Cycles of Knowledge

Though his writings included contributions to medicine and legal theory, Averroes is principally remembered for his efforts in two directions: Aristotelian commentary and the public defense of philosophy. As already indicated, the two projects were intertwined. It is because of al-(Gazal!’s religiously motivated critique that Averroes sought refuge in a return to Aristotle, and because of his faith in the Aristotelian corpus as the repository of all knowledge and scientific methodology that Averroes could feel confident that theological controversies, too, would find their proper resolution in a thorough investigation of the same. This high opinion of the Peripatetic curriculum Averroes took over from the earlier tradition of falsafa. Still, it took several decades for Averroes to come to the view that what was needed was a strict adherence to Aristotle’s very words. Even then, a literal understanding of the master was no simple matter (see al-‘AlawI 1986).

Averroes’ writings on the philosophical curriculum divide into three principal categories, commonly if misleadingly known as the short, middle, and long commentaries. It has sometimes been thought that the three are enumerated in a story related by al-MarrakushI in which the Sultan (very likely Abu Ya'qUb YUsuf), frustrated by the obliqueness of Aristotle’s expression, expressed a wish to Ibn Tufayl that somebody should ‘‘summarize them and expound their aims, after understanding them thoroughly.’’ Being otherwise occupied himself, Ibn Tufayl would then have delegated the task to Averroes. The overliteral interpretation is fanciful - if anything, Averroes’ own comments on the story peg the government-mandated activity to the middle phase of crafting talakhts - but the basics of the story ring true. Without institutional backing or encouragement, it is unlikely that Averroes would have set upon or completed such a comprehensive program on top of his other duties. The reasons, however, for the three different layers of exposition are to be sought in internal factors and in Averroes’ philosophical development rather than any external remit.

The Compendia (mukhtasar or [pl.] jawami‘), written at a youthful age, concisely recapitulate the philosophers’ teachings in dogmatic form. In stating their aim, Averroes speaks interchangeably about the Peripatetics’ ‘‘scientific,’’ “demonstrative,” or ‘‘universal’’ statements (al-aqawll al-‘ilmiyya/burhaniyya/kulliyya). In practice, the doctrines expounded often reflect the Peripatetic tradition more than they do any text of Aristotle’s: in the case of De anima, the depth of Averroes’ acquaintance with Aristotle’ treatise at this stage has been questioned (Druart 1993:193), while in the case of the Organon Averroes explicitly epitomizes al-FarabI rather than Aristotle (see Compendium of the Physics, 8.9-10). Because the Compendia aim solely at providing the reader with what is necessary (al-darurt) to know about the fundamentals (usul) of a given discipline - there is a cycle of this description on the Organon, another on natural philosophy, individual treatises on the soul and on metaphysics, and to these we may add Averroes’ summary of al-Gazall’s legal treatise al-Mustasfa as well - these synopses are short on dialectic, detail, and controversy.

The Explications (talkhts) form the largest body of texts. Besides Aristotle’ logical, natural, and metaphysical works (the triptych of theoretical philosophy) Averroes wrote on the Nicomachean Ethics and on Galen and Ptolemy in this genre. To call the talakhts paraphrases in the strict sense would be a misnomer (Gutas 1993:38-42): much more than rephrasing individual sentences, Averroes in these works sets out to rework the contents of Aristotle’ corresponding treatises in systematized form. Still, these works, in Averroes’ own words, explicate the texts in question according to their meaning (‘ala l-ma‘na), and in that regard at least the traditional title of Paraphrase is descriptive of the work done.

The Commentaries (tafstr or sharJt), the crowning achievement of Averroes’ career, follow the lemma-bylemma model established in late antiquity. Averroes completed five of these commentaries, tackling those works he considered most crucial for the imposing Aristotelian edifice of theoretical knowledge: the Posterior Analytics, for scientific methodology, followed by the Physics, On the Heavens, On the Soul, and finally the Metaphysics. The quoted Aristotelian texts form an important witness to the Arabic textual tradition: so do the commentaries themselves, which take onboard the bifurcation of theoria from lexis. Here the full weight of the foregone tradition as it was known to Averroes makes itself felt, as Averroes finds it necessary to grapple not only with those philosophers with whom Aristotle himself wrestled but also with subsequent Peripatetics, chief among them Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Philoponus, al-FarabI, Avicenna, and Ibn Bajja. When commenting on the Presocratics, Averroes even finds occasion to censure the speculative theologians (mutakallimun) of his day, whose methodology and thought he finds faulty in much the same way Aristotle had found, for example, the Atom-ists and the Megarians to be lacking in subtlety and common sense.

Characteristic of Averroes’ mature approach is his determination to treat any apparent discrepancy in Aristotelian teaching as resulting either from (a) a misunderstanding concerning the meaning of Aristotle’s text or (b) an intrusive and unwelcome piece of innovation on behalf of a later commentator. This not only affords Averroes a measure of distance toward the Peripatetic tradition but also offers him the rudiments of what would later become known as internal criticism (Urvoy 1991:58-59). Averroes confidently pronounces his judgment on what Aristotle would say, should say, or must have said, sometimes in manifest opposition to what Aristotle actually did say, either in the Arabic text in front of him or the Greek in front of us. Averroes always has his reasons for such emendations. For him, Aristotle’s intentions form a tightly interwoven whole in which nothing remains ungrounded, few things prove superfluous, and nothing whatsoever can be allowed to stand in contradiction to anything stated elsewhere. For all that these commentaries assume a unity of thought in Aristotle, which modern scholars find hard to countenance, they nevertheless bring forth into actuality a compelling systematic Aristotelianism where one only exists in Aristotle’s own writings in potentia (the phrase is Jonathan Barnes’).

To this final phase belong also Averroes’ independent treatises and two sets of questions, composed on the model of Alexander of Aphrodisias in order to address apparent inconsistencies and doctrinal lacunae. These treatises commence with the Sermo de substantia orbis in 1178 (as in many cases, the original Arabic is lost, but we have Hebrew and Latin versions), and continue right up to a collection of short treatises on Aristotle’s syllogistic compiled in 1195. They show that Averroes, for all his protestations concerning Aristotle’s infallibility as a guide to the workings of reality, remained intellectually curious to the end of his career, still searching for answers to pressing questions of fundamental importance (see Endress 2004). Also reflecting this, all three types of writing - Compendium, Explication, and Commentary - remained subject to revision by the author. Averroes edited his youthful Compendia to include criticisms of Avicennian positions he himself had held earlier: meanwhile, Ivry (1997:511-519) has plausibly suggested that work on the long-form Commentaries was an ongoing process spanning several decades, influencing the phras-ings adopted in the Explications along the way.