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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. System of philosophy Main article: Averroism Averroes tried to reconcile Aristotle's system of thought with Islam. 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 its study. Significance Averroes, detail of the fresco The School of Athens by Raphael. Averroes is most famous for his commentaries of Aristotle's works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West. Before 1150, only a few of Aristotle's works existed in translation in Latin Europe (i. e. excluding Greek Byzantium). It was in large part through the Latin translations of Averroes's work beginning in the 13th century, that the legacy of Aristotle was recovered in the Latin West. 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. Moses Maimonides, Samuel Ben Tibbon, Juda Ben Solomon Choen, and Shem Tob Ben Joseph Falaquera were Jewish philosophers influenced by Averroes.[43] 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 had no discernible influence on Islamic philosophic thought until modern times.[44] 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. Jurisprudence and law 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, " a textbook of Maliki doctrine in a comparative framework, which is rendered in English as The Distinguished Jurist's Primer[45]—. 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. Cultural influence Reflecting the deference that some medieval European scholars paid to him, Averroes is named by Dante in The Divine Comedy along with the thinkers and creative minds of ancient Greece and Rome 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 claim that Averroes deserves equal respect with Maimonides got the fictional Balthazar Abrabanel banished from Amsterdam by the Amsterdam rabbinate in Eric Flint's novel 1634. Averroes is also the title of a play called "The Gladius and The Rose", written by Tunisian writer Mohamed Ghozzi, and which took first prize in the theater festival in Charjah in 1999. The asteroid 8318 Averroes was named in his honor. Plant genus Averrhoa was named after him. The Muslim pop musician Kareem Salama composed and performed a song in 2007 titled Aristotle and Averroes. Averroes is the subject of the film Al Massir by Youssef Chahine. |
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