Averroes

ABSTRACT:Our paper studies one of the most interesting manuscripts of medieval Jewish philosophy, a unicum that is housed in the British Library, Heb MS Add 27559. This fascinating manuscript, in part a version of a work compiled by Ṭodros Ṭodrosi, in Trinquetaille in the 1330s, is a Hebrew anthology of logical and scientific texts, written by Greek and Arabic philosophers, some of which are translated into Hebrew for the first time by Ṭodros. The paper sheds new light on this manuscript through an examination of the section on natural science that Ṭodros devoted to the study and explanation of Aristotle’s Physics and which comprises more than a third of the entire manuscript. We uncover Ṭodros’s aims and methodology in this section on physics (and, to some extent, in other sections as well), and sketch a clear picture of the ways in which Ṭodros intended to assist his contemporary readers in the study of natural science. The paper contributes to our knowledge of the fundamental sta...

A cross-cultural reading hosted by Carleton University and covered by CBC In Town and Out interview

The diagram interfaces geometry and anatomy, humanity and nature, architecture and cosmos, microcosm and macrocosm. It transcends the ancient architect Vitruvius’ text and intersects with ideas prevalent among Leonardo’s contemporaries, at the threshold of modernity. Interweaving many strands of history and encapsulating the diverse interests of Leonardo, his Vitruvian Man was Renaissance’s archetypal selfie.

Second in a series of Three Cinquecento Lectures delivered at Carleton University on the occasion of Leonardo Da Vinci's 500th Anniversary in 2019
1. "Leonardo Da Vinci: From Baghdad to Bayezid"  (Oct 1)
2. “Vitruvian Man” as Renaissance Selfie (Dec 7)
3. "Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mirror Writing" (Dec 12)

Abstract. This article examines Averroes’ interpretation, found in his Long Commentary on the De Anima, of a famous passage in Aristotle’s De An. III 5 (430a14-15) which presents the intellect “producing all things, as a kind of positive state (hexis), like light”. Averroes, clearly heir to Alexander of Aphrodisias for whom hexis refers not to the intellect “agent” itself but to its product, defends nevertheless, via the comparison with light, the conception of the agent intellect (a substance purely in act by itself) as an hexis, which leads us to the inevitable consequence that the agent intellect is the prime object of the material intellect, acting as a condition for all subsequent thoughts.

Le but de cet écrit n'est pas de réaliser un lien historique entre la pensée averroïste et la pensée spinoziste, autrement dit son but n'est pas de montrer les développements de la pensée averroïste pour arriver à la pensée du philosophe néerlandais. Nous souhaitons plutôt montrer comment ces deux pensées se rencontrent au niveau de leurs possibilités critiques et politiques. La thèse qui traverse cet écrit est la suivante : la rencontre entre ces deux philosophes se fait sur le terrain commun de la félicité et de sa concordance avec la philosophie et la religion.

From the madrasa-graduate establishing the scientific method to the inventor of algebra; from the geographer of the most accurate map in the pre-modern world to the theologian-poet whose travels exceeded Marco Polo, Magellan or Columbus; from a million-word medical encyclopedia to Enlightenment’s bestselling Arabic novel; from North America’s bestselling poet to Reagan’s favourite medieval economist; from the Shariah judge that inspired Europe’s most freethinking university to the scholar who at the pinnacle of his fame walked away from it all: we will examine their influence in their time and ours. The course, back by popular demand, will visit the brighter side of the medieval Dark Ages: the golden age of Islam, to make sense of the present.

