Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (review)

168 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:1 JANUARY 1995 writes clearly, and his English is excellent, despite occasional difficulties with definite articles, but he makes few concessions to the reader. Every line is full of information, and although there are occasional overviews, it is still difficult to see each item in its proper perspective. In some ways this is more a work of reference than a book to be read at a sitting. That being said, however, l have no hesitation in recommending it to the attention of anyone with a serious interest in medieval philosophy. E. J. ASHWORTH University of Waterloo Herbert A. Davidson. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press, x992. Pp. x + 363 . Cloth, $39.95" The purpose of Herbert Davidson's recent book is to trace the history of the role of the active intellect in epistemological theory and cosmology in the Arabic philosophic tradition with particular reference to the writings of Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. Davidson begins with a summary of the original formulation of the theory of the active intellect as it is presented in Aristotle's De Anima, where Aristotle seeks to delineate the notions of potentiality and actuality in the human soul and to discover what agent causes the change from potentiality to actuality. Aristotle's cryptic account engendered extensive reflection and debate among his early Greek commentators and the Arabic philosophers. Davidson's book is a laborious collocation of and commentary on published texts and manuscripts pertaining to the theory of the active intellect throughout the period from the writing of the De Anima in the fourth century s.c. to the impact of Latin Averroism in sixteenth-century Italy. Davidson examines the texts in historical sequence, beginning in his introductory chapter with Aristotle's De Anima. Chapter ~ is an exploration of the Greek and Arabic antecedents to the three main Islamic philosophers under inquiry. Chapter 3 is an examination of three themes--emanation, the active intellect, and the human intellect--in several writings of Aifarabi. Chapter 4 continues the exploration of these three themes in Avicenna's works. Chapter 5 is a digression from the main argument in order to clarify the "reverberations" of Alfarabi's and Avicenna's theories in their Islamic successors and in medieval Jewish and scholastic philosophy. The three final chapters, chapters 6 through 8, examine references to emanation, the active intellect as the cause of existence, the material intellect, and the active intellect as the cause of human thought in the writings of Averroes. Chapter 7 also entails a summary of Averroist conceptions of the active intellect in later Jewish and Christian thought. The structure of the book maintains a historical perspective; this perspective has the merit of nourishing a comparison of the place of the active intellect in numerous writings composed over almost two millennia of Western philosophy. Davidson's argument identifies the variations in the purpose of the active intellect as it is articulated in three of the finest philosophers in the Arabic Aristotelian tradition . Of the founder of the Arabic school, Alfarabi, Davidson says that different works BOOK REVIEWS ~69 of his evince different positions on a single issue, and he conjectures tentatively that these "discrepancies" arise from the different sources which were available to Alfarabi as he wrote (6 and 73). Davidson admits that a number of scholars have suggested that some of Alfarabi's writings adopt an esoteric style of presentation (6); he identifies places in which AIfarabi is "probably dissimulating" (57) and he notices that Alfarabi's style is such that he "almost always lays down his positions flatly, without argument" (6). Davidson's final judgment, however, is that the inconsistencies arise due to sources, and thus that AIfarabi is not completely to blame for his ostensible difficulties. Davidson offers a more positive evaluation of Avicenna's project; Avicenna is philosophically consistent throughout his career and "merely played with alternate formulations " (6). Davidson not only acknowledges that Avicenna put forward his scheme as "a demonstrable and demonstrated scientific cosmology" (124), but also judges that "although Avicenna's universe may strike a...