Значение слова "AVERROES" найдено в 3 источниках

AVERROES

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Averroes: translation

AverroesAlfred IvryAbū’l Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd (1126–98) needs tobe known only as Averroes to be familiar to students of philosophy inthe West. Greatly respected as a commentator on Aristotle’s writings,Averroes was also strongly attacked for what were perceived to be histheologico-political and metaphysical views. He was accused of holdinga double-truth theory, in which religion had its own truths which couldcontradict, though not invalidate, the truths of reason; and accused aswell 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 LatinWest had, which it chose to have, on the basis of the translations of hiswork that it privileged. For Christian Europe may be seen to have beenso taken with Averroes as the disciple and interpreter of Aristotle, thatit disregarded his indigenous Islamic identity. The Muslim Ibn Rushd,however, is very concerned to show that the teachings of philosophyare not antithetical to those of Islam, that religion not only has nothingto fear from philosophy, but that philosophy endorses its teachings asa popular expression of its own. At the same time, Averroes’ argumentwith his co-religionists may be seen as a plea for toleration of dissentwithin Islamic society.Averroes was able to take this stand because he was deeply rootedin the religious establishment of his day. Born into a Cordoban familyof learned jurists, Averroes studied and wrote on Islamic law andeventually became chief judge of Cordoba, following in the familytradition. As a young intellectual he also studied theology, and hisfamiliarity with the writings of al-Ghazzālī (d. 1111) in particular werecritical to his later defence of philosophy against the latter’s criticisms.In addition to mastering the traditional ‘religious sciences’ ofIslam, Averroes avidly studied the full range of the ‘secular sciences’of his day.Besides Arabic poetry, these subjects were basically theheritage of Greek learning (in Arabic translation), and featuredmathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. He achievedprominence as a physician, and wrote a medical treatise, known inthe Latin West as Colliget (from al-Kulliyāt, the Arabic for‘generalities’ or principles).Averroes’ major scholarly effort, however, went into the study ofphilosophy, which for him meant the writings of Aristotle. For him, asfor others from Andalusian Spain (Maimonides, for example), Aristotlewas ‘the master of those who know’, and Averroes dedicated himselfto expounding peripatetic views. In so doing, he set himself againstboth the competing influence of Neoplatonic ideas, which had madeconsiderable inroads in the Muslim East, and the domestic oppositionof anti-philosophical theologians, the mutakallimūn.Averroes’ philosophical position attracted the Almohad caliph, AbūYa‘qūb Yūsuf (reigned 1163–84).1 The caliph, while apparentlyinterested in understanding and cultivating science and philosophy,was no doubt also interested in having philosophers at court for reasonsof state, perhaps as a check on the influence of the more traditionallyorientedtheologians and lawyers. Averroes’ repeated criticism of thesepeople, and of al-Ghazzālī in particular, bespeak the author’s confidencein 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 whothen appointed him to various high offices, first as a qadi and then,from 1182, as court physician. Averroes remained at court during thereign of Abū Yūsuf, the son of Abū Ya‘qūb, and was able to complete,under apparently favourable conditions, what had become amonumental task of philosophical exegesis.In 1195, however, the caliph turned against Averroes and otherphilosophers, apparently deferring to the conservative majority in hisregime. For a brief time the study of philosophy was prohibited,Averroes was banished from court and placed under house arrest, hisbooks banned and ordered burnt. Having made his point, the caliphthen relented, and Averroes was a free and respected person when deathtook him in 1198.Islamic philosophy of the sort Averroes advocated died with him,however, in a Muslim climate which had become increasinglyconservative. Averroes had no significant Muslim disciples, and hisbooks were largely ignored by Arab readers, some writings disappearingin their original language. Fortunately, interest in Averroes and inAristotelian thought remained high among Jews and Christians; theJews reading him in Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters) andthen Hebrew translation, the Christians in Latin. Averroes’commentaries on Aristotle were read alongside the original works fromthe thirteenth century on, and themselves engenderedsupercommentaries; while a Latin (and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew)Averroism emerged which claimed him as its progenitor.Today, Muslim scholars, particularly in North Africa, arereclaiming Averroes for their culture, appreciating his contributionto Western philosophy while viewing him within the social andpolitical context of