Averroism

Historiographically speaking, the notion of Averroism is notoriously elusive. By Averroism one can mean at least three different things: a current of radical Aristotelianism that exercised a considerable influence over the scholastic philosophy of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, especially in Paris and at some universities in northern Italy (Padua, Pavia, and Bologna); a hermeneutical approach meant to reconcile theological views and religious beliefs with the kind of rational investigation carried on by philosophers (an approach that, not without some straining, came to be known in the Latin West as the “doctrine of double truth”); and, finally, in the period spanning from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, a general skeptical attitude toward revelation and established religion that could range from a dissembled expression of unorthodox beliefs to plain atheism.

Abu al-Walïd Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd, latinized into Averroes, was born in Córdoba in 1126 CE to a family of jurists. Among other disciplines, he studied law and jurisprudence. In 1182, after having served as a judge in Seville (1169) and Córdoba (1171), he was appointed chief physician of Caliph Abū Ya'qūb of the Almohad dynasty (reigned, 1163–1184 CE). Starting from 1169, on request of his patron, Averroes embarked on the project of producing a systematic commentary on Aristotle's works. In 1195, during the caliphate of Abū Yusuf, son of Abū Yaūqub, due to an outbreak of intolerance toward philosophy instigated by the religious orthodoxy, Averroes lost the caliph's favor and was exiled to Lucena, outside Córdoba. He was rehabilitated two years later, shortly before dying in Marrakesh in 1198.

Averroes' theorizations in political philosophy can be better understood when they are set against the cultural and political context of the Almohad rulers, who tried to reconcile their enlightened patronage of philosophy and science with a respectful consideration of religion, in both its theological and popular forms. Averroes can be seen as a typical representative of this intellectual milieu, in that he went to great lengths both to vindicate the precarious but irreplaceable role of human reason and to mediate between religious and political laws.

In The Decisive Treatise, he defended the role of philosophical analysis as a legitimate tool to interpret the Qur'an. This point was also stressed in The Incoherence of the Incoherence (known as Destructio destructionum in Latin), which Averroes wrote to refute the arguments leveled against philosophy by the theologian and jurist al-Ghazali (1058–1111). In The Incoherence of the Incoherence, Averroes argued that the sacred texts could be understood on two levels, one accessible to the uneducated masses, the other suitable to scholars and philosophers.

The thesis that in the western Latin world came to be known as the doctrine of double truth was in fact a sophisticated hermeneutical technique to settle conflicts between philosophical truths and religious beliefs. Far from dismissing pious readings of the sacred texts and religious ceremonies as naive and superstitious, Averroes held the view that figurative interpretations and knowledge through imagination were integral components of human experience. Thus, he managed to maintain a unitary view of truth while acknowledging the existence of different ways of accessing the one truth.

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