## 1. Life and Works


### 1.1 Life



Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd was born in
Cordova in 1126. He belonged to an influential Andalusian family,
famous for its judicial power and for its scholarship in the religious
sciences. His father was a prominent judge, but the most important
figure in the family was his grandfather, who also bears his name, Ibn
Rushd, and so the philosopher is called "the grandson"
(*al-hafid*) to distinguish him from his grandfather
(*al-jadd*). The latter was both a well-known judge and a famed
jurist, being the author of many books in jurisprudence following the
Maliki school.



Unlike
 Ibn Sina
 and
 al-Ghazali,
 Ibn Rushd did not write an autobiography, and as a result many
aspects of his life are obscure and will remain so unless new
documents are discovered. The limited information we have from his
biographers unanimously agrees on his good conduct, his diligence in
science, and his fairness as a judge, while noting his interests in
philosophy and his adoption of certain "audacious" views.
The surviving historical sources tell us much about his teachers in
the religious sciences, but, with the exception of medicine, we know
little about those who taught him in other fields. He was certainly
not a disciple of either of his famous Andalusian contemporaries,
 Ibn Bajja
 or Ibn Tufayl, although he read their philosophical works. (Puig 1992
and Ben Sharifa 1999 discuss the intellectual circles around Ibn
Rushd.)



Ibn Rushd was 22 when the Almohads came to power in the western
Maghreb and Andalusia. Given that the Ibn Rushds had been prominent in
circles close to the previous Almoravid dynasty, it was imperative for
the grandson to express in his writings, and perhaps even in person,
his commitment to the new rulers and the Almohad creed
(*da*'*wa*) conceptualized by Muhammad Ibn
Tumart (d. 1130). Some surviving testimonies suggest that Ibn
Rushd did in fact adopt Ibn Tumart's creed at some point in
his life (see Ben Sharifa 1999).



Given the social position of his family, Ibn Rushd soon found himself
in the ruling circles of Marrakesh and close to the princes, or at
least some of them, in Andalusia. He engaged in debates on
philosophical and theological issues with this inner circle, and there
is a record of a meeting with Abu Ya'qub Yusuf (r.
1163-84), the second Almohad ruler, who officially asked Ibn
Rushd to comment on Aristotle's works and render them
accessible. Later he became chief physician to the caliph in
Marrakesh.



Nevertheless, Ibn Rushd's relationship with the Almohad creed
was complex and seems to have evolved (Geoffroy 1999; Ben Ahmed
2020c). Recently discovered revisions to his *al-Kashf 'an
manahij al-adilla* contain paragraphs where Ibn Rushd shows a
sort of critical distance towards Ibn Tumart's creed. These
paragraphs, when added to his harsh criticism of the Almohads in his
commentary on Plato's *Republic*, may help us understand
the evolution he underwent during his intellectual life. They may shed
light in particular on the disgrace he suffered at the end of his
career, when, for reasons that remain unclear, he fell out of favor
with the Almohads and was exiled in Lucena, 60 km southeast of
Cordova. According to one account, his death took place while he was
confined to a residence in Marrakesh in 1198. (The definitive
biography, in Arabic, is Ben Sharifa 1999. For more on the
historical context see Urvoy 1998 and Ben Ahmed 2020c.)


### 1.2 Works



Ibn Rushd remained productive for at least four decades. He was the
author of a large corpus that extends over medicine, logic and
philosophy in all its branches, including natural philosophy,
astronomy, metaphysics, psychology, politics, and ethics. His work
also includes the sciences of Islamic religion: jurisprudence
(*fiqh*), the foundations of Islamic law (*usul
al-fiqh*), the foundations of religion (*usul
al-din*), and the science of the Arabic language, including
grammar. With important exceptions, most of his works are available in
the original Arabic. For those works that have been lost, while
readers await the day of their rediscovery, they must generally make
do with medieval translations in Hebrew or Latin.



Ibn Rushd's work deploys various methods and styles. Many
treatises are in the form of a commentary, most famously and
extensively on Aristotle--covering nearly the whole Aristotelian
corpus*--*but also on Galen's medical treatises, as
well as on other philosophers such as Plato, Ibn Sina and
Ibn Bajja. Many other treatises, devoted to specific issues, are
not in commentary form. (For a detailed inventory of texts and
translations see SS10.1.)



The focus of his commentaries was Aristotle because no one has yet
surpassed his achievement: "no one who has come after him to
this our time--and this is close to 1500 years later--has
been able to add a word worthy of attention to what he said"
(*LongPhys* proem; Harvey 1985, 83). Scholarship going back to
the nineteenth-century has divided the commentaries into three
kinds:


* the epitome or short commentary (*jawami'*),
which he favored at the start of his career;
* the paraphrase or middle commentary (*talkhis*),
seemingly composed throughout his career;
* the literal or long commentary (*sharh* or
*tafsir*), dating to his later years.



Inasmuch as Ibn Rushd routinely wrote different kinds of commentaries
on the same Aristotelian treatise, some such distinction seems
necessary. But recent scholarship has doubted whether this neat
threefold distinction adequately captures Ibn Rushd's complexly
varied approach (Al-'Alawi 1986a; Druart 1994; Gutas 1993).
At a minimum, it omits important categories of work, such as compendia
(*mukhtasarat*), treatises (*maqalat*),
and answers to questions (*masa`il*), to say nothing
of the important treatises that focus on religious questions.



