CONTEXT
Averroes
was born when the Almoravids
controlled Al-Andalus. They had crossed the Gibraltar Strait to help the Taifas
kingdoms and they had defeated the Castilians. They extended their control over
Al-Andalus until 1145, when protests against
them increased and the Almohads crossed the Gibraltar Strait. This coincided
with Averroes’ youth. The Almohads followed a rigid interpretation of Islam
and claimed against the relaxation of customs under the Almoravid rule. They
moved the capital city from Córdoba to
Seville. The Almohad Empire was a period
of cultural splendor and economic and scientific development (Islam didn’t
forbid research). Al-Andalus was a centralized
State. The caliph held political and
spiritual power and he ruled with the help of the hayib (prime minister),
appointed the governors of the provinces (walis) and the judges of the cities
(qadis). Al-Andalus society was ethnically and religiously plural. The non-Muslims had to be respected and paid more taxes, but they
could live in Al-Andalus without much problem, except in periods of religious intolerance, like the Almohad Empire.
Al-Andalus finished with the ruralization and proto-feudalization processes and
it recovered the splendor of the Roman Empire.
AVERROES
He was interested in all the fields of
knowledge such as philosophy, theology, mathematics, physics, astronomy, law,
medicine, poetry, and he had a deep knowledge of the ancient Greek thought.
The most important
part of his work are explanations, comments and critiques of interpretations of
previous philosophers, applying the rules of the
Middle East wisemen of the end of the 10th century and beginning of
11th century Ibn al-Haytam,
who thought that it was necessary to analyze
the texts from every point of view, and not to have previous ideas in
favour or against the things we can read. However, Ibn Sab’in sustained that
Averroes thought about the same things Aristotle had said.
Averroes wrote comments on the work of Aristotle.
It deals with
the harmony between religion and philosophy,
trying to define the relationship between them clearly. Some of his
most important works are Comments to Aristotle (Mayor Comment, Medium Comment and Small Comment).
Averroes shared with Aristotle and Plato a similar idea about anthropology and
knowledge. He thought that human knowledge is captured by senses and
imagination and it isn’t objective (it corresponds to phenomenal reality),
while divine knowledge doesn’t depend from things that are external to the mind
(it corresponds to the reality of the universe. This knowledge is at the same
time identical to God).
 |
| Averroes appears in The School of Athens. He is the man with a moustache who is located in the upper and left corner. |
In his work Destructio destructionis he attacks
al-Gazali, who thought that philosophy is in contradiction with religion and in
this way philosophy is against the Muslim religion principles.
|
Averroes appears in The School of Athens. He is the man
with a moustache who is located in the upper and left corner.
|
His ideas had big influence in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and his comments
about Aristotle had big echo in the medieval Europe, being recognized like an
authentic philosopher, although the French Ernest Renan, in the 19th century,
rejected the originality of his thought.
In Law,
he got fame of great lawyer and he wrote The Distinguished Jurist Primer,
which is a textbook of Maliki doctrine in
a comparative framework. Maliki doctrine is one of the four schools of law that
exist in Sunni Islam. It represents the city of Medina’s tradition. Nowadays, it is predominant in Occidental
Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Kuwait, Bahrain and UAE.
One important characteristic of Maliki doctrine is flexibility: rules adjust to the different situations of each country.
This is why it applies successfully in so many countries.
Averroes was one of the biggest doctors of the period, although his medical work has been
almost forgotten because of his fame as a
philosopher. He studied with Avenzoar and he is the author of treatises that
had a big diffusion until the Renaissance and of which different versions were
made to the Hebrew and to the Latin. The medical texts of Averroes are of two
types:
- Medical works where he alludes to all the medical subjects treated by the most important Arab doctors and by some Greek philosophers. The most important texts in this group are:
1. About the conservation of the health.
2.
Assertion about the different
temperaments.
3. Book of the Generalities in Medicine (written between 1162 and 1169): it consists
of seven volumes, dedicated to anatomy, physiology, pathology, semeiotic,
therapeutic, hygiene and medication. It was translated to Latin, as all of his
works, and it was very used as text book in Christian universities: Paris,
Oxford, Rome, Leuven and so on.
- Texts made to comment Aristotle, Avicenna and Galenus: there are nine titles related to the Temperaments, Elements, Medicines, Fevers, Natural faculties and so on, by Galenus and a comment about the medicine of Avicenna.
In summary, his works are a compendium of the
Arabic knowledge in physiology, pathology, diagnosis, medical matter and, even,
anatomy, branch of the medicine that had lower impulse, since the Muslim
religion did not allow the dissection of corpses. He was the first to explain
the function
of the retina and realize that an attack of smallpox
causes immunity.
Averroes is also author of several small books
about Ethics, Politics, Mathematics and
Astronomy. He formulated the dogma, suggested already by Aristotle and
reiterated later by Descartes in the 18th century, that any algebraic
curve can be rectified in an exact way.
Averroes refused most of the Platonic ideas, and this implied
the rejection of the ideas of the Arab philosophers of the Middle East,
especially Avicenna.
His main detractors
were Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and Parisian teachers of the 13th
century. Aquinas and Magnus refused, for example, the theories that defend the eternity
of the world, the movement and unity of the souls of all of men. Aquinas said
that Averroes had twisted Aristotle’s teachings. Nevertheless, Averroes had a
big influence in the Christian and Jewish scholastic and philosophy of the
Middle Ages. In 1277, Archbishop Stefano Tempier condemned 219 theses sustained
by philosophers who shared ideas with Averroes and Aristotle and he started a
polemic which didn’t finish until Renaissance.
With respect to his followers, some teachers like Sigerius of Brabant and Boetius of
Dacia taught theories of Averroes related with monopsyquism and defended a
radical Aristotelianism which came from Averroes teachings. The teachers of
Padua also taught his theories in the 15th century. Some experts
have said that Averroes scholastic of Pietro Pomponazzi and Cesare Cremonini is
the origin of the modern world. The orientation influenced by Averroes that
raised Aristotle over the Bible was spread since the 13th century
among teachers of secular formation who controlled universities of scientiae (Music, Geometry).
In the East, Averroes ideas were less known
than in Europe.
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