★ Rabia 717-801 
★ al-Khwarizmi 780-850
★ ibn al-Haytham 965-1040
★ al-Biruni 973-1050
★ ibn Sina  . 980-1037
★ al-Idrisi 1100 -1165
★ ibn Tufayl 1105-1185
★ al-Ghazali 1126-1198 
★ ibn Rushd 1058-1111
★ Saladin 1137-1193
★ Nasir al-din Tusi 1201-1274
★ ibn Arabi 1165-1240
★ Mevlana Rumi 1207-1273
★ ibn Batuta 1304-1369
★ ibn Khaldun 1332-1406

Recent research has sought to explain the difference between the numbers of apostates in the two major areas of Jewish population in the Middle Ages. In Sefarad, there was a process of mass conversion to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth  century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, while in Ashkenaz, the numbers of conversions were notably fewer, in both number and proportion.  This paper seeks to show that the existence of a group of ideological apostates—well-known rabbis who became Christian—in Spain is one of the major reasons for this difference.  These rabbis, who knew of each other, believed  they had found the true religion in Christianity and wanted to share their truth with their former co-religionists. In my opinion, more than any actions that the apostate rabbis themselves took to convince other Jews to change their religion, the very fact that the Jewish population was aware of these rabbis’ committed conversions was the rabbis’ major influence on the community. This knowledge partly suppressed the natural repulsion of Spanish Jews from Christianity and put them in a more vulnerable situation which exacerbated existing exterior pressures—both physical and economic—to convert. No such ideology of apostasy existed in Ashkenaz, and this  is one of the major reasons for the difference in rates of conversion between the two communities.

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

تتناول هذه الدراسة حجم وطبيعة التأثير الذي أحدثته فلسفة ابن رشد (1126 – 1198) على أحد أهم وأشهر فلاسفة اليهود في العصور الوسطى، إن لم يكن أهمهم على الإطلاق، وهو موسى بن ميمون (1135 – 1204). ظهرت آثار الكثير من الأفكار الرشدية في كتاب ابن ميمون "دلالة الحائرين"، وأشار إليها عدد من الباحثين. لكن لا تنشغل هذه الدراسة بمجرد رصد حضور الأفكار الرشدية في كتاب ابن ميمون، بل تهتم بصفة أساسية بالبحث في الأصول الرشدية لمنهج ابن ميمون في كتابته لـ"دلالة الحائرين". كما تحاول الدراسة أن تثبت صحة هذه النتيجة بالاستعانة بفيلسوف يهودي آخر هو سبينوزا (1632-1677)، الذي وجه نقداً لمنهج ابن ميمون في التأويل في كتابه "رسالة في اللاهوت والسياسة". وتكشف الدراسة في نهايتها عن اتفاق سبينوزا مع ابن رشد في منهجه في التأويل وفي طرق معالجته للعلاقة بين الدين والفلسفة أو الوحي والعقل، مما يكشف عن رشديته المتسقة التي لم تتوافر لدى أي رشدي يهودي سابق عليه.

The articles in this volume explore the teachings on happiness by a range of thinkers from antiquity through Spinoza, most of whom held human happiness to comprise intellectual knowledge of that which is Good in itself, namely God. These thinkers were from Greek pagan, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian backgrounds and wrote their works in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin. Still, they shared similar philosophical views of what constitutes the Highest Good, and of the intellectual activities to be undertaken in pursuit of that Good. Yet, they differed, often greatly, in the role they assigned to deeds and practical activities in the pursuit of this happiness. These differences were, at times, not only along religious lines, but also along political and ethical lines. Other differences treated the relationship between the body and intellectual happiness and the various ways in which bodily health and well-being can contribute to intellectual health and true happiness.