The most prominent of those independent religious treatises are


* *The* *Decisive Treatise* (*Fasl
al-Maqal*), an argument for the value of philosophy to
Islam;
* *The Incoherence of the Incoherence* (*Tahafut
al-Tahafut*), a direct response to al-Ghazali,
whose work had achieved considerable influence at the time in
Andalusia (Di Giovanni 2019);
* *The Exposition of the Methods of Proof concerning Religious
Doctrines* (*al-Kashf 'an manahij al-adilla fi
'aqa`id al-milla*), a philosophically nuanced
alternative to the teachings of Ash'arite theology.



These works, which seem to have had little influence on medieval
Christian thought, have traditionally been seen as
"theological" and contrasted with his supposedly
"philosophical" works: the commentaries on Aristotle that
circulated throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe in Latin and
Hebrew translation. The latter were thought to be demonstrative, and
aimed at the elites, whereas the former were said to be merely
dialectical, and so aimed at a popular audience. Accordingly Ibn
Rushd's true position supposedly had to be sought in these
Aristotelian commentaries.



This distinction has affected the direction of scholarship, causing
great attention to be given to the "philosophical" works,
which were thought to represent most truly his thought, and leaving
the "theological" treatises to be comparatively neglected.
Even where the latter are widely taught, they are set apart from his
supposedly more philosophical commentaries. The result, ever since the
initial research of Renan (1852), has been a segmented and fragmentary
view of the Rushdian corpus that marginalizes important aspects of his
thought.



An important correction to this tendency appears in Jamal Al-Din
Al-'Alawi (1986a), who defends the unity and coherence of
the Rushdian corpus. He proposes that Ibn Rushd's works form a
unity where there is no room to distinguish between what is a
commentary on another text and what is an ostensibly original work.
With this, Al-'Alawi attempted to close a gap in a body of
work that should rightly be seen as continuous, and to reconnect texts
that have been disassociated from their contexts.


## 2. Logic and Methodology



The general character of Ibn Rushd's philosophy is illuminated
by his overarching picture of logic. Most broadly, he understands it
as the study of the conditions and rules that rightly guide the mind
toward the conception (*tasawwur*) of essences and the
assent (*tasdiq*) to propositions
(*CompLogic* 1.1). Glossing Aristotle's famous remark
that "it is the mark of the educated person" to seek the
appropriate level of precision in any inquiry, Ibn Rushd clarifies
that the educated person is "one who has been instructed in the
art of logic" *(ParaEthics* I.3, 3C).



In keeping with the weight he accords the subject, Ibn Rushd commented
several times on each work in Aristotle's logical
*Organon*. Near the start of his career, he wrote a
*Compendium of Logic* that includes Porphyry's
*Isagoge* and follows the usual Arabic practice of including
the *Rhetoric* and *Poetics* as part of an expanded
*Organon* (Black 1990). Later, he wrote a series of longer
paraphrases of this same corpus (but treated the *Isagoge*
separately, on the grounds that it is neither an introduction to nor
even a part of logic). Toward the end of his life, he devoted one of
his five long commentaries to the *Posterior Analytics*.



In line with the approach of his predecessors, Ibn Rushd divided
logical processes into five types of argument: demonstrative,
dialectical, rhetorical, poetical, and fallacious. These inferences
are not distinguished by their forms, which are the same, but by their
matter, that is, by their premises. The premises of demonstrative
arguments are necessary (Thom 2019), the premises of dialectical
arguments are generally accepted, the premises of rhetoric are
generally received, the premises of poetic arguments are imaginative,
and the premises of sophistical arguments are deceiving.



For Ibn Rushd, the center of logic and its very purpose is
demonstration, for it is the only procedure that leads to certainty in
philosophy: it is "the most perfect kind of reflection
(*nazar*), using the most perfect kind of inference
(*qiyas*)" (*Decisive Treatise* 3).
Accordingly, even in the context of Plato's *Republic*,
he begins his commentary by announcing that his goal is "to
abstract such scientific arguments attributable to Plato as are
contained in the *Republic* by removing from it its dialectical
arguments." However, this does not mean that non-demonstrative
arguments are useless. Generally, where one kind of argument is not
effective, other kinds of arguments should be used. Dialectic offers a
path toward demonstration and to science, which, although it does not
obtain certainty, is close to it. Rhetoric contributes, through its
paradigms and enthymemes, to reinforcing and promoting demonstrative
evidence. The study of sophistical reasoning is useful in assessing
the faulty argumentative methods of the theologians (the
*mutakallimun*, that is, practitioners of
*kalam*).



In light of the high status of demonstration, Ibn Rushd considered it
with great care in his commentaries. He devoted a compendium, a
paraphrase and a long commentary to the *Posterior
Analytics*--which he calls the *Book of Demonstration*
(*Kitab al-Burhan*)--and wrote separate
treatises on various special issues. The long commentary is probably
the most appropriate text for his positions on the components of
demonstration, its types, and its role in producing scientific
knowledge. That commentary is also the occasion for a critical and
severe interaction with the two Islamic authorities in logic before
him, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina.



