(1126-1198)
Averroës (Abu 'l Walid Muhammad, ibn Achmad, ibn Muhammad, IBN RUSHD; or
more in English, Abu 'l Walid Muhammed, the son of Achmet, the son of
Muhammed, the son of Rushd) was born in 1126 at Cordova, Spain. His
father and grandfather, the latter a celebrated jurist and canonist, had
been judges in that city. He first studied theology and canon law, and
later medicine and philosophy; thus, like Faust, covering the whole
field of mediæal science. His life was cast in the most brilliant period
of Western Muslim culture, in the splendor of that rationalism which
preceded the great darkness of religious fanaticism. As a young man, he
was introduced by Ibn Tufail (Abubacer), author of the famous 'Hayy
al-Yukdhan,' a philosophical 'Robinson Crusoe,' to the enlightened
Khalif Abu Ya'kub Yusuf (1163-84), as a fit expounder of the then
popular philosophy of Aristotle. This position he filled with so much
success as to become a favorite with the Prince, and finally his private
physician. He likewise filled the important office of judge, first at
Seville, later at Cordova.
He enjoyed even greater consideration under the next Khalif, Ya'kub
al-Mansur, until the year 1195, when the jealousy of his rivals and the
fanaticism of the Berbers led to his being accused of championing
philosophy to the detriment of religion. Though Averroës always
professed great respect for religion, and especially for Islam, as a
valuable popular substitute for science and philosophy, the charge could
hardly be rebutted (as will be shown later), and the Amir of the
Faithful could scarcely afford openly to favor a heretic. Averroës was
accordingly deprived of his honors, and banished to Lacena, a Jewish
settlement near Cordova--a fact which gives coloring to the belief that
he was of Jewish descent. To satisfy his fanatical subjects for the
moment, the Khalif published severe edicts not only against Averroës,
but against all learned men and all learning as hostile to religion. For
a time the poor philosopher could not appear in public without being
mobbed; but after two years, a less fanatical party having come into
power, the Prince revoked his edicts, and Averroës was restored to
favor. This event he did not long survive. He died on 10th December
1198, in Marocco. Here too he was buried; but his body was afterward
transported to Cordova, and laid in the tomb of his fathers. He left
several sons, more than one of whom came to occupy important positions.
Averroës was the last great Muslim thinker, summing up and carrying to
its conclusions the thought of four hundred years. The philosophy of
Islam, which flourished first in the East, in Basra and Bagdad
(800-1100), and then in the West, Cordova, Toledo, etc. (1100-1200), was
a mixture of Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism, borrowed, under the
earlier Persianizing Khalifs, from the Christian (mainly Nestorian)
monks of Syria and Mesopotamia, being consequently a naturalistic
system. In it God was acknowledged only as the supreme abstraction;
while eternal matter, law, and impersonal intelligence played the
principal part. It was necessarily irreconcilable with Muslim orthodoxy,
in which a crudely conceived, intensely personal God is all in all.
While Persian influence was potent, philosophy flourished, produced some
really great scholars and thinkers, made considerable headway against
Muslim fatalism and predestination, and seemed in a fair way to bring
about a free and rational civilization, eminent in science and art. But
no sooner did the fanatical or scholastic element get the upper hand
than philosophy vanished, and with it all hope of a great Muslim
civilization in the East. This change was marked by Al-Ghazzali, and his
book 'The Destruction of the Philosophers.' He died in A.D. 1111, and
then the works of Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sina, and the "Brothers of Purity,"
wandered out to the far West, to seek for appreciation among the Muslim,
Jews, and Christians of Spain. And for a brief time they found it there,
and in the twelfth century found also eloquent expounders at the
mosque-schools of Cordova, Toledo, Seville, and Saragossa. Of these the
most famous were Ibn Baja, Ibn Tufail, and Ibn Rushd (Averroës).
During its progress, Muslim philosophy had gradually been eliminating
the Neo-Platonic, mystic element, and returning to pure Aristotelianism.
In Averroës, who professed to be merely a commentator on Aristotle, this
tendency reached its climax; and though he still regarded the
pseudo-Aristotelian works as genuine, and did not entirely escape their
influence, he is by far the least mystic of Muslim thinkers. The two
fundamental doctrines upon which he always insisted, and which long made
his name famous, not to say notorious, the eternity of matter and of the
world (involving a denial of the doctrine of creation), and the oneness
of the active intellect in all men (involving the mortality of the
individual soul and the impossibility of resurrection and judgment), are
both of Aristotelian origin. It was no wonder that he came into conflict
with the orthodox Muslim; for in the warfare between Arab prophetism,
with its shallow apologetic scholasticism, and Greek philosophy, with
its earnest endeavor to find truth, and its belief in reason as the sole
revealer thereof, he unhesitatingly took the side of the latter. He held
that man is made to discover truth, and that the serious study of God
and his works is the noblest form of worship.