تتناول هذه الدراسة واحدة من أهم نظريات الفيلسوف اليهودي ليفي بن جرشوم(1288 – 1344) وهي خلق العالم. إن العالم عند بن جرشوم مخلوق، لكن لا من العدم بل من مادة أولى قديمة غير متعينة. وعلى الرغم من أنه مخلوق إلا أنه أبدي من جهة المستقبل، أي أنه لا يفنى. والواضح أن نظرية بن جرشوم في العالم تنتمي إلى الاتجاه الأفلاطوني وهي إعادة صياغة لنظرية أفلاطون في العالم والتي تنص على أن للعالم بداية لكن ليس له نهاية، وأن العالم ذاته مخلوق لكن من مادة أولى غير مخلوقة. وكان بن جرشوم على وعي بالأصل الأفلاطوني لهذه النظرية وأشار إلى ذلك بوضوح، لكنه أقام تعديلات جوهرية عليها.
ولأن ابن رشد (1126-1198) كان آخر الفلاسفة السابقين على بن جرشوم والذي كان صاحب نظرية شهيرة في قدم العالم، ولأن بن جرشوم قد أسس نظريته في الخلق على أساس نقده لأرسطو، فإننا نهدف في هذه الدراسة عقد مقارنة بين بن جرشوم وابن رشد في مسألة القدم والحدوث، محاولين تقديم رد رشدي على نظرية بن جرشوم في الخلق.

Le Tahâfut al-Tahâfut d'Averroès en ligne (Bibliotheca Arabica Scholasticorum, Série arabe III).

L’Incohérence de l’incohérence d'Averroès (Tahâfut al-Tahâfut) est un ouvrage polémique, réfutation systématique d’un livre du grand théologien oriental al-Ghazâlî intitulé L’Incohérence des philosophes (Tahâfut al-falâsifa), écrit à Bagdad en 1094-1095. Al-Ghazâlî (m. 1111) s’illustra dans tous les domaines du savoir musulman, droit, mystique, mais c’est en tant que défenseur de la doctrine ash‘arite qu’il formule cette critique des philosophes. Jouissant d’une immense autorité, son ouvrage avait marqué en Orient le départ d’une “réaction” anti-philosophique qui devait avoir des conséquences aussi dans l’Occident musulman, où l’adhésion à al-Ghazâlî est grande, y compris chez certains adeptes de l’almohadisme. En témoigne, par exemple, l’attitude d’un contemporain d’Averroès, le logicien Ibn Tumlûs (m. 1223), qui explique dans le prologue de son Introduction à l’art de la logique que lorsque la “providence divine” envoya le Mahdî, celui-ci incita à la lecture des livres d’al-Ghazâlî en déclarant que les doctrines de ce dernier étaient d’accord avec les siennes, et que dès lors, tout le monde se mit à lire les livres d’al-Ghazâlî, “sauf ceux que domine l’extrême immobilisme parmi les conformistes radicaux”. Pour Averroès, dont l’effort consiste précisément à persuader l’élite intellectuelle qu’Ibn Tûmart incline vers Aristote, la diffusion de telles opinions est bien sûr désastreuse ... (see the Presentation by Marc Geoffroy)

Averroes was fully aware of the fact that Aristotle’s account of intellect as propounded in De Anima was incomplete. This meant that the key facet of Aristotle’s thought was fraught with gaps. Averroes made repeated attempts in his commentaries on De Anima to fill the gaps. The problem for Averroes was this: “if human beings are enmattered entities, how will anything more than sense perception be possible?” Averroes believes that finally in his Long Commentary on De Anima he has achieved a full and coherent account of thinking and understanding that centers on a new notion of the material intellect, according to which, together with the active intellect, there is also a distinct material intellect, numerically one for all human beings. The present article explores in detail this idea of material intellect. It is shown that material intellect, for Averroes, functions as the transpersonal, non-particular and non-empirical subject required for the production and containment of universal meanings. The idea seems to aim at connecting consistently the embodied, sensible forms of human cognitive experience with the noetic, conceptual element of knowledge within a basically ontological account.

Abstract
This article aims at revisiting the famous claim that the doctrine of the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198) has no echo in Muslim contexts after his death and that there his thought had no impact in the philosophical works of the Islamic East, let alone in other disciplines. This reconsideration will take the form of a partial survey of the kinds of transmission that Ibn Rushd’s texts have known into Egypt and the Levant, in circles generally considered as antagonistic to philosophy. This paper tries to show how Ibn Rushd’s texts and philosophical ideas, immediately after his death, were received by some scholars of Egypt and the Levant, such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). I presume that this reception could help us on two levels: the first is to rewrite the history of Ibn Rushd’s thought after his death; the second is to shed new light on the intellectual and doctrinal evolution that he experienced during his life.