Almohad Andalusia and the Maghreb. Aninternational consortium of learned societies is engaged inpublishing critical editions, with concordances, of his Aristoteliancommentaries in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, the languages in whichthey circulated in the Middle Ages; they bring to fruition the projectfirst proposed by Harry Wolfson in 1931.Averroes wrote thirty-eight commentaries in all, mostly two andsometimes three per Aristotelian work.2 The commentaries differ inlength, and are called ‘short’, ‘middle’ and ‘long’ accordingly. The shortor ‘epitomes’ are free-standing summaries, apparently Averroes’ initialeffort to digest the arguments of Aristotle and his successors, bothGreek and Muslim, on a given text. There are only five longcommentaries, for the Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens,On the Soul and Metaphysics, and they are exhaustively detailed anduncompromising studies, quoting Aristotle in full and commenting onhis every sentence. Comparison of Averroes’ middle and longcommentaries on On the Soul and Metaphysics has raised the possibilitythat the middle are abridgements and somewhat revised versions ofthe long. It seems likely that Averroes wrote the long commentaries forhimself and the few who would have the training and patience to followhim, while composing the middle commentaries in a relatively shorterand somewhat more accessible and hence popular form, presumablyfor the edification of the caliph and his educated retinue.Besides these commentaries, Averroes composed a number of smallerindependent treatises, particularly on issues relating to epistemologyand physics, both terrestrial and celestial. He also wrote two defencesof philosophy, against the critical onslaught of al-Ghazzālī and thetheologians of Islam.In these apologia, Averroes insists upon respecting the dogmas ofIslam, while presenting himself as a dedicated philosopher, and offeringa spirited defence of the religious obligation to pursue philosophy.Refraining on principle from deliberating upon the truth value of articlesof faith in general, Averroes yet asserts the political and ethical necessityof affirming traditional religious beliefs.Though this non-judgemental attitude to religious claims may beseen as disingenuous, it could as well be argued that Averroes wassimply applying the same criterion to religion that he applied to otherfields of enquiry, namely, that it had its own premisses, which, aspremisses, were non-demonstrable. Moreover, he knew that theparticular 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 thenatural and empirical foundations which he saw as necessary for logical,rational discourse.Accordingly, the theology which Averroes allowed himself is of thephilosophical kind, in which the particular affirmations of Islam arerelevant only at the most universal and impersonal level, concernedwith the existence and nature of God, creation and providence.Averroes’ God is thus the philosophers’ God, with no historical orethnic identification. As a medieval philosopher, however, Averroesworks within a modified Aristotelian view of the deity, such that Godrelates to the world more directly and affectedly than Aristotle thought.Averroes’ logical commentaries attest to the advanced state of theart in the Islamic world by the twelfth century, with full understandingof the technical aspects of syllogistic proof as well as of the politicalpurposes to which logical argument could be put. Viewing, with hispredecessors, the Poetics and Rhetoric as part of the Organon, Averroeshas less sympathy with poetry as a vehicle for expressing the truththan he has for rhetoric, recognizing the common and even necessaryuse of rhetoric in traditional religious discourse ([3.4] 73, 84). Dialecticalreasoning is both criticized, when used by the mutakallimūn as a selfsufficientmethodology; and praised, when treated by the falāsifah asan effective stepping-stone to demonstrative proof. It is thedemonstrative proof, with its necessary premisses, which remains theideal form of argument for Averroes, though he may well have suspectedit was an ideal not often realized. As al-Ghazzālī insisted, foreshadowingHume, many of the philosophers’ physical and metaphysical premisses,and hence proofs, were not necessarily true.Nevertheless, Averroes’ physics and metaphysics follow Aristotlemainly in integrating the principles of being in the sublunar andsupralunar spheres. As much as is possible, Averroes presents a uniformpicture of the universe. The same principles obtain in the celestial andterrestrial realms, despite the matter of the heavens being consideredas eternal. Even where Averroes acknowledges the special propertiesof the heavens, and even more so of God, and qualifies his descriptionsas ‘equivocal’, and ‘analogous’ language, it appears he believes in theuniversal applicability and intelligibility of his ontological principles.Developing Aristotle’s hylomorphic perspective, Averroes posits aprime 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 anindeterminate tridimensional extension, an actual substance of sorts.Prime matter