The purpose of examining demonstrative arguments is to understand the
absolute demonstration that gives complete certainty and constitutes a
science (*LongPostAn* I.7 {180}). There are, however, other
kinds of demonstration, less certain than the absolute one, but still
demonstrative. In all, Ibn Rushd distinguishes three types
(*LongPostAn* I.95 {348}):


* an absolute demonstration (*burhan mutlaq*),
which establishes the existence of a thing on the basis of a cause
that is known prior to its effect;
* a demonstration of existence (*burhan al-wujud*),
which he calls a sign (*dalil*), which establishes a
thing's existence without any grasp of its cause (see
Elamrani-Jamal 2000);
* a demonstration of the cause (*burhan al-'illa*
or *burhan al-sabab*), which establishes the cause once
the effect's existence is known. (Al-'Alawi
1986b)



In mathematics, it is generally possible to frame absolute
demonstrations, because the premises both supply the cause and are
better known than their conclusions. In the natural sciences, however,
and even in metaphysics, this ideal situation is generally not
achievable. Here we begin with the accidental sensible features of
things, and so extensive use must be made of the demonstration of
existence (*EpiPhys* 1.105 {9}; Sylla 1979; Cerami 2014). Ibn
Sina, whose views are often the target of Ibn Rushd's
logic, had denied that these count as a demonstration at all, on the
grounds that they establish no substantial connection between the
posterior cause and the prior effect. Ibn Rushd rejects this view
(*LongPostAn* I.95 {349}), but admits that the demonstration of
existence is less reliable than the other demonstrations. Certainty
comes in degrees, and the differentiation in certainty between these
demonstrations is one of the reasons why some sciences are superior to
others (*ParaPostAn* SS88-9).



Ibn Rushd's enthusiasm for demonstration does not prevent him
from valuing other logical arts, and he was particularly concerned
with the place of dialectic. Broadly speaking, according to Aristotle,
dialectic has three main uses: as intellectual training, as a path
into the demonstrative sciences of philosophy, and as a means of
conversing with ordinary people (*Topics* I.2). But Ibn Rushd
devotes less space and shows less interest in this third feature of
dialectic, and one wonders whether this is due to his critical
reaction to the discursive practices of the
*mutakallimun*. Despite the many considerations that make
dialectic more suitable when dealing with ordinary people, Ibn Rushd
suggests that rhetorical and poetic statements are preferable
(*ParaTop* I.5C {31}; Ben Ahmed 2010-2011, 299-302,
307-17). Hence their inclusion in the expanded *Organon*.
The significance of rhetoric and poetics is a result he establishes in
political science, but maintains even when it comes to teaching and
anchoring theological truths. The bad example set by the dialectical
syllogisms of the *mutakallimun* shows how dialectical
methods, in discussion with ordinary people, are actually
disadvantageous.



Under the influence of al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd puts
emphasis on the need to introduce dialectic as a method
(*tariq*), a set of rules, techniques, and warnings
(Ben Ahmed 2020a, 262-7). This conception of dialectic makes it
distinct from both demonstration and sophistical reasoning, as well as
from ordinary conversations. When used well, dialectic is a communal
enterprise and so again different from other arts, such as
demonstration, where there is no need for more than one party. A
successful "partnership" in dialectic is one where each
party does their best to commit themselves to the rules. From this
perspective, it becomes evident that the questioner is not simply an
adversary seeking to defeat his opponent, but rather a partner and a
collaborator with the respondent in the search for knowledge. Any
debate that is motivated by the pursuit of victory or by deriving
pleasure from defeating one's opponent is a debate that cannot
fall under the method of dialectic. He writes, "the communal
enterprise (*al-'amal al-mushtarak*) can be achieved in
its utmost perfection only by both partners. They can have something
in common when their aim is the assessment and the deduction of the
truth, or the realization of their training. Thus, the respondent
should perfect his response if he intends that aim, because the basest
of the partners is the one who aims at the obstruction of the communal
enterprise. But if their aim is to struggle against and defeat the
other, then they will have nothing in common.... This is not the
method of dialectic" (*ParaTop* 8.132D {233}; Ben Ahmed
2020a, 267)



At the far reaches of the logical arts, the connection to the genuine
syllogism becomes remote. So, even while Ibn Rushd recognizes that
poetics is a syllogistic art, he says that it lacks the power of a
real syllogism and is thus unproductive (*CompLogic* 12.3). In
his paraphrase of the *Poetics*, he avoids using the term
"poetic syllogism" altogether.