İbn-i Rüşd şehrin erdemli kılınabilmesi için liderliğin öneminden bahseder. Erdemler arasında en önemlisi bilgeliktir. Bu şehirde kararlar felsefe aracılığıyla verilir. Diğer önemli erdemler ise yiğitlik, ölçülülük, adalet, birlik ve bütünlüktür. Şehrin sakinlerinin erdemli kılınabilmesi ya şiir ve hitabet sanatları ile ikna edilerek ya da şiddet kullanılarak sağlanır.

Ce livre constitue la première étude du rôle de la génération dans les systèmes philosophiques d’Aristote et d’Averroès (1126-1198). En s’appuyant sur de nombreux textes traduits du grec, de l’arabe et du latin, l’auteur propose une nouvelle lecture de la théorie aristotélicienne de la génération, ainsi qu’une interprétation de son renouvellement par le Commentateur. Les traités majeurs consacrés par Averroès à la physique générale, à la théorie des éléments et à la biologie d’Aristote sont, pour la première fois, examinés dans leur rapport mutuel et dans celui qu’ils entretiennent à la métaphysique. Cette étude transversale révèle les nouveaux enjeux philosophiques et épistémologiques au fondement du système d’Averroès : dans la lignée de l’aristotélisme essentialiste d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise et tout en réfutant la doctrine créationniste de certains théologiens de l’Islam, le philosophe cordouan établit le fondement a posteriori de tout savoir humain. La philosophie d’Averroès est ainsi réinterprétée comme un jalon fondamental d’une histoire qui, du monde grec à la modernité, scelle le destin commun de la philosophie naturelle et de la métaphysique.

Shem Tov Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate describes a debate between a Pietist who is knowledgeable only in Jewish law and religious texts and a Scholar who is well versed in both Jewish and philosophical works about whether according to Scripture studying philosophy is forbidden, permitted, or necessary for the perfection of human beings. I argue that to a large extent the form, style, and much of the content of the arguments in the debate are based on Al-Fārābī’s Book of Dialectic. Falaquera thus provides an example of a debate by the book (Al-Fārābī’s Dialectic), about the Book (Scripture), and in a book (The Epistle of the Debate). Moreover, by examining the arguments of the Epistle in light of Al-Fārābī’s Dialectic, we can see how dialectic can provide both training in adversarial debates and an introduction to philosophy and science.

The position of Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198 AD) and the meaning of his philosophy within the milieu of Almohad Spain is a scholarly issue that has deservedly attracted increasing attention. The present essay approaches this debate through the case study of Ibn Rushd’s discussion of God’s knowledge. The understanding of divine omniscience mobilized much of the Cordovan’s philosophical genius, leading to a wide variety of distinct, albeit not incompatible, views on the subject. These reflect the evolution of Ibn Rushd as a thinker from the early epitome of Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the much later Long Commentary on the same work, and including the most Islamically connoted segment of his work. Not only does the reflection which unfolds through these writings run parallel to, and thus corroborate, the traditional chronology of Ibn Rushd’s works. Most notably, it bespeaks the author’s endeavor to maintain formal adherence to the doctrine of Almohadism throughout the subsequent phases of his philosophical elaboration — a distinct feature of his engagement with the social and intellectual trajectories of the day.

