Averroes in Arabic, Ibn Rushd (1126–98), Islamic philosopher, jurist, and physician. Scion of a long line of qadis (religious judges), he was born at Córdova and educated in Islamic law. Introduced to the Almohad ruler by Ibn Tufayl, author of the philosophical allegory Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, he feigned ignorance of philosophy, only to learn that the leader of the dynasty so feared for its orthodoxy was thoroughly at home with philosophical issues. He was given a robe of honor and a mount and later invited to write his famous commentaries on Aristotle and made qadi of Seville, finally succeeding Ibn Tufayl as royal physician and becoming chief qadi of Córdova. He was persecuted when the sultan’s successor needed orthodox support in his war with Christian Spain, but died in the calm of Marrakesh, the edicts against him rescinded.
His works, most often preserved in Hebrew or Latin translations (‘Averroes’ reflects efforts to Latinize ‘Ibn Rushd’), include medical and astronomical writings; short, middle, and long commentaries on Aristotle (‘his was the ultimate human mind’); a commentary on Plato’s Republic; and spirited juridical and conceptual defenses of philosophy: The Decisive Treatise and Incoherence of the Incoherence. The former argues that philosophy, although restricted to the adept, is mandated by the Koranic (59:2) injunction to reflect on God’s design. The latter answers al- Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers, defending naturalism and its presumed corollary, the world’s eternity, but often cutting adrift the more Platonizing and original doctrines of Avicenna, al-Ghazali’s chief stalking horse. Thus Averroes rejects Avicenna’s idea that the world itself is contingent if it is necessitated by its causes, arguing that removing the necessity that is the hallmark of God’s wisdom would leave us no way of inferring a wise Author of nature. Ultimately Averroes rejects emanation and seeks to return natural theology to the physics of matter and motion, discrediting Avicenna’s metaphysical approach and locating God’s act in the ordering of eternal matter. On bodily resurrection, individual providence, and miracles, he takes refuge in authority, fudge, and bluff; and even his defense of causal necessity smacks of a dogmatism expressive of the awkwardness of his position and the stiffening of Peripatetic thought. Yet he retains the idea that the intellect is immortal, indeed impersonal: since only matter differentiates individuals, all minds are ultimately one; they reach fulfillment and beatitude by making contact (ittifal; cf. Plotinus’s aphe) with the Active Intellect. Many Jewish philosophers like Narboni and Albalag followed Averroes’ arguments explicitly, reinterpreting Maimonides accordingly. But Averroes’ efforts to accommodate rhetorical and dialectical along with philosophical discourse led to the branding of his Christian followers as exponents of a ‘double truth,’ although no text advances such a doctrine. Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and Bernier of Nivelles were condemned for Averroistic heresies at Paris in the 1270s. But from the thirteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries Latin scholars regularly read Aristotle with Averroes’ commentaries. His philosophic respondents include Ibn Taymiyya (d.1327), Gersonides, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas. Spinoza’s dogged eternalism links him vividly to Averroes. See also ARABIC PHILOSOPHY. L.E.G.