In the realm of jurisprudence, Ibn Rushd is famous for his position on
the logical and epistemological value of juridical inferences, which
in his view produce nothing more than opinion
(*z**ann*). Even when confronted with the
surprising insertion of the word for jurisprudence (*fiqh*)
into the Arabic translation of the *Prior Analytics* 68b10, Ibn
Rushd chooses totally to ignore it. In his juridical writings, he
openly denies the accuracy of the term 'syllogism'
(*qiyas*) for what jurists had become accustomed to
calling their juridical inferences (*al-maqayis
al-fiqhiyya* or *qiyas* *shar'i*).
When jurists speak of *qiyas*, it is important to
recognize that the term bears quite a different meaning
(*Abridgement* 299 {130-1}; Bou Akl 2019). In particular,
contrary to what happens in the syllogism, the *qiyas* of
the jurists does not have the power to deduce the unknown from the
known. And even in those cases where Ibn Rushd seems to accept
juridical inference, he does not make use of logical vocabulary, but
instead deploys the terms used by most of the jurists before him.
Rather than engage in a "syllogistification" of the
juridical inference, he focuses on the semantic and linguistic origins
of juridical rules. For Ibn Rushd, every science has its own
characteristics; therefore, anyone who tried to study logic while
studying jurisprudence would fail at studying both
(*Abridgement* 123 {37-38}).


## 3. Metaphysics



The divisions between metaphysics, natural philosophy, psychology, and
theology are permeable for Ibn Rushd, and the systematic character of
his thought makes it difficult to treat any part in isolation. (See
the start of *EpiMeta* for his division of the sciences.) Here
our method of proceeding is to begin with the most general principles
of being, and then to turn, in the next section, to their causal
relationships.



Of the various kinds of being, substances are what exist in the most
proper sense (*EpiMeta* 4.138 {125}). Among substances, the
most familiar are concrete individuals like dogs and stones
(*EpiMeta* 2.58 {43}). But these are composite entities, and
since the principles of a substance are themselves even more properly
considered to be substances (*EpiMeta* 1.31 {15-16};
*LongAnima* II.8), the most fundamental substances in the
sensible realm are the metaphysical ingredients of composite
substances, matter and form (*LongMeta* VII.44 {960}).



Underlying all change, and enduring through it, is homogeneous matter,
defined simply by its potentiality--that is, its potential to
serve as subject for any earthly form (*SubstOrb* 1.50).
Conceived of without form, it is perpetually enduring and numerically
one everywhere: "all transient bodies share this body that is
numerically one" (*SubstOrb* 2.87), because it is
"deprived of the divisions of individual forms"
(*LongMeta* XII.14 {1473}). Ibn Rushd worries in predictable
ways about the reality of this so-called prime matter (*madda
`ula*). On the one hand, he consistently counts it
as a substance (e.g., *ParaAnima* 2.115). On the other hand,
matter so-conceived is a "pure privation" and "does
not exist outside of the soul" (*LongMeta* XII.14
{1473-4}). He offers the less-than-perspicuous compromise
formula that prime matter lies "halfway, as it were, between
absolute non-being and actual being" (*quasi medium inter
non-esse simpliciter et esse in actu*) (*LongPhys* I.70;
*ParaPhys* I.3.3.276).



Matter exists only when actualized by form, but the first form it
receives is not the nature of the composite substance (dog, stone,
etc.) but instead the "indeterminate dimensions"
(*al-ab'ad ghayr al-mahdudat*) that give
matter its corporeal character: "the three dimensions that
constitute the nature of body are the first state in matter, and
matter cannot be devoid of them in any instance of generation: not
that they exist in matter in actuality, but rather in some kind of
potentiality different from the potentiality in which matter is
constituted" (*ParaGC* I.4.26 {32}; *SubstOrb*
1.55). In postulating a persisting extended substratum beneath all
physical change, Ibn Rushd has been said to take a step toward the
*res extensa* of seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy
(Hyman 1965). But his conception of matter, far from making further
forms unnecessary, explains how multiple forms can be instantiated in
the same material stuff: "the presence of dimension in prime
matter is a prerequisite for the existence of contraries"
(*EpiMeta* 3.126 {112}). Since forms, by their nature, are
always individuals--universals, Ibn Rushd insists, do not exist
outside the soul (*EpiMeta* 2.73-5
{57-9})--the theory does not require a "principle of
individuation" for form. Extended matter does, however, serve as
what might be called a principle of multiplication. If the material
realm were not extended, "there would exist in it only one form
at a given time" (*SubstOrb* 1.60; Di Giovanni 2007).



Alongside matter, the other internal principle of composite substances
is form, and so form too counts as a substance (*LongAnima*
II.2), and indeed is substance in the most proper sense of the term
(Amerini 2008; Di Giovanni 2012). Substantial forms can be
distinguished from accidents in that a subject (a dog, a stone)
endures through the gain and loss of its accidents, whereas when the
substantial form of the subject departs, the subject ceases to exist
or exists only homonymously (*ParaAnima* 2.120)--as one
might speak of cremating one's grandfather. Interpreters have
disagreed on whether Ibn Rushd allows a single substance to have
multiple substantial forms. But at least sometimes he seems to suppose
that one substance has just one form, as when he holds that "if
prime matter were to have its own form, it would receive no other
form, while enduring, but would immediately be corrupted as soon as
that other form were generated" (*LongPhys* I.69; see
*SubstOrb* 1.50). If elsewhere he seems to suggest that any
necessary feature of a thing will count as a substantial form of it,
this may mean merely that a substantial form is a composite of
multiple discrete, incomplete constituents (Di Giovanni 2011; Cerami
2015, 521-4). Ibn Rushd is clear, at any rate, that the essence
(*dhat*) or quiddity (*mahiyya*) of a thing is
accounted for entirely by its form, rather than by its form and matter
(*LongMeta* VII.34 {896}). Thus, "form is the primary
substance only because it is the cause of the determinate substance
and the determinate substances come to be substance only by it"
(*LongMeta* VII.5 {761k}).