thereby represents being in a perpetual state ofbecoming.At the other end of the spectrum of being—and part of that spectrumfor Averroes—the first mover or God is conceived as an immaterialsubstance, both fully actual and the very principle of actuality, theactual state of every being deriving ultimately from him. In this way,while representing the very principle of being, God functions to facilitatecontinuous change and becoming in the world.Every substance in the universe in this view is regarded as the productof these eternal formal and material principles of being, and eachsubstance exists in actual and potential states. At the extremes there isno absolutely separate existence either, prime matter not being foundwithout a corresponding ‘corporeal form’, and God’s very existence‘proven’ only in relation to the motion of the heavens, for which he isa first and necessary cause.Averroes gets this view of God partly from Aristotle, together withAristotle’s conceptualization of the first mover as an immaterial andintelligent being: a mind the essential being and sole activity of whichis thought, treated in the post-Aristotelian tradition as equivalent toknowledge. For Averroes, as for his Muslim predecessors, this divineknowledge is not purely self-referential; in thinking himself, God wasbelieved to think and hence to know the essential forms (i.e. the species)of all beings ([3.9] 155). While not subscribing to a Neoplatonicemanationist view, and instead believing that all forms are intrinsic tothe substance in which they appear, Averroes yet believes that theactualization of each form depends ultimately on the first cause.For Averroes, the physical dependency of the world upon God iscouched not only in terms of intelligence and knowledge, but also desireand even love ([3.9] 154). The heavenly bodies were each thought tohave intellects which functioned as their immaterial, formal principles.For Averroes this meant that each intellect ‘knew’ the place and role ofits sphere in the cosmos, both in relation to the other spheres, and tothe unmoving first cause itself. This knowledge could also be expressedas a desire in the intellect to realize itself as perfectly as it could, whichfor the spheres took the form of perfectly circular and hence eternalmotion.Averroes does not seriously posit the existence of a soul in additionto an intellect for each sphere, believing he had no need for a secondimmaterial principle to explain the motion of the planets ([3.9] 149).For him, the intellect alone could both think or know its object, anddesire or love it, desire being the external manifestation of its knowledge,intellect in action. Moreover, the intellects of the spheres could be saidto ‘know’ events on earth, inasmuch as their movements, andparticularly the heat of the sun, affected the generation of substanceshere. This knowledge Averroes judged ‘accidental’ or incidental to the‘essential’ knowledge or function of the spheres, which was to maintaintheir own, more immediate perfection, expressed by perfect circularmotion ([3.9] 38).Averroes clung to the Aristotelian model of circular planetary motion,though aware that astronomical theory had long since modified it. Hethereby shows his fundamental if anachronistic loyalty to Aristotle asthe arbiter of scientific truth. At the same time, Averroes modified hisAristotelian stance, or appears to have done so, as circumstancesrequired. A striking example of this occurs in his treatment of the processof 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 Onthe Soul 3.5, and for which the post-Aristotelian tradition had proposeda number of theories. The fundamental question was whether thepotential human intellect, being formed and informed by the imaginativeand sensory faculties of the soul, could transcend these physical originsand become an independent and hence immortal substance. Averroesformulated different responses to this question throughout his life([3.31] 220–356), and it appears his final position is that the individualintellect is only ‘accidentally’ related to the other corporeal faculties ofthe soul, belonging ‘essentially’ to a universal immaterial ‘AgentIntellect’. Put another way, the Agent Intellect is ‘essentially’ a singleimmaterial actual substance, ‘accidentally’ related, as a potential ormaterial intellect, to many corporeal beings.The Agent Intellect for the peripatetic post-Aristotelian tradition isthat intellect which is the last of the heavenly intelligences, its sphereof operation our earth. For Averroes, it acts in much the same way thatGod does in the universe as a whole, as the actualizing principle for allinnate forms, including and especially the form of human beings, theirintellects. The Agent Intellect thus actualizes the potential and naturalintelligibility of all objects here, and the potential knowledge of allpersons who exercise their minds. The philosopher’s knowledge, his‘acquired intellect’, may be considerable indeed, when directed towardsand conjoined with the Agent Intellect, his ultimate goal; yet thisconjunction does not, for Averroes, render the individual intellect