This article aims at suggesting a partial examination what has become established as a history of philosophy in Muslim contexts after Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198). In order to do so, I used an unusual perspective, that of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). The latter's work provides us with at least three elements: The first one is that Ibn Taymiyya was acutely aware of the complexity and richness of the philosophical scene in Muslim contexts. The second element is that Ibn Rushd's philosophy provided Ibn Taymiyya with a philosophical and theoretical alternative to which he had recourse to face his opponents. The third element is that this philosophy provided him with sufficient philosophical and methodological tools to evaluate the history of philosophical and theological thought, on the one hand, and to formulate a pluralist vision of this history that prevents the rejection of philosophy and allows the appropriation of Ibn Rushd's texts and thought, on the other hand. Keywords: The fate of Ibn Rushd's philosophy in Muslim contexts, a pluralistic perspective of philosophy, a philosophical alternative, a rejection of philosophy.

""One of the most extensive and insightful studies of al-Ghazali ever undertaken... Griffel's book is a veritable tour de force that will remain a benchmark in Ghazalian studies for a long time to come."
--Jon Hoover, University of Nottingham, in Theological Review.

"[An] excellent new study on Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's thought, easily the most comprehensive to date (...)."
-- Eric L. Ormsby, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, in Journal of Shia Islamic Studies.

"Fascinating (...) Griffel's book is provocative, comprehensive, and valuable."
--Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University, in Review of Middle East Studies.

"Masterly... I strongly recommend this book to every student of Arabic intellectual history."
--Damien Janos, Göttingen University, in Journal of the American Oriental Society.

"This work of historical theology is essential reading for those wanting to understand with new depth and clarity the life and teachings of al-Ghazali."
--Martin Whittingham, Regent's Park College, Oxford, in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.

"... a major contribution to the study of al-Ghazali, both his life and his thought. (...) It may be hoped that this book will receive the attention it deserves and may offer as well an opportunity to futher studies on one of the greatest thinkers of Islam."
-- Jules Jansses, De Wulf-Mansionscentrum, Leuven, in Muslim World.

"This work is a detailed examination of Al-Ghazali's position with respect to Greek science and philosophy as it was presented to the Muslim world in the works of Avicenna. In making this examination the author has been able to correct certain misconceptions about Al-Ghazali which have long been held by some Western scholars."
--Nicholas Heer, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, University of Washington, Seattle.

"Frank Griffel's new book is a lucid synthesis of the latest scholarship on al-Ghazali's life and legacy, his interpretive method and his ideas about the world's creation and about divine, human and natural causality. Griffel succeeds in presenting a coherent and nuanced picture of the cosmology of this complex thinker, who was both a scholar of jurisprudence and a mystic, both a critic of philosophy and a philosophical theologian."
--Robert Wisnovsky, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University."

The book focuses on two important areas in the philosophy of Robert Grosseteste at the beginning of the thirteenth century: Philosophy of Intellect and Philosophy of Vision. These two areas of Grosseteste's philosophy have not been thoroughly explored, nor their importance established. Robert Grosseteste was the first chancellor of Oxford University and Bishop of Lincoln 1235-53. This project aims to contribute to the importance of Robert Grosseteste in the history of philosophy, and to establish groundwork for further development in these two areas of philosophy, to contribute to contemporary philosophy. Emphasis is placed in the project on the relation between Grosseteste's philosophies and previous philosophical influences (classical, Greek commentators on Aristotle, Arabic commentators on Aristotle, Neoplatonic), as well as their relation to subsequent philosophies in the middle ages, and the Renaissance to the twentieth century. The philosophies are also considered in relation to the architecture of Lincoln Cathedral.

