Ibn Rushd’s life and thought represent the culmination of the remarkable development of Islamic philosophy that took place between 700 and 1200 CE. Through his dedication to the task of interpreting the philosophy of Aristotle he became known to the scholastic thinkers of the western world as the Commentator, much as Aristotle was known as the Philosopher. He opposed many of the views of his two great predecessors, Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali, who had asserted and argued powerfully for the supremacy of faith over reason. In response to al-Ghazali’s famous work, Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), Ibn Rushd wrote an equally famous reply, Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’),1 in which he set out to defend philosophy and reason without weakening any of the tenets of the Islamic faith. His fundamental aim was to demonstrate the compatibility of philosophy with religion.
Little of detail is known about Ibn Rushd’s life. He was born in Cordoba in southern Spain, into a family known and respected for its eminent lawyers.2 He received a broad education in philosophy, science, medicine, jurisprudence and theology. Much of his life subsequently seems to have been spent between Cordoba, Marrakesh and Seville. It is reported that on a visit to Marrakesh, probably in 1169, the caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf discussed with him the question: ‘What is the opinion of the philosophers on the composition of the skies? Are they made of eternal substance or did they have a beginning?’3 Subsequently, Ibn Rushd was encouraged by the caliph, who became his patron and friend, to write the commentaries on the works of Aristotle.
In spite of the interest of rulers such as Abu Ya’qub Yusuf, philosophy was not generally held in high esteem in the Muslim world of the twelfth century and few scholars were in a position to dedicate their lives to it. Much of Ibn Rushd’s daily work was in the judiciary as a qadi, or judge. As such he performed duties which were not only civil but religious as well, since the Islamic legal system is founded on religion.4 He was appointed qadi at Seville in 1169 and at Cordoba in 1171. In 1169 he published a major medical treatise, Kitab al-Kulliyat, and in 1182 became physician to Abu Ya’qub Yusuf at the court of Marrakesh. Abu Ya’qub died two years later but Ibn Rushd’s position at court remained unchanged for a further ten years. Then, for complex political and doctrinal reasons, he and other philosophers fell from favour and were banished from the Marrakesh court to a small town near Cordoba. In 1195/6 Ibn Rushd moved to Seville and soon after was restored to favour at the Marrakesh court where he stayed until his death there in 1198. His remains were later transported to Cordoba on a mule, ‘their weight being balanced by his works of philosophy’.5
Ibn Rushd became widely known and admired during his lifetime. He was held in high regard by the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, and his works were translated into Hebrew shortly after his death. By then the world of scholarship was teeming with commentaries on his commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were being translated into Latin for the benefit of western scholars.
Ibn Rushd developed the art of commentary writing to a high level of excellence, providing commentaries for almost all the works of Aristotle, for Plato’s Republic and for the Isagoge of the Neo-Platonist Porphyry. But it is for his commentaries on Aristotle that he became famous. They consist of the Greater Commentaries, in which portions of Aristotelian text are given interspersed with Ibn Rushd’s comments; the Middle Commentaries, in which he expounds and explains the main elements of Aristotle’s thought; and the Little Commentaries, which are summaries or compendia of Aristotelian doctrine. These works became extremely influential among western scholars from the thirteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, but made little impact on Arabic thought.
Like other Arabic philosophers, Ibn Rushd relied heavily on a source widely known as the Theologica Aristotelis, a treatise believed at the time to be by Aristotle but shown subsequently to be the work of Plotinus, a Neo-Platonist of the third century CE who expounded an emanationist cosmology and a metaphysical doctrine of aspiration to mystical union with the one.6 The Theologica embodied ideas that appealed strongly to the temperament of Islamic theology. It described a system in which rational knowledge develops to a stage at which it is superseded by a mystical intuition of reality, and in which individualism is lost through fusion with the divine Whole. This was not Aristotelianism as it is now known, but a mode of thought in which the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and numerous other Greek thinkers were blended into a unity they did not actually possess. Ibn Rushd’s own philosophical position has been described as ‘Aristotle warped onto a Platonic frame’.7 He managed to place the wide-ranging empirical data of Aristotle within the framework of a Platonic hierarchical system and endow it with an integrated organicism not conferred on it by Aristotle. So firm was his conviction that Greek philosophy comprised a unified system of thought, that when he was unable to obtain a copy of Aristotle’s Politics he wrote a commentary on Plato’s Republic to fill that place in the series of commentaries.