itselfimmortal. Its truths are not personal, though its knowledge is its own,as long as the person lives. The immortality that the individual mayanticipate is as part of the sum of universal truths, identified with theAgent Intellect. For Averroes this knowledge, however inadequate itmay seem to the person seeking a personal immortality or mysticalunion with the deity, yet provides the philosopher with a sense of greatfelicity and fulfilment.The uncompromising teachings of Averroes’ commentaries aremodulated in the works he composed in his own name in defence ofphilosophy. The Faṣl al-Maqāl, paraphrased in English as ‘Averroes onthe harmony of religion and philosophy’,3 was probably written aboutten years after Averroes received his mandate from the caliph to explainand summarize Aristotle’s works, i.e. in a period when Averroes enjoyedthe caliph’s support and felt confident in presenting philosophy’s claimto religious legitimacy before its detractors.The Harmony has a logical and legal focus, Averroes arguing beforehis fellow jurists that while rooted in the Qur’ān, Islamic law is asmuch of an innovation or post-Qur’ānic development within Islam asis philosophy, and that therefore both are equally permissibleexpressions of the faith. For Averroes, the Qur’ān demands that onereflect upon, hence study the world, which he takes as an obligation topursue philosophy, for those capable of it. This means, in effect, thosewho appreciate the difference between demonstrative and nondemonstrativearguments, people (i.e. philosophers) who can argueapodictically ([3.11] 45).Persons such as these are relatively few in any society, Averroesrecognizes, and he readily accepts the use of the less conclusive andmore popular forms of religious discourse, expressed dialectically andrhetorically. Averroes believes the Qur’ān appeals to people on allthree levels, though its demonstrative arguments may only be alludedto, and that only by understanding the text allegorically. Averroes hasno 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 superiorityof scientific, i.e. demonstrable, philosophical discourse, to all otherforms of reasoning. Averroes could scarcely expect to persuade hiscritics of the virtues of philosophy in this manner, and his writing simplyattests to his complete conviction and self-confidence.Averroes’ claims for philosophy are buttressed in this book by abrave de facto attack upon one of the institutions of Islamic faith, theconcept of ijmā‘ or consensus, which when invoked has the status oflaw. To his critics, there is a consensus in Islam that philosophy is anirreligious and hence unacceptable pursuit. Averroes, in response, claimsthat a unanimous consensus does not exist on this issue, simply becausethere may always be private reservations to positions publicly declared,undermining theoretically the seeming unanimity; while this is true inmany areas, it is particularly so for philosophy, which has always hadan esoteric tradition of its own ([3.11] 52).Averroes in fact insists upon the private nature of philosophicalinstruction, claiming it wrong to teach the masses philosophy or theallegorical meaning of Scripture, since they would misunderstand thephilosophers and be led to unbelief. It is better to have them believe inideas which approximate and imitate the truth, thereby preservingsociety and their own (and the philosophers’) well-being ([3.11] 66).While it would be too much to claim that Averroes is fully preachingtoleration, within the limits of his society he may be seen as advocatinga fair measure of freedom of speech. He is not beyond branding asheretics disbelievers in creation, prophecy and the afterworld, but insists,without going into much detail, that the traditional understanding ofthese concepts should not be the only permissible ones.Averroes addresses these particular issues more fully in the Tahāfutal-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), his major defence ofphilosophy against the theological attack of al-Ghazzālī. Here thepolemical side of Averroes takes a back seat to his gift for philosophicalargument, his sights set on Avicenna (d. 1037) as much as on al-Ghazzālī. For it is Avicenna’s philosophy which al-Ghazzālī had firstsummarized, in his Maqāsid al-Falāsifah (The Intentions of thePhilosophers), and then attacked, in his Tahāfut al-Falāsifah (TheIncoherence of the Philosophers).The incisiveness of al-Ghazzālī’s attack may well have contributedto the declining fortunes of philosophy in the Muslim East, andeventually in the Muslim world as a whole. In Andalusia, however, therational philosophical tradition lived on through the twelfth century,and Averroes’ Incoherence may be seen as a last hurrah for a rigorousAristotelianism within Islamic culture. Averroes may have hoped thatin discrediting Avicenna’s Neoplatonically inclined approach tophilosophy he could defuse al-Ghazzālī’s critique of philosophy ingeneral, not appreciating the fact that if Avicenna’s more religiouslycompatible philosophy was refuted, his own more uncompromisingapproach would be even more at risk in Islamic society.As does his