Accidents, which can come and go from a substance, are inseparable
from that substance, and are caused by it (*EpiMeta* 2.56 {42};
*LongMeta* XII.25 {1532-3}), but are not themselves a
part of the substance (*LongAnima* II.4; *Tahafut*
I.6.216 {359}). They do not have existence in an absolute sense, but
only relationally (*LongMeta* XII.3 {1415}; *EpiMeta*
1.28 {12}), and indeed Ibn Rushd generally does not refer to them as a
form (*sura*), preferring to reserve that term for
the substantial form.



The earthly realm we have been describing is just one small and
relatively insignificant part of what there is. Much more exalted, and
a much worthier subject of intellectual contemplation, is the eternal
heavenly domain. Here Ibn Rushd broadly follows standard premodern
cosmology in describing the eight celestial spheres of the moon, the
sun, the five planets, and the fixed stars. These spheres are solid,
transparent bodies, spinning around the earth, luminous only at those
points where the sphere thickens (*SubstOrb* 2.92). Celestial
bodies are composites of matter and form, but of an utterly different
kind. Their matter is actually existent, incorruptible and
indivisible, with a determinate size and shape (*SubstOrb*
2.82; *LongMeta* XII.10 {1447}). Celestial matter is in
potentiality only with regard to motion, and that motion, although
generally circular, is extremely complex, with as many as 55 distinct
motions identifiable among the eight spheres (*LongMeta* XII.48
{1679}). Each of these distinct motions requires a distinct
actualizing form (*EpiMeta* 4.147 {135}; *LongMeta*
XII.43 {1645}), but these are not material forms, inhering in the
celestial matter (since that matter is already actualized). Instead,
these celestial forms are separate and, like all forms not inhering in
matter, they are therefore intellectual: "if there are these
forms that have existence inasmuch as they are not in matter, then
these are necessarily separate intellects, since there is no third
kind of existence for forms *qua* forms"
(*EpiMeta* 4.150 {139}; *Incoherence* I.6 {338}). In
addition to intellects, these forms have desires, and indeed are aptly
referred to as souls (*LongMeta* XII.36 {1593};
*SubstOrb* 1.71, 2.81). It is this desire, rather than any sort
of physical contact, that moves the spheres, with the beauty of its
celestial intelligence serving as a final cause, and its desire
efficiently moving the sphere. Far from being cold bodies in empty
space, these spheres are "alive, full of pleasure, and delighted
in themselves" (*EpiMeta* 4.162 {152}). Adding to their
delight is their partial understanding of and desire for the first and
unmoved mover, which moves all of the spheres through their desire for
this highest cause (*LongMeta* XII.44 {1649-50};
*EpiMeta* 4.154 {142}). (For this cosmology in its historical
context, see Wolfson 1962 and Endress 1995.)


## 4. Natural Philosophy



The previous section followed the order of discovery, beginning with
what is better known to us. Here we start with what is causally prior,
and so begin with the First Cause. (On Ibn Rushd's method of
inquiry see Cerami 2015 ch. 7.) Although the existence of some kind of
First Cause was undisputed, religious and philosophical authorities
disagreed about the nature of creation. The most common view was that
the world came into existence, from God, after having not existed, but
Ibn Rushd follows Aristotle in supposing that the world has always
existed, eternally. His strategy for explaining how an eternal world
can have a First Cause turns on distinguishing between two kinds of
causal orderings, essential and accidental.



Causes that are essentially ordered are simultaneous, such that the
prior stages are a condition for the effect's ongoing existence,
as when waves move a ship, the wind moves the waves, and the wind is
moved by elemental forces (*QPhys* 7.25 {235};
*Incoherence* I.1 {59}). In such a series there must be a first
cause, because an endless such series would be actually infinite all
at once, which Ibn Rushd regards as impossible (*Incoherence*
I.4 {275}). The series could, moreover, never reach its end, since
causal agency cannot pass through an infinitely long series in a
finite time (*LongPhys* VII.6; *QPhys* 7.25 {235}). This
First Cause cannot itself be something in motion, given the
Aristotelian dictum that everything that is in motion must be moved by
another (*LongPhys* VII.1; *QPhys* 7.30 {236}). In
principle, Ibn Rushd allows that there could be many unmoved movers
(*QPhys* 7.35 {238}), but at a minimum there must be one such
thing that is immovable, and eternally so, because otherwise some
still prior mover would be required to move the supposedly first
mover, and this would lead again to an essentially ordered infinity of
movers (*EpiMeta* 4.139 {126}). (For the intricate details see
Twetten 2007.)