Ibn Rushd’s Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’) is a sustained rebuttal of al-Ghazali’s objections to the rationalism of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina.8 Ibn Rushd does not go about this rebuttal by constructing a systematic defence of the two philosophers attacked by al-Ghazali. Instead, he picks out what he sees as misinterpretations of Aristotelian texts, irrespective of who has made them, with the result that he diverges as much from the views of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi as from those of al-Ghazali. All the time he works to show a compatibility, rather than an opposition, between reason and faith. He rejects the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation espoused by Ibn Sina, in which the universe is held to flow necessarily from and to exist co-eternally with God, the unmoved First Mover. In its place he argues for a scale of being ranging from God to Prime Matter. He maintains that God draws the forms of all created things from Prime Matter and also creates the ten Intelligences that relate to the heavenly spheres. He also modifies another of Ibn Sina’s claims, namely, that of the immortality of the individual soul, maintaining that when the passive intellect belonging to human beings becomes, under the influence of active intellect, the ‘acquired intellect’, it does indeed achieve immortality, although not as an individual immortal soul; it endures only as an element within the collective intelligence of humanity as a whole.9
Against al-Ghazali’s view that the world was created by God at a certain point in time, and against the teaching of Islam that God created the world out of nothing, Ibn Rushd argues that if God had created the world at a particular time, this would mean that God underwent some change. But this, he says, is not possible, since God is perfect and changeless. He claims, for the same reasons, that the universe is eternal, since its coming to an end would also imply a change in God. Change is possible within the world, but not to its totality.
Many of Ibn Rushd’s claims in The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’ turn out to be contrary to the tenets of Islamic faith. How then does he work to resolve the tensions between faith and philosophy? A full answer to that question is not possible here but an outline of his strategy and of its consequences can be given.
The disfavour with which philosophy was regarded in the Muslim world of the twelfth century led Ibn Rushd to write Fasl al-Maqal (The Decisive Treatise), a book which defends philosophy in the face of its condemnation as a pagan science. Fasl was written from a legal point of view and its stated purpose was ‘to examine, from the standpoint of the study of the law, whether the study of philosophy and logic is allowed by the law, or prohibited, or commanded – either by way of recommendation or as obligatory’.10 In it, Ibn Rushd writes as the learned judge he undoubtedly was. He invokes the Koran and the Traditions (hadith) derived from it to justify his conclusion that philosophic reasoning is an entirely legitimate enterprise. He cites the Koran’s exhortations to study the natural universe and interprets them as instructions to reason about the universe in order to secure knowledge of it. From such foundations he draws the inference that philosophical activity is obligatory for those who have the ability to engage in it, and that logic is its essential tool, the use of which is learned only through a study of ancient Greek philosophy. In this first part of the Fasl he proposes that there are three ways of attaining to religious knowledge and that the three ways correspond to three types of human mentality. These three types are, first, simple and unlearned persons for whom faith and authority are sufficient; second, persons able to engage in debate and who therefore require reasons to substantiate their beliefs; and third, those who demand secure arguments and absolute demonstrations of their tenets of belief.
Ibn Rushd next propounds a view that is clearly meant to rebut objections which point out that since philosophy is often at variance with scripture, it cannot be a study that scripture either condones or requires. He boldly claims that
since this religion is true and summons to the study which leads to the knowledge of the Truth, we, the Muslim community, know definitely that demonstrative study does not lead to [conclusions] conflicting with what scripture has given us; for truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it.11
What Ibn Rushd seems to be declaring here is that any apparent contradictions are not actual contradictions and can, by proper study, be reconciled in such a way as to be understood as a single truth; that the inner meaning of scripture, correctly interpreted, will be seen as consonant with the reasoned truths of philosophy.
Ibn Rushd then deals with the kind of reconciliation that should take place between scripture and philosophy. The reconciliation requires metaphorical or allegorical interpretations of scripture that are able to provide several levels of meaning for a passage or sentence. Of course, not any interpretation will do. An allegorical understanding must not contradict what is affirmed in any other part of the Koran, so there is a limitation on the scope of possible interpretations. Once again, it is philosophers who are seen to possess the ability and so the right to produce allegorical interpretations of scripture, for it is they who have conducted a reasoned enquiry into the real nature of the universe and who can therefore recognize the hidden unity of scripture and philosophy. Philosophy, he holds, is essentially plain and unmysterious, even though it is also a deep and difficult discipline. Scripture is imaginative, rich in meanings and implications; but both philosophy and scripture are founded on the same truths.