Harmony, Averroes’ Incoherence daringly insists on thelegitimacy, if not necessity, of his interpretation of creation, providenceand the afterworld, though realizing the philosopher’s political andmoral obligation to uphold conventional beliefs in these issues.Accordingly, he gives sufficient lip-service to traditional religiouslocutions to permit wildly divergent assessments of his views on thesematters in contemporary scholarship.Averroes’ Incoherence of the Incoherence is a detailed response toal-Ghazzālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers, containing a verbatimtranscript of the former work. As such, it offers, among other things,Averroes’ proofs for the eternity of the world, so presented as to becompatible with the notion of God as creator; Averroes’ utilization ofpositive 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 whichAvicenna adopted. In place of Avicenna’s scheme, Averroes advocatesa more immanentist role for God in the cosmos, modifying therebyAristotle’s self-centred deity.Averroes’ physics, both celestial and terrestrial, is basicallyAristotelian, as is his closing defence of the logical necessity for believingin causation, directed against al-Ghazzālī’s Occasionalism. Averroes’final remarks defending his views on immortality of the soul andresurrection are very abbreviated, and perhaps indicative that he knewhow difficult it was to make them acceptable to his critics, thoughostensibly he claims these are not topics amenable to philosophicalinvestigation.For al-Ghazzālī, the notion of the eternity of the world poses twomain difficulties: it challenges God’s role as sole creator of theuniverse, and pre-empts the exercise of his free will. Al-Ghazzālī thusattempts both to discredit the notion of eternal motion and thephilosophers’ use of the concept of divine will. He claims, usingarguments which may be traced to John Philoponus, that the differentrates of motion of the supposedly eternal heavenly bodies wouldcreate disparate and hence impossible infinite numbers; while a divinewill in an eternal universe would have to act for that which already isand always has been existent, chaining its will to necessity andthereby rendering it otiose.Averroes’ response to the problem of different infinities distinguishesbetween actual and potential states of being; as all actual movementsare finite, infinity is predicable only of non-actual or potentialmovements, which as such are non-quantifiable ([3.18] 10). As for thedivine will, Averroes acknowledges that its action is indeed eternal andnecessary, 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 whichGod is the agent directly responsible, as the first and final cause, forthe motion of the heavenly bodies; and indirectly responsible,through those motions, for the formal and efficient causality whichdetermines the nature of all objects. Even matter may be said to comewithin God’s purview, through the forms with which all matter isconnected ([3.18] 108).This eternally created world is viewed as the willed effect of God’sknowledge, which ‘knowledge’ is tantamount to the creative act itself.God thus ‘knows’ the world, in so far as he is its creator. This knowledgeis of the world as it is, the actual world, with its corresponding realpotentialities, integral to the nature of every actual being. God’sknowledge accordingly is of that which is necessary, being actual,though full knowledge of that entails, for Averroes, knowledge as wellof non-necessary or possible alternative states of being.Averroes’ assurance in the divine awareness of logically possiblealternative orders in the universe encourages him to speak of the divinewill as ‘choosing’ to act in the manner which he does, though the choiceis eternally foreknown and necessary. The divine will is thus, forAverroes, the external realization of a theoretically more comprehensivedivine knowledge. These and other attributes may be predicated ofGod, since as immaterial properties they pose for Averroes noquantifiable challenge to the divine oneness ([3.18] 188, 212).Nor do such distinct notions as knowledge and will, or power andlife, for example, introduce differentiation into the divine essence forAverroes, since in that essence they are undifferentiated ([3.18] 257). Itis we who, assessing the multiple effects of God’s presence in the world,attribute diverse faculties to him. God’s nature remains unique, thoughit is not necessary therefore to strip it of all meaningful predication,and to distance God from the world physically and logically. God’sinvolvement 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 uponothers.Averroes is, accordingly, more willing than other medievalphilosophers to detail God’s manifold presence in the world, a presencewhich 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 manycontexts as we have seen, is the distinction he employs between‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ states of being, though both are necessaryfor the full description of the object discussed. Thus, it may be saidthat God’s knowledge is essentially one (or single) though accidentallymany (or