Ibn Rushd (Averroës)
Philosophers (falāsifa) · Sunni · 1126–1198 CE
At a glance
| Category | Philosophers (falāsifa) |
|---|---|
| Tradition | Sunni |
| Lifespan | 1126–1198 CE |
| Region | al-Andalus |
| Role | Jurist, physician and Aristotelian; the great commentator |
| Note | His Latin commentaries shaped medieval European philosophy; replied to al-Ghazālī's critique of falsafa |
Ibn Rushd — Averroës to Latin Europe — was born at Córdoba in 1126 into a family of Mālikī jurists; both his father and his grandfather had served as chief qāḍī of the city, and he held that office himself. He was trained first in the Muslim sciences of Qurʾānic exegesis, hadith and law, then in medicine, and his first substantial book was a general medical work, the Kulliyāt. Philosophy came to him as a commission rather than a private enthusiasm: introduced at the Almohad court by Ibn Ṭufayl, he was asked by the caliph Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf — himself a serious student of the subject — to produce a reliable exposition of Aristotle, and he succeeded Ibn Ṭufayl as court physician in 1182.
The commentaries occupied him from about 1169 until the end of his life and are the work on which his reputation rests. He wrote short summaries, middle commentaries and long analytical commentaries — sometimes all three on the same treatise — covering most of the Aristotelian corpus, and, lacking access to the Politics, commented on Plato's Republic instead. He read the Greek commentators Alexander and Themistius alongside the Muslim falāsifa al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Bājjah, and he corrected all of them where he judged they had let Neoplatonic assumptions displace Aristotle's own arguments. Much of this work survives only in Hebrew or Latin translation, the Arabic originals having been lost.
His three polemical treatises of 1179–80 defend philosophy as a religious duty rather than a danger. The Faṣl al-maqāl argues that scripture, properly read, commands demonstrative reasoning, and that where a plain text conflicts with a demonstrated conclusion the text calls for interpretation; the Kashf al-manāhij examines how theological doctrines are actually proved; and the Tahāfut al-tahāfut (“The Incoherence of the Incoherence”) answers al-Ghazālī point by point. He coupled this with a frankly elitist principle: demonstrative argument belongs to the philosophers, dialectic to the theologians, and the plain sense of scripture to everyone else, who should not be unsettled by readings they cannot follow.
The defence did not prevail at home. Opposition from the jurists and theologians was strong, and late in life he fell out of favour — his books were burned and he was banished for a period before his death at Marrakesh in 1198. Falsafa did not recover its standing in the western Islamic world. In Latin Christendom, by contrast, his commentaries became the standard route to Aristotle, and “Averroism” — above all a reading of his account of the intellect — was argued over and condemned in the medieval universities for three centuries; Jewish philosophers in Hebrew translation made similar use of him. That his influence should have been greatest among those outside his own tradition is one of the ironies of Islamic intellectual history.