In the early Islamic world (from the eighth to the eleventh centuries) there were two different methods of thinking about ultimate questions such as the constitution of the world, freedom and necessity, justice, and merit. One was kalam, a sort of philosophizing closely attached to problems raised by the Qur’an and conducted in terms partly borrowed indirectly from the Greek tradition, partly invented by the Islamic thinkers themselves. Exponents of kalam divided themselves into many different schools, of which the most adventurous philosophically, and the most influential at the start, was that of the Mu'tazilites. The other method of thinking about these questions was that of Greek philosophy, introduced by al-Kindl in the eighth century. Al-Kindl was a Muslim and belonged to an important Arab family. He seems to have introduced Greek philosophy consciously as an alternative to Mu'tazilite kalam: it was a foreign importation, but one which, he tried to show, could be adapted to fit Islam. Although there were some thinkers in the tenth and eleventh centuries - particularly the Isma'ills - who also followed a conciliatory approach, mainstream philosophy took a different direction. It centered increasingly on whose work was commented on in detail by Baghdad peripatetics, many of them Christian. The outstanding member of this school was al-FarabI, a Muslim but one who, to judge by his work, accepted Islam because he saw in it a symbolic way, suitable for assimilation by the masses, of stating the truths which were demonstrated in their full and clear form by Aristotelian science.
The most influential of all the Arabic philosophers, Avicenna, seems to have developed his rethinking of Aristotelian philosophy mainly in isolation from religious considerations, although he may have been influenced by some of the questions raised by the Mu'tazilites. He was willing, in line with his understanding of Aristotle, to deny the fundamental Islamic doctrines of the resurrection of the dead and the non-eternity of the world. For these views, Avicenna was fiercely attacked by al-(GazalI (10581111), whose writings had, and continue to have, enormous influence among Muslims. But, at the same time, al-GGazall was himself deeply influenced by Avicenna, and he played the pivotal role in infusing kalam with Avicennian philosophy. Although, then, Avicenna is the last major figure in the eastern Islamic tradition of
Aristotelian philosophers, there continued into the late Middle Ages and beyond a stream of indirectly Aristotelian speculation - some of it conducted in commentaries on Avicenna - which now was part of, rather than a rival to, Islamic theology (Griffel 2009).
In Muslim Spain and North Africa, as explained above, the tradition of direct study of Aristotle continued. Its outstanding representative, Averroes, was a dedicated Aristotelian who thought that the fundamental truth about the universe could be found just by the most careful scrutiny of Aristotle’s meaning. But Averroes was not a covert freethinker, doing his day job as an Islamic judge just to keep up appearances. There is every indication that he agreed fundamentally with al-(GazalI over when a Qur’anic text should be “interpreted” and its literal meaning rejected - when it was contradicted by a demonstration. He held, however, that a wider range of truths than al-(GazalI accepted are demonstrable through Aristotelian science (Griffel 2000).
The first Jewish Aristotelian, Abraham b. Daud, believed that Aristotelian science and orthodox Jewish doctrine were compatible, and in his rabbinic works Mai-monides professed the same view. There he argued that the rabbis of old had honored philosophy and arrived at the same truths as were professed by the philosophers of the Arabic Aristotelian tradition, but they had kept them secret so as not to reveal them to the mass of the people. Maimonides’ most famous work - indeed, the most celebrated text in the whole tradition of Jewish medieval philosophy - the Guide of the Perplexed is, however, mainly directed toward the perplexities faced by the firm believer in the Jewish law who has also studied Arabic-Aristotelian philosophy and science. It is hard to be completely certain of how Maimonides resolves these perplexities: whether he has really retrenched from his earlier acceptance of almost everything in Aristotelianism, or whether he continues in and even extends his earlier position, though in a covert manner, hidden from those who read too straightforwardly. Such was Maimonides’ influence on subsequent Jewish thinkers, that the dispute over Aristotelianism in Jewish philosophy became in large part a dispute about whether or not to follow Maimonides. Since Maimonides himself was, from the beginning, interpreted in a more radical and a less radical way, the contours of the debate are hard to follow; some Jews criticized even Maimonides under a moderate interpretation for conceding too much to Aristotle, while for some of the most enthusiastic Jewish Aristotelians, he had not - even under a radical interpretation - gone far enough. But even a thinker like Moses of Narbonne (d. after 1362), who followed Averroes’ Aristotelianism closely, shared with Averroes the feeling that Aristotelianism did not in fact contradict the fundamental principles of his own religion. There was, then, a flourishing thirteenth - and fourteenth-century tradition of Jewish Aristotelianism, learned mainly through Averroes. But, at the same time, there was consistent opposition to this whole philosophical tradition, which resulted, for example, in an unsuccessful attempt of banning Maimonides’ works in the 1230s and, in 1305, the banning of Arabo-Greek learning to Jews aged under 25 in Catalonia. The greatest of all these Hebrew-language philosophers, Gersonides (1288-1344), took an independent stance and rethought philosophical problems, using Aristotelian positions and tools, but not feeling bound to them, in a way which eliminated most of the obvious clashes between religious orthodoxy and the results of philosophy. But the mood among Jews in the following century and a half became more generally and resolutely set against Aristotelianism, and against philosophy in general.
Suspicion of Aristotelianism - which was put under the general banner of ‘‘Hellenism,’’ that is to say, sympathy for the pagan thought of Greece - was a constant feature of the Byzantine tradition. It did not prevent scholars from maintaining a tradition of Aristotelian exegesis, but it could make life difficult or worse for individual scholars. Whereas, for instance, Michael Psellos, though accused of heresy, managed to escape condemnation, his student, John Italos, was not so fortunate. After a series of trials, he was condemned and his books burned. The charges against him were related to his use of Aristotelian logic in theology, and he was said, probably unjustly, not merely to have enquired into the doctrines of the ancients but to have accepted them as truths (cf. Clucas 1981).
