Averroes: A Rationalist in Islam (review)

David Streight's translation of Roger Arnaldez's Averroès makes this brief overview of the life and thought of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-98) available to an English-speaking audience. The importance of Averroes as a linchpin in the transmission of Greek thought, especially Aristotle, from the Arabic- to the Latin-speaking world, and the interest of Averroes' views on the nature of the human intellect, the relationship between philosophy and religion, and other topics, means that many will be glad to have easier access to Arnaldez's interpretation. The translation is generally readable, while staying close to the French.

There are two guiding objectives in Arnaldez's treatment. The first is explicit: Averroes' life and thought should be treated as a coherent whole. Thus some attention is devoted to his work in jurisprudence (fiqh) and medicine, though readers of this journal may find the five pages on the latter topic frustratingly scant. Arnaldez claims (rightly, I think) that there is no contradiction between Averroes' best-known work as a commentator on Aristotle and his life as a devout Muslim and juridical authority in Spain: they are brought together by the rationalism that governed all of his endeavors. Averroes defends this rationalism by sketching the limitations of dialectical theology and fiqh; they fall short of the demonstrative knowledge attained in philosophy, but are crucial in maintaining a well-ordered society, because they educate and legislate for the vast majority of nonphilosophers. Thus it is not strange that Averroes was a jurist, and engaged in some theological and dialectical exchanges (including the famous Incoherence of the Incoherence).

A second, less explicit goal is to depict Averroes as a positive role model for rationalism in Islam (as implied by the title). Arnaldez praises his subject's "openness of mind, his rigorous method, [and] the perspecuity of his analyses" (p. 120). Happily, he refrains from indulging in some of the more extreme claims made recently on behalf of Averroes;¹ he admits that "Averroes was not a martyr for freedom of thought" (p. 15). Still, he is concerned to downplay some of the aspects of Averroes' thought that compromise his image as a partisan of empirical science, as contrasted to the Neoplatonic synthesis of Persian illuminationism (p. 121).

This means, above all, denying that Averroes subscribed to the doctrine known as "monopsychism": the view that there is a single intellect for all humans. Arnaldez spends thirty-one pages (pp. 47-78) summarizing the Short Commentary on the De anima, in order to illustrate that Averroes here rejected monopsychism. Unfortunately, he does not inform the reader that, although Averroes did reject this theory of intellect in the Short Commentary, dismissing it as a Neoplatonic distortion of Aristotle, he later repented and, in the Long Commentary on the same work, defended monopsychism on Aristotelian grounds.² Thus the later Latin Averroist thesis of monopsychism did have a basis in Averroes. On the other hand, Arnaldez rightly rejects (p. 89) the old canard that Averroes subscribed to a theory of "double truth," according to which religion and philosophy teach different, incompatible truths. This doctrine, unlike monopsychism, never formed part of any genuine Averroism, on the part of either Averroes himself or his Latin disciples.

Though Arnaldez's discussion of intellect is thus seriously misleading, the book may with this warning be recommended as an introduction to Averroes—despite some shortcomings as a springboard for further research: usually no specific citations are given when quoting Averroes, and the bibliography (pp. 147-48) is minimal. It is to be hoped that it will play a role in building the already increased interest in Averroes' philosophy, without leading us to distort his philosophy by insisting that...