An accidental ordering takes place over time, as when rain comes from
a cloud, the cloud comes from vapor, and vapor comes from a prior rain
(*Incoherence* I.4 {268}). Such an ordering is circular,
inasmuch as the materials from one stage are corrupted and reused in a
later stage, and so there is no threat of an actual infinity. There is
thus nothing incoherent about such a series extending infinitely far
into the past and infinitely far into the future, and indeed Ibn Rushd
argues that such an infinity can be proved in various ways (Davidson
1987). One fundamental proof arises from the nature of the First
Cause. Since it is itself unmoved--that is, wholly
changeless--its causal agency must likewise be eternal. "A
thing lacking the potential for change and alteration cannot be
changed at any time, since if it were then its alteration would be by
cause of itself, and so there would be alteration without the
possibility for it" (*LongCaelo* I.103). It is, for Ibn
Rushd, incoherent to posit an eternally existing, changeless
actuality, which suddenly springs into agency after having not acted
for an eternity. In general, "the effect of a cause cannot be
delayed after the causation" (*Incoherence* I.1 {15}).
Similar considerations show that the world's future existence
must likewise be eternal (*Incoherence* 1.1 {22}).



For the reasons just rehearsed, an eternal and unchanging First Mover
entails an eternal and unchanging first thing moved, and observation
suggests that this must be the outermost sphere of the stars, whose
diurnal rotation in turn moves everything within its ambit:
"there is a moved thing that is first by nature, which moves the
whole, and which terminates every movement whose mover is
external.... The mover of this [first] moved thing is, of itself,
not a body and is absolutely and essentially unmoved"
(*EpiPhys* 8.242 {141}). Past this first ceaseless motion, the
causal story becomes increasingly complex, under the influence of the
celestial intelligences. Ibn Rushd is suspicious of the unrealistic
convolutions of Ptolemaic cosmology, preferring to honor the
principles of Aristotelian physics even where that leaves a gap
between theory and observation (Sabra 1984; Endress 1995). A
strikingly personal remark describes how he had once aspired to close
that gap, but has now, in his old age, abandoned the project
(*LongMeta* XII.45 {1664}). Anticipating the modern rise of
scientific specialization, he yields the field to those who devote
themselves solely to this one science (*LongMeta* XII.48
{1679}).



The spheres move eternally in majestic circles simply because it
befits their lofty existence to do so (*EpiMeta* 4.152 {140},
*LongMeta* XII.36 {1595}, *Incoherence* I.15 {484}), but
these motions have a subordinate effect of signal importance to us:
they sustain the very existence of our sublunary world. Most
basically, the motion of the celestial spheres--although they are
not themselves hot (*SubstOrb* 2.95)--gives rise to heat
in the fiery region immediately beneath the lunar sphere, and from
heat and its contrary, cold, arise the four elements: earth, air,
fire, water. "The existence of the celestial body entails
necessarily the existence of the elements ... as preserving,
efficient, formal, and final cause" (*EpiMeta* 4.171
{161}; *Incoherence* I.3 {261}). The bodies that furnish our
sublunary realm are various elemental mixtures, in which the elements
themselves endure in an attenuated state, as the material strata above
prime matter (*EpiMeta* 1.48 {32}; *LongCaelo* III.67;
*EpiGC* I.121 {22-3}; see Maier 1982 ch. 6). The
qualities of these elements--hot, cold, wet, dry--"are
the causes of all natural things that come into being and pass
away" (*Incoherence* II.1 {525}). The entire system so
depends on the celestial spheres that "if the motion of the
heavens were destroyed, ... the world in its totality would be
destroyed" (*SubstOrb* 4.117; *Kashf* 5.112
{191}).



Matter is, at least potentially, infinitely divisible, but at the
level of elements and mixed bodies we can refer to the smallest body
capable of still being a body of that kind--the minimum
naturale--e.g., "the minimal possible magnitude of
fire" (*EpiPhys* 7.212 {114}, Glasner 2009 ch. 8; Cerami
2015, 429-36). Any sort of mixed body requires a substantial
form to actualize it, but Ibn Rushd's view of how such forms
emerge evolves. His early works hold that, at least at the level of
living things, substantial forms cannot be generated by wholly natural
processes, but require a celestial "giver of forms," the
Agent Intellect (*EpiMeta* 4.171 {162}). His later view is more
thoroughly naturalistic, and argues that prime matter contains the
potentiality for all substantial forms, which need only be actualized
by a natural agent, along with the usual cooperation of the celestial
bodies (*LongMeta* VII.31 {883}, XII.18.109 {1499}; see
Davidson 1992 ch. 6; Freudenthal 2002; Cerami 2015 chs.
8-9).



Ibn Rushd's naturalistic conception of generation and corruption
is of a piece with one of his most famous philosophical stances, his
rejection of al-Ghazali's occasionalism. On this
theological tradition, "when a man moves a stone by leaning
against it and pushing it, he does not push it, but it is the Agent
who creates the motion" (*LongMeta* XII.18.112 {1504}).
Ibn Rushd heaps scorn on this view in the *Incoherence*,
resting his case most fundamentally on the link between a
thing's causal role and its defining nature: "it is
self-evident that things have essences and attributes that determine
the special functions of each thing and through which the essences and
names of things are differentiated. If a thing did not have its
specific nature, it would not have a special name nor a definition,
and all things would be one" (II.1 {520}). (For discussion of
this argument see Kogan 1985 ch. 3.)



