averroes


 * AVERROES-HIS LEGACY**


 * =Lead section=**

Averroes was a twelfth century Muslim philosopher who lived in the Almohad caliphate of al- Andalus in southern Spain. His most enduring legacy was his role in bringing to western Europeans the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers, notably Aristotle, which ultimately changed European philosophy and scholarship. The French philosopher Bernard-Henry Levy suggests Averroes’s works provide an ‘early sketch of the concept of secularism.’


 * ==Background== **

Averroes(Muhammed Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd) was born in 1126 in Cordoba, the capital of al-Andalus. His father and grandfather were both cadis in Cordoba, judges who administer sharia law. Averroes studied theology and jurisprudence and then medicine, mathematics and philosophy. In 1184 he became physician to the Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf. He remained with the Caliph and his successor son in Cordoba until 1197. During this time Averroes finished a number of publications, the most notable and popular of which were the Decisive Treatise, the Incoherence of the Incoherence and On Harmony of Religions and Philosophy. These works defended philosophy against charges that it was opposed to religion, ‘that is a clear indication of the necessity of using reasoning faculty or rather reason and religion in the interpretation of things’. The second of these works was in response to the publication of a book, the ‘Incompetence of the Philosopher’ by al Ghazal ( Algazel) who attacked the concept of scientific knowledge as a heresy against islam. Averroes argued that philosophy was indeed consistent with and enhanced religious life rather than hindered it. The argument, in broad terms, centred on whether the Quran should be taken literally as traditionalists such as al Ghazal believed or whether as Averroes asserted it ‘speaks to different people in different ways’. For him reason was the basis of human knowledge of god and the Quran was ‘an allegory requiring rational interpretation.’


 * ===Historical relevance=== **

Averroes was the last of the Muslim philosophers of Spain. Bertrand Russell notes that he was more important to Christianity than to Islam and that for ‘the latter he was a dead end; in the former, a beginning.’ Nassim Nicolas Taleb suggests that the west, both Christian and Jews, ‘embraced Averroes rationalism based upon Aristotle’. Islam and its subsequent decline, Taleb contends can be traced, in part, to the acceptance by succeeding Arab thinkers of al Ghazal’s position regarding the incompatibility of scientific knowledge with religion. With the Reconquista there was increasing contact between the Muslim al Andalus and the Christian kingdoms in northern Spain. As a consequence between 1220 and 1250, Averroes commentaries on Aristotle and philosophy were translated into Latin. Aristotle had sought to explain to explain the workings of the universe based on observations of what actually happened. This philosophy was at odds with the then current centrality of knowledge being derived entirely from god’s revelations through the Bible or Quran, not reason. Averroes bridged this gap with the ‘doctrine of the double truth’ which ‘asserted the absolute independence of truths established by natural reason and those established by divine revelation’. There was a philosophical truth and a theological truth. Averroes thus provided the mechanism by which scholars could take reason as the ‘starting point and method’ rather than revelation without being perceived as a direct threat to religion or faith. Averroes offered a comprehensive vision of the universe in which philosophy dictated by reason and science could happily co-exist with a religion based on faith and belief in revelations from god. Islamic philosophy and Averroes therefore provided the’ link between ancient and modern European civilisation’. They were the primary vehicle for the transmission of Greek philosophy to medieval Europe. Their impact on western society was immense. Thomas Aquinas, for example, who developed his system of harmonising faith with reason in the thirteenth century, quoted Averroes in developing his arguments. Aquinas relying on Aristotle’s work believed ‘all human knowledge begins with sense perception’. Many of the other great medieval Christian philosophers and theologians, Albert the Great, Abelard, Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus, acknowledged their intellectual debt to Averroes and other Muslim predecessors.


 * ====Conclusion==== **

Russell argues that Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought but that what is important about Averroes essentially was his role a commentator and transmitter of the ancient Greek philosophers to medieval Europeans for whom they had been previously lost. Notwithstanding this, the renaissance of the twelfth century and the subsequent development of science and reason through to the enlightenment and to today owe a great debt to Muslim thinkers such as Averroes.


 * ==references==**