Ibn Rushd, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Hafīd (Averroes), 2011
By: Taneli Kukkonen
Title Ibn Rushd, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Hafīd (Averroes)
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2011
Published in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy between 500 and 1500
Pages 494–501
Categories Biography, Surveys, Logic, Psychology, Cosmology, Metaphysics
Author(s) Taneli Kukkonen
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
Averroes (1126–1198 CE) was the most famous and prolific commentator on Aristotle in all of medieval philosophy: 38 works are extant, at all levels of instruction. This concentration on Aristotle was not happenstance, instead, it reflects Averroes’ maturing philosophical outlook. For Averroes, Aristotle’s teaching came to represent the pinnacle of philosophical wisdom, and answers to all the most pressing problems in philosophy were to be found in a thorough and careful exploration of what that teaching truly implied. In the course of Averroes’ deepening investigations into Aristotelian lore, alternative interpretations were advanced and different traditions of thinking carefully laid side by side, producing a field guide to the Peripatetic tradition, as it was known to an Arabic scholar of the classical period. The resulting body of texts represents a high watermark in Aristotelian synthesis and systematization, even if Averroes failed in the end to resolve satisfactorily all the problems that had accumulated over the centuries. In addition to his Aristotelian Commentaries, Explications, and Compendia (which, besides Aristotle, encompassed works by Plato, Galen, Ptolemy, and al-Ġazālī), Averroes wrote smaller, independent essays and questions that explored contested issues in Aristotelian teaching; polemical works that argued the religious innocence and intellectual respectability of Peripatetic philosophy, correctly understood; and medical and legal treatises of solid but unspectacular standing. Averroes’ reputation was made in Latin Scholasticism and in Jewish circles of learning, while in the Arabic world his works fell mostly by the wayside. Today, his name is evoked in the Arabic world as a rallying-point for a rationalist Islam – a fitting legacy, if not always especially well grounded (modern-day Averroists displaying at best a cursory knowledge of the Commentator’s philosophy).

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Ibn Rushd, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Hafīd (Averroes), 2011
By: Taneli Kukkonen
Title Ibn Rushd, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Hafīd (Averroes)
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2011
Published in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy between 500 and 1500
Pages 494–501
Categories Biography, Surveys, Logic, Psychology, Cosmology, Metaphysics
Author(s) Taneli Kukkonen
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
Averroes (1126–1198 CE) was the most famous and prolific commentator on Aristotle in all of medieval philosophy: 38 works are extant, at all levels of instruction. This concentration on Aristotle was not happenstance, instead, it reflects Averroes’ maturing philosophical outlook. For Averroes, Aristotle’s teaching came to represent the pinnacle of philosophical wisdom, and answers to all the most pressing problems in philosophy were to be found in a thorough and careful exploration of what that teaching truly implied. In the course of Averroes’ deepening investigations into Aristotelian lore, alternative interpretations were advanced and different traditions of thinking carefully laid side by side, producing a field guide to the Peripatetic tradition, as it was known to an Arabic scholar of the classical period. The resulting body of texts represents a high watermark in Aristotelian synthesis and systematization, even if Averroes failed in the end to resolve satisfactorily all the problems that had accumulated over the centuries. In addition to his Aristotelian Commentaries, Explications, and Compendia (which, besides Aristotle, encompassed works by Plato, Galen, Ptolemy, and al-Ġazālī), Averroes wrote smaller, independent essays and questions that explored contested issues in Aristotelian teaching; polemical works that argued the religious innocence and intellectual respectability of Peripatetic philosophy, correctly understood; and medical and legal treatises of solid but unspectacular standing. Averroes’ reputation was made in Latin Scholasticism and in Jewish circles of learning, while in the Arabic world his works fell mostly by the wayside. Today, his name is evoked in the Arabic world as a rallying-point for a rationalist Islam – a fitting legacy, if not always especially well grounded (modern-day Averroists displaying at best a cursory knowledge of the Commentator’s philosophy).

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