Music, Poetry, and Politics in Averroes’s Commentary on Plato’s “Republic”, 2022
By: Douglas Kries
Title Music, Poetry, and Politics in Averroes’s Commentary on Plato’s “Republic”
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2022
Published in Plato's Republic in the Islamic Context. New Perspectives on Averroes's Commentary
Pages 87–110
Categories Poetics, Politics, Plato
Author(s) Douglas Kries
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
As our title announces, the current essay will explore three subjects that, in Averroes's Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” lead from one into another, almost like a short series of stepping-stones. The first part of the essay will consider the treatment of music in the Commentary, arguing that Averroes effectively reduces music to poetry. The second of the stepping-stones will show that the Commentary credits poetry with educating the young especially and in that way transforms poetry into a political art for disciplining and educating citizens. The third will take up the question of the Andalusian's extended criticism of poetry's common practice of offering pleasurable prizes and rewards for virtue and show how the Commentator applies this criticism of poetry to the very author on whom he is commenting. In pursuing all three of these questions, we will focus squarely on Averroes's Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” attempting to understand that text on its own terms but against its obvious background, the Republic of Plato. Nevertheless, in pursuing the teaching of The Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” we cannot neglect the important research that has been done in recent decades on classical Islamic philosophy's understanding of Aristotle's Organon generally and of the Poetics in particular. We will therefore turn to the reports of other scholars on these aspects of Averroes, at least to the extent that such reports will be helpful in enabling us to understand better the Commentary on Plato's “Republic.” In the Republic, Plato initiates his analysis of the education of the guardians with a discussion of music in the latter portions of book 2; that discussion extends through much of book 3. Averroes's corresponding treatment of the education of the guardians through music is in the “First Treatise” of the Commentary, mostly in a relatively lengthy and isolable section that extends from 29.9 through 36.5. During his treatment of music, Plato divides his subject into three parts: “melody is composed of three things—speech, harmonic mode, and rhythm.” Averroes seems to accept this division, although he inverts the order of the three elements: “A melody occurring in a narrative is composed of three things: rhythm, harmonic mode, and the speech to which the melody is set” (34.30–31).

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Averroes's Aesthetics. The Pleasure of Philosophy and the Pleasure of Poetry, 2015
By: Francesca Forte
Title Averroes's Aesthetics. The Pleasure of Philosophy and the Pleasure of Poetry
Type Article
Language English
Date 2015
Journal Quaestio
Volume 15
Pages 287–296
Categories Aristotle, Poetics, Commentary, Logic, Politics
Author(s) Francesca Forte
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
The theme of the pleasure of knowledge is central in Averroes’ aesthetical reflection of Aristotle’s Poetics, regardless whether we side with the logical or with the moral interpretation. The first one stresses the continuity between Averroes and previous commentators in his attempt to reconstruct the Poetics as an integral part of the Logic itself, whereby poetic discourse is conceived as a form of reasoning based on syllogisms. According to the latter perspective, however, pleasure is central in that poetry is a tool towards the pursuit of happiness: in this perspective it is necessary to bear in mind some common themes present in other works by Averroes (particularly in the commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon – and especially the commentary on the Rhetoric –, in the commentaries on Plato’s Republic, and, last but not least, in the Decisive Treatise). The pleasure of contemplative knowledge must go hand in hand with the pursuit of communal happiness and therefore with the good and proper order of community and society. Poetry represents a central tool towards this aim in that it expresses moral truths which cannot not be communicated (to everybody) by means of logic and philosophy alone.

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Averroes's Aesthetics. The Pleasure of Philosophy and the Pleasure of Poetry, 2015
By: Francesca Forte
Title Averroes's Aesthetics. The Pleasure of Philosophy and the Pleasure of Poetry
Type Article
Language English
Date 2015
Journal Quaestio
Volume 15
Pages 287–296
Categories Aristotle, Poetics, Commentary, Logic, Politics
Author(s) Francesca Forte
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
The theme of the pleasure of knowledge is central in Averroes’ aesthetical reflection of Aristotle’s Poetics, regardless whether we side with the logical or with the moral interpretation. The first one stresses the continuity between Averroes and previous commentators in his attempt to reconstruct the Poetics as an integral part of the Logic itself, whereby poetic discourse is conceived as a form of reasoning based on syllogisms. According to the latter perspective, however, pleasure is central in that poetry is a tool towards the pursuit of happiness: in this perspective it is necessary to bear in mind some common themes present in other works by Averroes (particularly in the commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon – and especially the commentary on the Rhetoric –, in the commentaries on Plato’s Republic, and, last but not least, in the Decisive Treatise). The pleasure of contemplative knowledge must go hand in hand with the pursuit of communal happiness and therefore with the good and proper order of community and society. Poetry represents a central tool towards this aim in that it expresses moral truths which cannot not be communicated (to everybody) by means of logic and philosophy alone.

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Music, Poetry, and Politics in Averroes’s Commentary on Plato’s “Republic”, 2022
By: Douglas Kries
Title Music, Poetry, and Politics in Averroes’s Commentary on Plato’s “Republic”
Type Book Section
Language English
Date 2022
Published in Plato's Republic in the Islamic Context. New Perspectives on Averroes's Commentary
Pages 87–110
Categories Poetics, Politics, Plato
Author(s) Douglas Kries
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
As our title announces, the current essay will explore three subjects that, in Averroes's Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” lead from one into another, almost like a short series of stepping-stones. The first part of the essay will consider the treatment of music in the Commentary, arguing that Averroes effectively reduces music to poetry. The second of the stepping-stones will show that the Commentary credits poetry with educating the young especially and in that way transforms poetry into a political art for disciplining and educating citizens. The third will take up the question of the Andalusian's extended criticism of poetry's common practice of offering pleasurable prizes and rewards for virtue and show how the Commentator applies this criticism of poetry to the very author on whom he is commenting. In pursuing all three of these questions, we will focus squarely on Averroes's Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” attempting to understand that text on its own terms but against its obvious background, the Republic of Plato. Nevertheless, in pursuing the teaching of The Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” we cannot neglect the important research that has been done in recent decades on classical Islamic philosophy's understanding of Aristotle's Organon generally and of the Poetics in particular. We will therefore turn to the reports of other scholars on these aspects of Averroes, at least to the extent that such reports will be helpful in enabling us to understand better the Commentary on Plato's “Republic.” In the Republic, Plato initiates his analysis of the education of the guardians with a discussion of music in the latter portions of book 2; that discussion extends through much of book 3. Averroes's corresponding treatment of the education of the guardians through music is in the “First Treatise” of the Commentary, mostly in a relatively lengthy and isolable section that extends from 29.9 through 36.5. During his treatment of music, Plato divides his subject into three parts: “melody is composed of three things—speech, harmonic mode, and rhythm.” Averroes seems to accept this division, although he inverts the order of the three elements: “A melody occurring in a narrative is composed of three things: rhythm, harmonic mode, and the speech to which the melody is set” (34.30–31).

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