Central to Averroes’ views regarding the pursuit and transmission of knowledge are the notions of conception (tasawwur) and assent (tasdlq), two concepts that early became part of Arabic Peripatetic teaching. Conception and assent, which typically were introduced as preliminaries to logic, tie in psychological with logical considerations, thereby effecting a much-needed (from a naturalist point of view) link between ontology, epistemology, and reasoned argument. Briefly, it was thought that every act of assent requires prior conception, but that both conception and assent can be arrived at through various means. Besides apprehending a thing as it is in itself, one may conceive of a thing through its likeness (mathal); similarly, and more importantly from the point of view of logic, besides the demonstrative syllogism one may be moved to assent to a proposition through dialectical or sophistic argumentation, or indeed through rhetorical or poetic persuasion.
This so-called context theory of argument and persuasion, which the Arabic philosophers took over from Alexandrian teaching, served to counterbalance the great weight placed on demonstration (found in science) with a recognition that scientific discourse is after all only one form of communication and may prove inappropriate in some situations, for instance in dealing with people with inadequate scientific training. Under such circumstances, the responsible interlocutor will take into account his or her social context and the intended audience and choose the means of persuasion most likely to have a salutary effect (see Black 1990).
It is the context theory that accounts for Averroes’ approach to the public defense of philosophy. to the context theory, Averroes can regard himself as a faithful follower of the Prophet at the same time that he operates unapologetically as a scientifically minded philosopher. In the Decisive Treatise, Averroes puts forward his case in terms of Islamic law (see Mahdi 1984), arguing first that the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions obligate the pursuit of knowledge, which in turn is best accomplished according to the method of the philosophers, that is, through scientific investigation (from effects to causes) and demonstrative argument (from causes to effects). However, because not all people are capable of attaining such a demanding ideal, the divine Law has also made provisions for the dialectically minded (i. e., the theologians) and the rhetorically persuaded. The latter comprise the greater majority of the populace, who come to rest securely in a viewpoint through an unreflective acceptance of striking and compelling imagery. In his Messenger, Muljammad, God has provided humanity
With the ultimate rhetorician, someone who has been handed images of such rare power that they bring forth immediate recognition of their essential correctness. These religious images reveal the exact same truths, which the demonstrative sciences uncover: after all, ‘‘truth does not oppose truth; rather, it agrees and bears witness to it’’ (Decisive Treatise, 9.1-2 Butterworth; see Taylor 2000). Averroes neatly sidesteps the issue of whether the Prophet himself should be regarded as a philosopher, something over which al-FarabI and Avicenna had notably disagreed. For Averroes, it is enough that the Prophet has at his disposal resources for persuasion, which the philosopher qua philosopher is unable to access.
For Averroes, the claims of religion should be taken at face value whenever possible. The likenesses of philosophical conceptions, which these claims encapsulate, are rich enough to stand on their own; besides, the argumentative procedures necessarily involved in any unpacking of allegory or metaphor quickly become so convoluted that untrained people run the risk of losing their way. For this reason, Averroes apologizes for engaging in polemics with al-(GazalI in the first place; it would have been better for all concerned had he not had to embark on this path (Incoherence, 409, 427-429). However, because al-(GazalI and the Muslim speculative theologians in general had made such a bad hash ofattempting to reason dialectically (and also of interpreting the religious metaphors handed down by the prophets: see Averroes’ Exposition, passim), it had become imperative for a genuine philosopher to come forward, set the record straight, and show at the very least that the charges brought by al-(GazalI against the philosophers did not stick.
Averroes’ views on human nature and interaction are undeniably elitist, insofar as he judges the majority of people to be incapable of handling properly philosophical and scientific argumentation. Averroes himself stresses the positive message that all people are called to the truth through the three means of assent (Decisive Treatise, 8.2-17 Butterworth), whereas a stricter method would leave happiness entirely out of reach of some people and put others at mortal risk of losing their way. His approach, essentially FarabIan, sanctions a degree of dissimulation in matters where the philosophical doctrine is on the surface level very far from the popular understanding of the matter - personal immortality provides a suitably infamous example - but it is nevertheless a far cry from the doctrine of double truth for which the Latin Averroists of the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries were notorious.
As might be expected, in his philosophical commentaries, Averroes greatly favors the demonstrative approach, to the point of repeatedly recasting Aristotle’s dialectical arguments in natural philosophy as demonstrative proofs. Another indication of the hold the demonstrative ideal had on Averroes is the way he conceives of medicine in the Kulliyat (Lat. Colliget). Insofar as medicine aspires to be a science, it, too, has to set about the business of discovering essential causes for essential effects and ignore the contingent circumstances that sometimes prevent such regularities from obtaining. Consequently, Averroes, like Avicenna, conceives of medicine both as a science and as an art; although the latter predominates in the practice of the discipline, as well it should, medicine must for its advancement ultimately rely on the soundness of the former.
Notably, Averroes did not rest easy with the received notion of demonstration as a scientific tool perfectly aligned with Aristotelian syllogistic (proving that he did not take it lightly either, or use it as a smokescreen to mask private doubts about the philosophers’ claims to certitude). All the way up to the very late Questions on Logic, Averroes pursued the meaning especially of essential predication, a crucial aspect of Aristotelian philosophy of science that proved surprisingly difficult to pin down. In his questions, Averroes introduces a distinction between accidental and essential necessity which ended up influencing Latin discussions. What is noteworthy about Averroes’ own treatment of the issue is that while the discussion is of a technical character, its aims are markedly ontological, having to do with how the syllogistic moods can be deployed in sorting out corporeal reality.
World History
