublunar and supralunar spheres.

As much as is possible, Averroes presents a uniform picture of the universe.

Thesame principles obtain in the celestial and terrestrial realms, despite the matter of the heavens being considered aseternal.

Even where Averroes acknowledges the special properties of the heavens, and even more so of God, andqualifies his descriptions as ‘equivocal', and ‘analogous' language, it appears he believes in the universal applicabilityand intelligibility of his ontological principles.Developing Aristotle's hylomorphic perspective, Averroes posits a prime matter which, through its connection withan 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 actualsubstance 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 isconceived as an immaterial substance, both fully actual and the very principle of actuality, the actual state ofevery being deriving ultimately from him.

In this way, while representing the very principle of being, God functions tofacilitate 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 materialprinciples of being, and each substance exists in actual and potential states.

At the extremes there is no absolutelyseparate existence either, prime matter not being found without a corresponding ‘corporeal form', and God's veryexistence ‘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 asan immaterial and intelligent being: a mind the essential being and sole activity of which is thought, treated in thepost-Aristotelian tradition as equivalent to knowledge.

For Averroes, as for his Muslim predecessors, this divineknowledge is not purely self-referential; in thinking himself, God was believed to think and hence to know theessential 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 thatthe 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 andknowledge, but also desire and even love ([3.9] 154).

The heavenly bodies were each thought to have intellectswhich functioned as their immaterial, formal principles.

For Averroes this meant that each intellect ‘knew' the placeand 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 forthe 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 hadno need for a second immaterial principle to explain the motion of the planets ([3.9] 149).

For him, the intellectalone could both think or know its object, and desire or love it, desire being the external manifestation of itsknowledge, intellect in action.

Moreover, the intellects of the spheres could be saidto ‘know' events on earth, inasmuch as their movements, and particularly the heat of the sun, affected thegeneration 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 byperfect circular motion ([3.9] 38).. »

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