For further details see the entry on
 Ibn Rushd's natural philosophy
 and the entry on
 causation in Arabic and Islamic thought.


## 5. Psychology



In the Aristotelian tradition, Ibn Rushd postulates a special sort of
substantial form--a soul--to account for living substances.
Even in the mundane case of plants, the complexities of their
operations require a special principle beyond what would be adequate
for nonliving things: nutrition, for instance, "is ascribed to
the soul because it is impossible for it to be ascribed to the powers
of the elements" (*LongAnima* II.14). His theory of the
soul's operations distinguishes, most basically, between the
nutritive, sensory, and rational levels. Judging from his casually
flexible terminology, he sees no real difference between treating
these as different souls within a single living thing or as parts of a
single soul--parts characterized as a power (*quwwa*) or
principle (*mabda`*). Judging again from his varying
formulations, he thinks there can be no definitive list of how many
such powers of the soul there are. The question he does regard as
meaningful is whether a power is distinguished solely in terms of its
function, or also in terms of its substrate--as he puts it,
whether it "differs from the other powers in subject as well as
in intention (*ma'na*), or only in intention"
(*LongAnima* III.1; *ParaAnima* P276). Each of the
five external senses, for instance, has its own subject, a sensory
organ, whereas some of the higher sensory operations have dedicated
organs, in the brain, whereas other operations, such as recollection
(Black 1996) and choice (Phillipson 2013), are mere functions produced
by multiple powers working in conjunction. This question of
"subject" is particularly vexed, as we will see, for the
powers of intellect.



The "foundation" of cognition at all levels is its
passivity (*LongAnima* II.54). This is particularly clear for
the five external senses, which have as their objects the material
qualities of the external world. Color, for instance, the proper
object of sight, is an elemental mixture on the surface of bodies
(*ParaParv* I.10 {15}), which acts on an illuminated medium and
then the organ of the eye, making its recipient at each stage be like
the color itself. The general (although not perfect) reliability of
the process--that a sense with respect to its proper sense object
"does not err in regard to it for the most part"
(*LongAnima* II.63)--is a product of the natural
world's causal regularity. Indeed, the passivity of the five
senses is such that Ibn Rushd, when speaking most carefully, seems to
treat these organs as themselves simply the corporeal media through
which sensible qualities are conveyed to the one true principle of
sensation, the common sense (*al-hiss al-mushtarak*). He
writes, for instance, that "through the innermost of all the
curtains of the eye, the common sense can perceive the form"
(*ParaParv* I.19 {30}); here is where we pass from a purely
corporeal stage to "the first of the spiritual stages"
(*ParaParv* II.26 {42-3}). The lesson he draws from
Aristotle's notoriously obscure treatment of common sense
(*De anima* 425b12ff) is that the principle of sensation is
"one in number and multiple in extremities and organs,"
like a point at the center of a circle (*ParaAnima* P260).
Only here is perception both self-aware and capable of assimilating
the objects of multiple sensory modalities. All subsequent cognition
is dependent on the information collected at this stage. (See Black
2019 for the theory's strict empiricism.)



To account for the functional role of common sense, Ibn Rushd accepts
its traditional--even antiquated--location at the heart,
with the concession that common sense has its origin there, but
terminates in the brain (*ParaParv* II.36 {59}). This brings
sensible forms to the higher sensory powers, of which he recognizes
three that are distinct within the human brain both in function and in
subject:


* imagination (*al-mutakhayyila, al-khayal*);
* the cogitative power (*al-mufakkira, al-mumayyiza*);
* memory (*al-hafiza,
al-dhakira*).



These faculties, listed in order from the anterior to the posterior of
the brain's supposed three chambers (*ParaParv* II.26
{42}), account for much of human cognition. Most basically (for
details see *LongAnima* II.63, III.6; Blaustein 1984;
Hansberger 2019), imagination allows us to form sensory images taken
from sensation even when we are not presently sensing an object. The
cogitative power refines these images so as to allow a distinct grasp
of the "individual contents" (*al-ma'ani
al-shakhsiya*, known in the Latin tradition as
"intentions") that are confusedly contained within sensory
experience. Memory stores and recalls these images. Ibn Rushd
explicitly argues (*Incoherence* II.2 {546-7}) that the
cogitative power can do all the work that Ibn Sina had split
between a cogitative power and a further estimative power
(*al*-*quwwa* *al-wahmiyya*). The overall process
is compared to the gradual "abstracting and cleansing" of
the rind, eventually leaving just the fruit itself (*ParaParv*
II.26 {43}), these fruits being the "substantial
differences" between individuals (*LongAnima* II.65).
Nonhuman animals, because they lack a cogitative power entirely, are
incapable of moving beyond superficial sensory appearances
(*LongAnima* III.57).