Over the centuries Ibn Rushd has been somewhat glibly accused of promulgating a ‘double-truth’ theory of the reconciliation of scripture with philosophy. This is the view that there is one truth for the masses and another for those of intellectual sophistication. Recent careful study of Ibn Rushd’s writings shows that this is a distortion of his view; that he repeatedly affirms that both revelation and reason are true and are in fundamental agreement, and that the same truth is embodied in both kinds of exposition although their modes of presentation differ. He has recently been succinctly described by Ian Netton as ‘a proponent of a multivocal expression of truth’ and in commenting on the status of such multivocal expressions of truth, Netton has argued that we may
validly conceive of a universe of intellectual discourse in which contradictions flourish . . . and examine the articulation and interrelatedness of those units of contradiction as they contribute towards the global structure of the discourse itself: the actual truth or otherwise of the individual units of such discourse may be left as a matter of faith rather than proof or reason.12
At the end of the twelfth century, the dynamic development of five centuries of Arabic philosophy waned rapidly in its own part of the world, but its influence then became potent in the West. The controversial doctrine of ‘doubletruth’ became linked to the movement known as Averroism that began to emerge in the scholastic communities of thirteenth-century Europe with the arrival of eagerly awaited translations of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle. Averroism flourished from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries and became the focus of numerous confrontations between scholarly Aristotelians and Christian theologians intent on resolving the crisis between the reasoned demonstrations of philosophy and the pronouncements of religion. It provoked severe criticism from church leaders and was condemned in 1209, 1215, 1240, 1270 and 1277 for its assertion of the eternity of matter and its denial of personal immortality as well as for the presumed doctrine of ‘double-truth’. St Thomas Aquinas produced sedulously detailed attacks on Averroism, the best-known of which is De Unitate Intellectus (On the Unity of the Intellect). Aquinas was convinced that it was possible to make a coherent intellectual whole from Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology and although he recognized the cogency of Ibn Rushd’s expositions of Aristotle he was entirely opposed to the kind of reconciliation advanced by Averroist thought.
It is sometimes remarked that just as Aristotelianism was different from Aristotle’s philosophy, so was Averroism different from the philosophy of Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd, the Commentator, achieved considerable success in realizing his ambition to purify corruptions of Aristotle, the Philosopher, even though his understanding of the Philosopher was marred by the elision of Aristotelian with Platonic thought. His seriousness and dedication show themselves in all he wrote, and especially in the following words:
I believe that this man [Aristotle] is a rule in nature and an example which nature has devised to demonstrate supreme human perfection . . . It is therefore well said that he was created and given to us by divine providence that we might know whatever can be known.13
1 For further details of al-Ghazali’s views in The Incoherence of the Philosophers see the essay on al-Ghazali in this book, especially pp. 27–28.
2 Since Ibn Rushd was born in Spain, it is questionable whether he should feature in a book about Oriental philosophers. He is included because of the importance of his thought in the mainstream of Islamic philosophy.
3 This story is related in most accounts of Ibn Rushd’s life, but opinions vary concerning exactly when the event took place. See, for example, G. Hourani (trans. and int.), Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, London, Luzac, 1961, pp. 12, 13 and M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, London, Longman, 1983, pp. 270–271.
4 Any injunction of the sunnah, the established law of Islam, was declared in hadith, statements of traditions authenticated by tracing their origins to the words or deeds of Muhammad the Prophet.
5 Dominique Urvoy, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), trans. Olivia Stewart, London, Routledge, 1991, p. 26.
6 For more on the Theologica, see the essay on al-Kindi in this book, pp. 16–18.
7 In Paul Edwards (ed.), ‘Averroes’, Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, New York, Macmillan, 1967, p. 21.
8 See the essays on al-Ghazali and Ibn Sina in this book, pp. 26–30 and 22–26.
9 For a fuller account of this see the essay on Ibn Sina in this book, especially pp. 24–25.
10 Hourani, op. cit., repr. 1976, p. 19.
11 op. cit., p. 22.
12 Ian Richard Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology, London and New York, Routledge, 1989, p. 328.
13 Quoted in G. Leff, Mediaeval Thought: St Augustine to Ockham, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1958.
Aristotle’s Categories, Posterior Analytics, Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul, The Short Physical Treatises, Metaphysics, Rhetoric
Plato’s Republic
Porphyry’s Isagoge
Kitab al-Kulliyat fi-l-Tibb (Compendium on Medicine) A commentary on Ibn Sina’s The Canons of Medicine
Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’)
Fasl al-Maqal (The Decisive Treatise)
Butterworth, C.E. (ed., trans, and int.), Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983
Hourani, G. (trans. and int.), Averroes on the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, London, Luzac, 1961; repr. 1967 and 1976
Lerner, R. (trans. and int.), Averroes on Plato’s ‘Republic’, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1974
Van den Bergh, S. (trans. and int.), Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of ‘The Incoherence’), 2 vols, London, Luzac, 1954, repr. 1969 and 1978
A fuller list of Ibn Rushd’s works, and details of translations of them, are in Leaman, Averroes and His Philosophy, pp. 197–201. There is also a very useful bibliographical guide in Urvoy (listed below), pp. 134– 148.
Muhammad, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Muhammad Iqbal
Copleston, F., A History of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Pt II, New York, Image Books, 1962
Fakhry, Majid, A History of Islamic Philosophy, London, Longman, 1983
Leaman, Oliver, ‘Ibn Rushd on happiness and philosophy’, Studia Islamica, vol. LII, 1980, pp. 167–181
Leaman, Oliver, Averroes and His Philosophy, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988
Leff, G., Mediaeval Thought: St Augustine to Ockham, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1958
Mohammed, O.N., Averroes’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy, Waterloo, Ontario, 1984
Rosenthal, E.I.J., Averroes’ Commentary on Plato’s Republic, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956
Urvoy, D., Ibn Rushd (Averroes), trans. Olivia Stewart, London and New York, Routledge, 1991