diverse).Averroes’ political philosophy is known to us from a variety ofsources, not least his commentary on Plato’s Republic.4 This work isparticularly intriguing, being included, presumably intentionally, withinthe corpus of his Aristotelian commentaries. Admittedly, Averroes’choice of the Republic was determined in part by his unfamiliaritywith Aristotle’s Politics, a text which was unavailable to him in Spain,and largely unknown throughout the Islamic world. However, thatfact may itself indicate the status which the Republic enjoyed amongthe Muslim falāsifah, particularly Averroes’ predecessor, al-Fārābī (d.950). As the pre-eminent textual representative of Greek politicalphilosophy, the Republic thus had to be included in the canon ofphilosophical texts which Averroes was charged to present, with hiscommentaries, to the caliph.The paraphrase of the Republic which Averroes offers his readers is,however, imbued with Aristotelian perspectives, and shows the influenceof the Stagirite’s Organon as well as his Nicomachean Ethics ([3.30]17–45). The metaphysical and dialectical underpinnings of the Republicall but disappear, and the examination of personal and civic virtuewhich Plato describes is pursued by Averroes for essentially instrumentalpurposes. Political philosophy is treated primarily as a practical science,though surely Averroes knew the kind of state Plato advocated wasimpractical and totally unrealistic for a Muslim society.Though it is not necessary to believe Averroes endorsed everythinghe reports Plato as recommending in the Republic, it is quite clear thathe is sympathetic to many of Plato’s teachings there. Averroes’ ownaffinities can be discerned from the style of his composition, both inhis omissions and elaborations, as well as in his comparisons of Plato’steachings with references to the situation obtaining in the cities or statesof his own time.Averroes omits the opening and closing Books of the Republic, withtheir dialectical, poetic and mythic emphases, and omits also thediscussion of the Ideas and of the divided line in Book 6 of Plato’swork; substituting for it an attack upon the world view and methodsof the mutakallimūn, a critique which may be seen as an indirect wayof affirming Aristotelian nominalism and logic. There as elsewhere inthis commentary, Averroes emphasizes Aristotelian distinctions betweendemonstrative and non-demonstrative forms of reasoning. Whilepreferring demonstrative arguments, Averroes acknowledges thenecessity of presenting philosophical truths to the masses in less rigorousways. Suspicious of the dialectical arguments of the mutakallimūn andof the themes and excesses of much of poetic discourse, and recognizingthe 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 Republicmay help the reader understand his stunning indifference to theconventions of Muslim society. Daringly, Averroes follows Plato inconsidering religion from a political perspective only. It is seen as astructural component of all societies, part of the legal and moralcomposition of each city, with Islam and its Prophet accorded no specialpriority ([3.13] 48). Prophecy as an institution is not placed above theleadership and laws bestowed by the philosopher-king or imām (theone Muslim term which Averroes uses, though treating it as a meresynonym for Plato’s ideal leader) ([3.13] 72). Nor is Averroesparticularly sensitive to the strictures of Islamic law, in apparentlyadvocating equal rights and responsibilities for both sexes, and inseeming agreement with Plato’s views on the engendering andupbringing of the guardian class.Again, Averroes does not hesitate to convey and apparently concurwith Plato’s remarks about the necessity for political leaders to lie totheir subjects on occasion, presenting abstract or impersonal truths infictive dress. While Averroes is sympathetic to the particular teachingsof popular Islam, with its personal and providential God, and afterworldbeliefs, he considers them only from a neutral political perspective,risking thereby the wrath of his community ([3.13] 24). Here it wouldappear that his philosophical zeal has overwhelmed his politicalprudence.On the other hand, a conventional Islamic influence on Averroesmay be discerned in his treatment of Plato’s views on warfare ([3.13]12). Unlike the Greek philosopher’s defensive (if pre-emptive) militarystrategy, which Averroes sees as a racially biased attempt to keep thebarbarians at bay, the war which the Cordoban faylasūf advocates is ajihād or ‘holy war’; this is intended, however coercively, to bring thevirtues of good government and civilization to all those capable ofbeing educated, particularly the young.5 Averroes, we could thus assume,did not ponder the destabilizing effects upon society of a permanentstate of warfare, and this despite the ample evidence from the cities ofhis own time.We know, however, from his legal compendium Bidāyat al-Mujtahidwa-Nihāyat al-Iqtiṣād (which may be loosely translated as The ProperRational Initiative of a Legist), written for the most part well beforehis Republic commentary, that Averroes had considered jihād in all