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Averroes

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Ibn-Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد), known as Averroes (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher, physician, and polymath: a master of philosophy, theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, mathematics, medicine, physics, psychology and science. He was born in Córdoba, modern day Spain, and died in Marrakech, modern day Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. He has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.

His name is also seen as Averroës, Averroès or Averrhoës, indicating that the o and the e form separate syllables. In Arabic (the language in which he wrote), his name is Abul Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd أبو الوليد محمد بن احمد بن رشد or just Ibn Rushd.

Biography

Ibn Rushd came from a family of Maliki legal scholars; his grandfather Abu Al-Walid Muhammad (d. 1126) was chief judge of Cordoba under the Almoravid dynasty. His father, Abu Al-Qasim Ahmad, held the same position until the coming of the Almohad dynasty in 1146. It was Ibn Tufail ("Abubacer" to the West), the philosophic vizier of Almohad Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, who introduced Averroes (Ibn Rushd) to the court and to Ibn Zuhr ("Avenzoar" in the West), the great Muslim physician; both men became friends. Averroes later reports how it was Ibn Tufail that inspired him to write his famous Aristotelian commentaries:

In 1160 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was made Qadi of Seville and he served in many court appointments in Seville and Cordoba, and in Morocco during his career. At the end of the 12th century, following the Almohads conquest of Al-Andalus, his political career was ended. Averroes' strictly rationalist views which collided with the more orthodox Islamic views of Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur led to him banishing Averroes though he had previously appointed him as his personal physician. Averroes was not rehabilitated until shortly before his death. He devoted the rest of his life to his philosophical writings.

Works

He wrote commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle. These were not based on primary sources (it is not known whether he knew Greek), but rather on Arabic translations. On each work, he wrote the Jami, the Talkhis and the Tafsir which are, respectively, a simplified overview, an intermediate commentary with more critical material, and an advanced study of Aristotelian thought in a Muslim context. The terms are taken from the names of different types of commentary on the Qur'an. He did not have access to any text of Aristotle's Politics. As a substitute for this, he commented on Plato's Republic, arguing that the state there described was the same as the original constitution of the Arabs and was rediscovered in the Almohad state of Ibn Tumart.

His most important original philosophical work was The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-tahafut), in which he defended Aristotelian philosophy against al-Ghazali's claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa). Al-Ghazali argued that Aristotelianism, especially as presented in the writings of Avicenna, was self-contradictory and an affront to the teachings of Islam. Averroes' rebuttal was two-pronged: he contended both that al-Ghazali's arguments were mistaken and that, in any case, the system of Avicenna was a distortion of genuine Aristotelianism so that al-Ghazali was aiming at the wrong target. Other works were the Fasl al-Maqal, which argued for the legality of philosophical investigation under Islamic law, and the Kitab al-Kashf, which argued against the proofs of Islam advanced by the Ash'arite school and discussed what proofs, on the popular level, should be used instead.

Averroes is also a highly-regarded legal scholar of the Maliki school. Perhaps his best-known work in this field is Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid (بدايات المجتهد و نهايات المقتصد), a textbook of Maliki doctrine in a comparative framework. He is also the author of al-Bayān wa’l-Taḥṣīl, wa’l-Sharḥ wa’l-Tawjīh wa’l-Ta`līl fi Masā’il al-Mustakhraja, a long and detailed commentary based on the Mustakhraja of Muḥammad al-`Utbī al-Qurtubī.

In medicine, Averroes wrote a medical encyclopedia called Kulliyat ("Generalities", i.e. general medicine), known in its Latin translation as Colliget. He also made a compilation of the works of Galen (129-200) and wrote a commentary on The Canon of Medicine (Qanun fi 't-tibb) of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037).

Jacob Anatoli translated several of the works of Averroes from Arabic into Hebrew in the 1200s. Many of them were later translated from Hebrew into Latin by Jacob Mantino and Abraham de Balmes. Other works were translated directly from Arabic into Latin by Michael Scot. Many of his works in logic and metaphysics have been permanently lost, while others, including some of the longer Aristotelian commentaries, have only survived in Latin or Hebrew translation, not in the original Arabic. The fullest version of his works is in Latin, and forms part of the multi-volume Juntine edition of Aristotle published in Venice 1562-1574.