However little one may agree with his chief tenets, there can be no
doubt that he was the most enlightened man of the entire Middle Age, in
Europe at least; and if his spirit and work had been continued, Western
Islâm might have become a great permanent civilizing power. But here
again, after a brief period of extraordinary philosophic brilliancy,
fanaticism got the upper hand. With the death of Averroës the last hope
of a beneficent Muslim civilization came to an end. Since then, Islam
has been a synonym for blind fanaticism and cruel bigotry. In many parts
of the Muslim world, "philosopher" is a term of reproach, like
"miscreant."
But though Islam rejected its philosopher, Averroës's work was by no
means without its effect. It was through his commentaries on Aristotle
that the thought of that greatest of ancient thinkers became known to
the western world, both Jewish and Christian. Among the Jews, his
writings soon acquired almost canonical authority. His system found
expression in the works of the best known of Hebrew thinkers,
Maimonides (1135-1204), "the second Moses" works which, despite all
orthodox opposition, dominated Jewish thought for nearly three hundred
years, and made the Jews during that time the chief promoters of
rationalism. When Muslim persecution forced a large number of Jews to
leave Spain and settle in Southern France, the works of Averroës and
Maimonides were translated into Hebrew, which thenceforth became the
vehicle of Jewish thought; and thus Muslim Aristotelianism came into
direct contact with Christianity.
Among the Christians, the works of Averroës, translated by Michael
Scott, "wizard of dreaded fame," Hermann the German, and others, acted
at once like a mighty solvent. Heresy followed in their track, and shook
the Church to her very foundations. Recognizing that her existence was
at stake, she put forth all her power to crush the intruder. The Order
of Preachers, initiated by St. Dominic of Calahorra (1170-1221), was
founded; the Inquisition was legalized (about 1220). The writings of
Aristotle and his Arab commentators were condemned to the flames (1209,
1215, 1231). Later, when all this proved unavailing, the best intellects
in Christendom, such as Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), and Thomas Aquinas
(1227-74), undertook to repel the new doctrine with its own weapons;
that is, by submitting the thought of Aristotle and his Arab
commentators to rational discussion. Thus was introduced the second or
palmy period of Christian Scholasticism, whose chief industry, we may
fairly say, was directed to the refutation of the two leading doctrines
of Averroës. Aiming at this, Thomas Aquinas threw the whole dogmatic
system of the Church into the forms of Aristotle, and thus produced that
colossal system of theology which still prevails in the Roman Catholic
world; witness the Encyclical _Æterni Patris_ of Leo XIII., issued
in 1879.
By the great thinkers of the thirteenth century, Averroës, though
regarded as heretical and dangerous in religion, was looked up to as an
able thinker, and the commentator _par excellence_; so much so that St.
Thomas borrowed from him the very form of his own Commentaries, and
Dante assigned him a distinguished place, beside Plato and Aristotle, in
the limbo of ancient sages ('Inferno,' iv. 143). But in the following
century--mainly, no doubt, because he was chosen as the patron of
certain strongly heretical movements, such as those instigated by the
arch-rationalist Frederic II--he came to be regarded as the precursor of
Antichrist, if not that personage himself: being credited with the awful
blasphemy of having spoken of the founders of the three current
religions--Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad--as "the three impostors."
Whatever truth there may be in this, so much is certain, that
infidelity, in the sense of an utter disbelief in Christianity as a
revealed religion, or in any sense specially true, dates from the
thirteenth century, and is due in large measure to the influence of
Averroës. Yet he was a great favorite with the Franciscans, and for a
time exercised a profound influence on the universities of Paris and
Oxford, finding a strong admirer even in Roger Bacon. His thought was
also a powerful element in the mysticism of Meister Eckhart and his
followers; a mysticism which incurred the censure of the Church.
Thus both the leading forms of heresy which characterized the thirteenth
century--naturalism with its tendency to magic, astrology, alchemy,
etc., etc., and mysticism with its dreams of beatific visions, its
self-torture and its lawlessness (see Görres, 'Die Christliche
Mystik')--were due largely to Averroës. In spite of this, his
commentaries on Aristotle maintained their credit, their influence being
greatest in the fourteenth century, when his doctrines were openly
professed. After the invention of printing, they appeared in numberless
editions,--several times in connection with the text of Aristotle. As
the age of the Renaissance and of Protestantism approached, they
gradually lost their prestige. The chief humanists, like Petrarch, as
well as the chief reformers, were bitterly hostile to them.
Nevertheless, they contributed important elements to both movements.
Averroism survived longest in Northern Italy, especially in the
University of Padua, where it was professed until the seventeenth
century, and where, as a doctrine hostile to supernaturalism, it paved
the way for the study of nature and the rise of modern science. Thus
Averroës may fairly be said to have had a share in every movement toward
freedom, wise and unwise, for the last seven hundred years. In truth,
free thought in Europe owes more to him than to any other man except
Abélard. His last declared follower was the impetuous Lucilio Vanini,
who was burned for atheism at Toulouse in 1619.
The best work on Averroës is Renan's 'Averroës et l'Averroïsme' (fourth
edition, Paris, 1893). This contains, on pages 58-79, a complete list
both of his commentaries and his original writings.