itsramifications, including the advisability, under duress, of declaring atruce, in effect making peace. His remarks in the Republic commentaryshould therefore not be taken as a realistic assessment of or prescriptionfor 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 thereader wondering which of Averroes’ remarks are meant to be takenas truly his, and to what degree we must see him adopting a rhetoricalstance, and for what ultimate purpose. Fundamentally, Averroes hasan appreciation for the philosopher-king model of leadership, with allits stratification and manipulation for the common good; and he hasan elitist but apparently egalitarian view of society. It would besurprising if he did not know that this Platonic political philosophywas anything but a practical or implementable document, and thattherefore this commentary, as all his philosophical writings, wereprimarily intended for theoretical reflection, the path to happiness forhim best reached through intellectual pursuits.NOTES1 Cf. the description of Averroes’ momentous encounter with the caliph, as givenby 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 Discourseand 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; forhis paraphrase of Plato’s work see Ralph Lerner [3.13].5 Cf. Rudolph Peters [3.14] 21 (the chapter on Jihād from Averroes’ legal handbookBidāyat al-Mujtahid).BIBLIOGRAPHYThis is an abbreviated bibliography, owing to the large number of editions, translationsand studies of Averroes’ philosophical writings. A complete listing to date may befound in the Rosemann and Druart-Marmura entries given in the bibliographicalsection below.Complete Editions of Arabic Original, and of Hebrew and LatinTranslations3.1 Aristotelis opera cum Averrois Commentariis, 9 vols and 3 supplements,Frankfurt-On-Main, Minerva, 1962. Reprint of Aristotelis omnia quae extantOpera…Averrois Cordubensis in ea opera omnes, qui ad haec usque temporapervenere, commentarii, Venice, 1562.3.2 Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. Ongoing series, publishedby the Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, Mass. until 1974, Arabiceditions since then published in Madrid and Cairo, Hebrew editions inJerusalem, and Latin editions in Cologne, under the auspices of learnedacademies in each country. Nine editions published to date, three each inArabic, Hebrew and Latin.The American Research Center in Egypt has sponsored the publication of variousArabic commentaries on the Organon, edited by C.Butterworth et al.Editions and Translations of Single Works3.3 Bland, K. (ed. and trans.) The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction withthe 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 onAristotle’s Topics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, Albany, NY, State University of NewYork Press, 1977.3.5 ——(trans.) Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and DeInterpretatione, 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 FragmenteAlexanders zur Metaphysik des Aristoteles untersucht und übersetzt vonJ.F.Mit Beiträgen zur Erläuterung des arabischen Textes von S.F.’,Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin ausdem 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 andLondon, 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 Sciencesand Humanities, 1986.3.13 Lerner, R. (trans.) Averroes on Plato’s Republic, Ithaca, NY and London, CornellUniversity 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, InstitutoHispano-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 1966and 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).Bibliographies3.19 Cranz, F.E. ‘Editions of the Latin Aristode accompanied by the commentariesof Averroes’, in E.Mahoney (ed.) Philosophy and Humanism. RenaissanceEssays 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 from1821 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.Surveys3.23 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, Longmanand Columbia University Press, 1970, 2nd edn 1983, pp. 270–92.3.26 Gätje, H. ‘Averroes als Aristoteleskommentator’, Zeitschrift der DeutschenMorgenländischen 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 ofAristotle-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 CommentariorumAverrois in Aristotelem’, Speculum 38 (1963): 88–104; 39 (1964): 378,corrections.Studies3.30 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 andOxford, 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 Universityof America Press, 1981, pp. 161–91.3.34 Jolivet, J. ‘Divergences entre les métaphysiques d’Ibn Rušd et d’Aristote’, Arabica29 (1982): 225–45.3.35 Kogan, B. Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, Albany, NY, StateUniversity 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 andAl-Bitrûjî’, in E.Mendelsohn (ed.) Transformation and Tradition in theSciences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 133–53.3.39 Wolfson, H. ‘Averroes’ lost treatise on the Prime Mover’, Hebrew Union CollegeAnnual 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.

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