As explained above, scholars in the medieval Latin West knew only a few Aristotelian logical texts until the mid-twelfth century. For this reason, questions about the compatibility between religious teaching and Aristotelian-ism, like those faced by Byzantine Christians, Muslims and Jews, were not posed in the early Middle Ages. Although from time to time a religious thinker would cast doubt on the study of logic, or at least on its appropriateness as for monks, it was generally accepted that logic was valuable, or indeed essential, as a tool for presenting and defending Christian doctrine. It was only when it was misused that it became dangerous. And the tradition of logic, they recognized, was Aristotelian. But it was not just Aristotelian. A paraphrase of Aristotle’s Categories, widely read from the ninth to eleventh centuries, was attributed to Augustine (helping, incidentally, to ensure the Christian respectability of the subject). The curriculum usual in the
Early twelfth century included two Aristotelian texts, and five others, four by Boethius and one by Porphyry. Although the best logicians, like Abelard, seem to have shown a special respect for Abelard and to have had suspicions, rightly, about Boethius’ logical acumen, all three figures were generally treated on the same level as authorities. Questions about the relationship between Christian doctrine and pagan philosophy were indeed posed in this period, but in connection with Plato and writings in the Platonic tradition.
Once translations of his non-logical works began to be disseminated, this easy acceptance of Aristotle as a logical authority was no longer possible. Some of the earliest evidence for the study of Aristotle’s natural philosophy and his Metaphysics are the prohibitions issued in 1210 and 1215 against the study of this material in the Arts Faculty of Paris. But the authorities did not do much to enforce these prohibitions by the 1240s, and - as noted above - by the 1250s the curriculum of the Arts Faculties in Paris and Oxford was based around Aristotle. In a way that contrasts sharply with the Islamic, Jewish, and Byzantine traditions, Aristotelianism was thus incorporated openly and institutionally into the scheme of education approved by the religious authorities and which also was responsible for the formation of theologians and Church leaders. Although this theological formation took place in the Theology Faculty, students had either to have taken the Arts course, or, if they belonged to the mendicant orders, its equivalent in their own schools: theologians were thoroughly trained in Aristotelian philosophy, and their approach to theological problems was deeply affected by it.
This institutional adoption of Aristotelianism did not, however, prevent there from being tensions between Aristotle’s views and Christian doctrine, in two areas in particular, one of which related primarily to the Arts Masters, the other to the theologians. Granted that the Arts Faculty was officially dedicated to the study of Aristotelian science, and that it was not its business to deal with matters of Christian doctrine, to what extent should Arts Masters be permitted to develop views which actually contradicted Christian doctrine? Two positions were especially at issue: the Aristotelian principle that the world - in the sense of the whole universe - is eternal (which clashes with the Christian doctrine that the world had a temporal beginning), and Averroes’ reading of On the Soul in his long commentary, according to which there is just one Intellect for all humans (which contradicts the idea of individual immortality and so the whole Christian teaching about heavenly reward and punishment). Although none of the Arts Masters seems to have proposed that either of these positions was true without qualification, there was some in the 1260s - such as Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia - who tried to find some way in which, in their capacity as Arts Masters and so teachers of Aristotle, they could develop these and any other arguably Aristotelian views in their own terms, even if they acknowledged that, as a Christian, one must hold a different, incompatible view. Although this movement in the thirteenth century was crushed by ecclesiastical opposition, there remained until the end of the Middle Ages an important strain of ‘‘Radical Aristotelianism” or ‘‘Latin Averroism’’ in the Arts Faculties - of thinkers who, while acknowledging, at least verbally, the truth of Christian doctrine, looked to Averroes as the most reliable interpreter of Aristotle, even where his interpretations made his thought clearly unacceptable to Christians (Hayoun and De Libera, 1991). In order to prevent such speculations, the authorities obliged fourteenth-century Paris Arts Masters to swear that, if they touched in their philosophy on any subjects that also concerned the faith, they would give the answers demanded by faith and provide refutations of the arguments against the answer consistent with Christian teaching. Yet, even the cautious John Buridan, who taught for about 40 years in the Arts Faculty at Paris from c. 1320, makes clear that, for instance, the Christian teaching on the immortality of the soul does not follow from Aristotle’s position and must be accepted as a matter of faith (Sylla 2001).
For the theologians, the problem was, rather, the extent to which Aristotle’s God, as interpreted by the Arabic Aristotelians, was their God, at least in philosophical guise. By and large, Aquinas believed that he was. But in 1277, shortly after Aquinas’ death, a long list of propositions, many of them reflecting positions held by Arabic Aristotelians and their followers, were condemned in Paris. Although largely directed against Arts Masters, the condemnations indicate a growing awareness that Aristotle’s God, and the physical and metaphysical context in which the Arabic Aristotelian placed him, did not fit well with Christian belief. Late thirteenth - and fourteenth-century theologians, stimulated by their doctrinal requirements, although deeply learned in Aristotelian science and indebted to it for much of their thinking, rethought many aspects of Aristotelianism: consider, for instance, Duns Scotus’ account of God’s contingent causality or Ockham’s nominalism.
See also: > Arabic Philosophical Texts, Jewish Translations Of > Arabic Texts: Philosophy, Latin Translations of > Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Latin
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