Contributions

Philosophy

According to him, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy, rather that they are different ways of reaching the same truth. He believed in the eternity of the universe. He also held that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one divine; while the individual soul is not eternal, all humans at the basic level share one and the same divine soul. Averroes has two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy, which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake this study.

The concept of "existence precedes essence", a key foundational concept of existentialism, can also be found in the works of Averroes, as a reaction to Avicenna's concept of "essence precedes existence".

Psychology

H. Chad Hillier writes the following on Averroes' contributions to psychology:

Astronomy

In astronomy, Averroes rejected the eccentric deferents introduced by Ptolemy. He rejected the Ptolemaic model and instead argued for a strictly concentric model of the universe. He wrote the following criticism on the Ptolemaic model of planetary motion:

Averroes also argued that the Moon is opaque and obscure, and has some parts which are thicker than others, with the thicker parts receiving more light from the Sun than the thinner parts of the Moon. He also gave one of the first descriptions on sunspots.

Logic

Averroes was the last major Muslim logician from al-Andalus. He is known for writing the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic.

Medicine

In medicine, Averroes discussed the topic of human dissection and autopsy. Although he never undertook human dissection, he was aware of it being carried out by some of his contemporaries, such as Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar), and appears to have supported the practice. Averroes stated that the "practice of dissection strengthens the faith due to his view of the human body as "the remarkable handiwork of God in his creation.

In urology, Averroes identified the issues of sexual dysfunction and erectile dysfunction, and was among the first to prescribe medication for the treatment of these problems. He used several methods of therapy for this issue, including the single drug method where a tested drug is prescribed, and a "combination method of either a drug or food." Most of these drugs were oral medication, though a few patients were also treated through topical or transurethral means.

In neurology and neuroscience, Averroes suggested the existence of Parkinson's disease, and in opthalmology and optics, he was the first to attribute photoreceptor properties to the retina. In his Coliget, he was also the first to suggest that the principal organ of sight might be the arachnoid membrane (aranea). His work led to much discussion in 16th century Europe over whether the principal organ of sight is the traditional Galenic crystalline humour or the Averroist aranea, which in turn led to the discovery that the retina is the principal organ of sight.

Physics

In Averroes' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, he commented on the theory of motion proposed by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) in Text 71, and also made his own contributions to physics and mechanics.

Averroes was the first to define and measure force as "the rate at which work is done in changing the kinetic condition of a material body and the first to correctly argue "that the effect and measure of force is change in the kinetic condition of a materially resistant mass.

Significance

Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle's works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West, and for his early secular thought. Before 1150, only a few translated works of Aristotle existed in Latin Europe, and they were not studied much or given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of Aristotle became more widely known in the medieval West.

Averroes' separation of reason and religion in The Decisive Treatise provided a justification for the doctrine of separation of religion and state, thus Averroism is considered by some writers as a precursor to modern secularism, and the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. George Sarton, the father of the history of science, writes:

Averroes's work on Aristotle spans almost three decades, and he wrote commentaries on almost all of Aristotle's work except for Aristotle's Politics, to which he did not have access. Hebrew translations of his work also had a lasting impact on Jewish philosophy. His ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others (especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition which valued Aristotelian logic. Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed him to be so important they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him "The Commentator" and calling Aristotle "The Philosopher." Averroes also greatly influenced philosophy in the Islamic world. His death coincides with a change in the culture of Al-Andalus. In his work Fasl al-Maqāl (translated a. o. as The Decisive Treatise), he stresses the importance of analytical thinking as a prerequisite to interpret the Qur'an; this is in contrast to orthodox Muslim theology, where the emphasis is less on analytical thinking but on extensive knowledge of sources other than the Qur'an, i.e. the hadith.

Averroes's treatise on Plato's Republic has played a major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in the West. It has been a primary source in medieval political philosophy.

Cultural influences

Reflecting the respect which medieval European scholars paid to him, Averroes is named by Dante in The Divine Comedy with the great pagan philosophers whose spirits dwell in "the place that favor owes to fame" in Limbo.

Averroes appears in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, entitled Averroes's Search, in which he is portrayed trying to find the meanings of the words tragedy and comedy. He is briefly mentioned in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce alongside Maimonides. He appears to be waiting outside the walls of the ancient city of Cordoba in Alamgir Hashmi's poem In Cordoba. He is also the main character in Destiny, a Youssef Chahine film.

The asteroid "8318 Averroes" was named in his honor.

See also

Endnotes

Further reading

External links



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