La imaginación es un descubrimiento de la cultura medieval pero es en el pensamiento de Averroes donde este descubrimiento alcanza su pleno desarrollo. El experimentum crucis del averroísmo tiene que ver, como lo habían entendido sus adversarios, con la relación entre el intelecto posible, que es único y separado, y los individuos singulares. La imaginación recibe de este modo un rango determinante en todo sentido: en el vértice del alma individual, en el límite entre lo corpóreo y lo incorpóreo, lo individual y lo común, la imaginación es la escoria extrema que la combustión de la existencia individual abandona en el umbral de lo separado y de lo eterno.En todos los casos, el pensamiento en acto resulta del encuentro de dos elementos, heterogéneos y externos el uno con respecto al otro: los fantasmas individuales y la potencia única del pensamiento (lo que implica que los hombres están antes que todo separados de su potencia de pensar). Para ambos, la partida decisiva se juega fuera de casa: si el intelecto posible debe hallar su propia forma estáticamente en los fantasmas de los individuos, estos pueden unirse a la mente única sólo si salen de la cripta psicológica donde están prisioneros para devenir cognoscibles y comunicables.

The place of women in society has been subjected to scrutiny and has been disputed for a long time as many societies regard them inferior. Different myths about the creation of women provide material for debate about their status from ancient figures like Ishtar , Athena, Aphrodite, Hera  with their different capacities and down to Eve, the wife who tempted Adam into intemperate behavior that came to bedevil the human race. The process of demonizing women has not only occurred within the structures of traditional monotheistic religions, but had existed even before these religions took form.
Islam projected itself with the image of liberation and empowerment for the weak, slaves, and women: it was Islam that prohibited the burying of girls alive, and improved the status of women. The wives and daughters of the prophet were important examples of women playing central roles in society.

Starting from the condemnation of the clearly Thomist proposition “In the human, there is only one form, the rational soul, without any other substantial form” in 1286 by the Archbishop of Canterbury I ask how Aquinas could have opposed (as the Archbishop rightly claimed) the Augustinian philosophical theology and spirituality of the Latin Church, "reason and the saints" and answer that it required the unity of Dionysius with Aristotle that Aquinas learned from Albert and discerned himself. The paper goes on to consider how Aquinas discovered that both Dionysius and the Liber de causis were Platonist (Aquinas was the first to call Dionysius a Platonist) and the consequences of this shift Albert never made. The paper gives arguments for redating Thomas' Exposition of the Divine Names.

St. Thomas Aquinas sometimes uses strictly conceptual and logical insights to draw insights about things in reality. I show that, throughout his career, Aquinas’s metaphysics employs a logical procedure that he calls the “method of predication” (modus praedicandi). This method consists in using what logic teaches about modes of predicating as a tool for deductive reasoning in metaphysics.
The first chapter examines passages in Aquinas’s Commentaries on De Trinitate and on the Metaphysics that describe this method of predication or “logical method” as a “fitting” and “proper” way for metaphysics to proceed. This chapter also provides the context for Aquinas’s method by identifying some important classical and contemporaneous sources (Aristotle, Boethius, Averroes), including a discussion on topical arguments and the distinction between doctrinal and instrumental logic (logica docens, logica utens). 
In chapters two and three, I consider the realist framework behind the method of predication. I discuss cognitive realism in chapter two focusing on the origin and role of essence or nature (absolutely considered) in predication.  I offer an account of how concepts and predications are ultimately caused by (real) things. I discuss metaphysical realism in chapter three focusing on the relationship between the subject of logic, rationate being (ens rationis), and the subject of metaphysics (ens communis), which is real being (ens naturae). This chapter finishes with an examination of essential being (ens secundum se) and different types of predication (e.g., per se, per participationem, denomative).
In chapter four, after examining Aquinas’s rejection of similar types of arguments from previous authors (Parmenides, Plato, Avicebron), I consider the application of the method of predication to various metaphysical issues. Aquinas uses the method of predication in many different contexts. He uses it in order to derive different properties and categories of being, to distinguish esse from essence, to establish the unicity of the substantial form, and to justify the reality of prime matter in a properly metaphysical fashion. These arguments are analyzed for their soundness, and the interpretation of some authors are taken into consideration.

This doctoral dissertation was defended on November 18th, 2016 before Dr. Gregory T. Doolan, Dr. Timothy B. Noone, and Dr. Michael Gorman alongside two external readers at The School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C.