{"_index":"bib","_type":"_doc","_id":"1751","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1751,"authors_free":[{"id":2018,"entry_id":1751,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":684,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Gregorio Piaia","free_first_name":"Gregorio","free_last_name":"Piaia","norm_person":{"id":684,"first_name":"Gregorio","last_name":"Piaia","full_name":"Gregorio Piaia","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":0,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1141240149","viaf_url":"https:\/\/viaf.org\/viaf\/2485674","db_url":"","from_claudius":1,"link":"bib?authors[]=Gregorio Piaia"}}],"entry_title":"Averroes and Arabic Philosophy in the Modern Historia Philosophica: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","main_title":{"title":"Averroes and Arabic Philosophy in the Modern Historia Philosophica: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"},"abstract":"Averroes\u2019s role as Aristotle\u2019s commentator par excellence guaranteed him widespread and certain fame up to the first decades of the seventeenth century; but the crisis of Peripateticism and the establishment of the new philosophy and new science also find an echo in the image of Averreoes and, more generally, in that of Arabic philosophy and science. Here we find Averroes taking on the role of a symbol of perverse intellectual activity (Malebranche), an unscrupulous thinker as regards religion, or even, at times, of an unbeliever (Bayle, Hume). The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the place given to Averroes and to Islamic thought in the historiography of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when historia philosophica established itself as a literary genre in its own right. The inquiry starts with Georg Horn\u2019s Historia philosophica (1655), in which \u2018Arabic philosophy\u2019 is said to begin with the Biblical figure of Job and where the presentation of Averroes is particularly brief compared with the lengthy biographical treatment meted out to Avicenna. In effect, it is only with Johann Heinrich Hottinger\u2019s publication (1664) of the De scriptoribus Arabicis by Johannes Leo Africanus (\u1e24asan ibn Mu\u1e25ammad al-Wazz\u0101n) that European intellectuals became aware of some of the details of Averroes\u2019s life. Our inquiry moves on to look at such writers as Johannes Gerhard Vossius, Daniel Georg Morhof, Ren\u00e9 Rapin, Pierre de Villemandy, Laurent Bordelon, Dupont-Bertris, and Georg Volckmar Hartmann, and ends with a critical examination of Andr\u00e9-Fran\u00e7ois Boureau-Deslandes Histoire critique de la philosophie (1737). Boureau-Deslandes does not limit himself to quoting information and anecdotes, but in line with his \u2018critical\u2019 approach, also expresses some judgements on the historical, religious, and cultural context of science in Islam. The attitude of these writers towards \u2018Arabic\u2019 thought is ambivalent: their recognition of the cultural and philosophical splendour of the caliphate of Baghdad is in practice frequently accompanied by a criticism of the Arabic philosophers\u2019 excessive subtlety. In the case of Averroes their negative judgement also springs from the fact that he had no knowledge of Greek, which prevented him from reaching an adequate understanding of Aristotelian doctrine. We must note however \u2013 in the work of Dupont Bertris (1726), for example \u2013 attempts to bring Averroes to the fore as a rationalist philosopher, indifferent to all positive religion, all the while defending him from accusation of impiety. These are the first signs of a historiographical trend which\u2013 thanks above all to Renan\u2019s famous th\u00e8se \u2013 was later to lead to a philosophical reappraisal of Averroes, no longer viewed merely as the \u2018commentator\u2019 of Aristotle.","btype":2,"date":"2013","language":"English","online_url":"","doi_url":"10.1007\/978-94-007-5240-5_12","ti_url":"","categories":[{"id":1,"category_name":"Averroism","link":"bib?categories[]=Averroism"},{"id":43,"category_name":"Tradition and Reception","link":"bib?categories[]=Tradition and Reception"}],"authors":[{"id":684,"full_name":"Gregorio Piaia","role":1}],"works":[],"republication_of":null,"translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1751,"section_of":241,"pages":"237\u2013254","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":241,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":"reference","type":4,"language":null,"title":"Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe","title_transcript":null,"title_translation":null,"short_title":null,"has_no_author":0,"volume":null,"date":"2013","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2013","abstract":null,"republication_of":null,"online_url":null,"online_resources":null,"translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"ti_url":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":241,"pubplace":"London","publisher":"Springer","series":"International Archives of the History of Ideas","volume":"211","edition_no":null,"valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Averroes and Arabic Philosophy in the Modern Historia Philosophica: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries"]}