In keeping with his broadly naturalistic orientation, Ibn Rushd allows
the brain a much larger share of the cognitive load than one finds in
most premodern philosophers. But the "fruit" these
corporeal powers yield is always a representation of a particular
individual. To think abstractly--to have universal
concepts--requires the powers of intellect, and here is where his
naturalism notoriously comes to an end. Ibn Rushd, though he deploys a
bewildering variety of terms for different aspects of intellect,
ultimately endorses just two intellectual powers distinct both in
function and subject:


* an agent intellect ('*aql al-fa''al*),
which illuminates imagined intentions, making them universal;
* a material intellect ('*aql al-hayulani*),
which receives those abstracted forms and thereby
thinks--fittingly described as "material" not because
it is corporeal but because it is a matter-like potentiality for
receiving forms in the intelligible domain.



Following what was then the dominant Aristotelian view, he treats the
agent intellect as a single, separate, eternal substance, and spends
little time arguing for this doctrine, or even explaining how it
"illuminates" imagined intentions (*LongAnima*
III.17-18; Davidson 1992, pp. 315-18). In contrast, he
discusses the material intellect at length in various treatises, with
his views evolving dramatically over time (see Taylor 2009). Here we
focus only on his final considered view of the subject, as set out in
the *Long Commentary*, according to which the material
intellect, like the agent intellect, is a single, separate, eternal
substance (*LongAnima* III.5).



Ibn Rushd recognized the audacity of supposing that human beings share
in a single intellect, writing that "this claim came to me after
long reflection and intense care, and I have not seen it in anyone
else before me" (*CommAlex*, p. 30). Indeed, he himself
had once called such a view "repulsive"
(*ParaAnima* P282). Still, we can understand why he was
eventually drawn to it in light of his commitment to three
propositions:


1. Human beings think abstractly;
2. Abstract thought is impossible for corporeal beings;
3. Human beings are corporeal.



Although the trio is jointly contradictory, each claim is individually
plausible: (A) seems obvious; (B) follows from the familiar
Aristotelian argument that a power capable of understanding all bodies
must itself contain the nature of no body (*LongAnima* III.4);
(C) is a consequence of Ibn Rushd's eventual conclusion that the
various strategies for situating an immaterial power within a human
being--his own and that of earlier commentators--were all
failures. The genius of his ultimate position was to find a way for
all three claims to be embraced. In one sense, human beings are
individual composites of matter and substantial form, and so wholly
corporeal. Although he consistently describes both the material and
the agent intellect as parts of the human soul (e.g.,
*LongAnima* III.5 {406}), they are souls and actualities only
equivocally: they are not the actuality of a body (*LongAnima*
II.7, II.21, III.5 {396-7}). When human beings are conceived in
this narrow way, (C) is true and (A) is false.



But of course there must be some sense in which (A) is true. Ibn Rushd
insists that, even though we all share the material intellect, its
thinking can count as *my* thinking. To explain this, he
appeals to Aristotle's doctrine that "the soul never
thinks without an image" (*De anima* III.7, 431a17;
Wirmer 2008, 367-75). The material intellect, although separate,
is dependent both for its function and for its very existence on
receiving imagined intentions from individual human beings
(*CommAlex* p. 29); it is eternal only because the human
species is eternal (*LongAnima* III.5 {407}). Each of us,
therefore, partially controls the operation of this separate material
intellect. *Its* operation is to think, but inasmuch as we each
control our imagination, and the imagination is what triggers thought,
it is appropriate to think of the thoughts we trigger as *our*
thoughts, and to think of the two shared intellects, agent and
material, as each a part of our soul (*LongAnima* II.60,
III.18, III.36 {500}). With this, Ibn Rushd offers the first developed
statement of the
 extended-mind
 thesis: that a being's cognitive system extends beyond the
individual organism. When human beings are conceived in this extended
way, (A) is true and (C) is false.



Even if this extended conception of a human being is allowed, that
still leaves a question about why these two separated intellects must
each be singular, and so shared by all human beings. Ibn Rushd's
answer depends in part on an argument against private concepts: that
without concepts that are literally shared, teachers could not convey
knowledge to students (*LongAnima* III.5 {411-12}; Ogden
forthcoming). He also argues that an intellect individuated by a
corporeal subject would receive individualized forms
(*LongAnima* III.5 {402}; Ogden 2016). Accordingly, he thinks
the domain of actually intelligible concepts, and of the intellects in
which those objects exist, must be entirely separate from the material
realm, and cannot be individuated by matter. And, as we have seen in
the previous two sections, he is for independent reasons committed to
the existence of such a realm, among the celestial spheres.
Accordingly, the human intellectual powers can be identified as the
lowest members of this hierarchy (*LongAnima* III.19; Davidson
1992, 223-31; Taylor 1998).



For further information see the entry on
 Arabic and Islamic psychology and philosophy of mind.


## 6. Religion


### 6.1 God



Ibn Rushd believes that God's existence can be demonstrated
through a complex argument from Aristotelian physics, establishing the
existence of a first cause (see SS5). As with physical arguments
in general, the argument is a mere sign (*dalil*),
starting from empirical features of the world that are better known to
us even if causally posterior (*LongMeta* 12.5 {1423}; see
SS2) He rejects the *a priori* metaphysical arguments of
Ibn Sina (Davidson 1987 ch. 10; Bertolacci 2007) and of the
Ash'arite theologians (*Kashf* 1), all of which he thinks
not only fall short of being demonstrative but also fail to be
persuasive to ordinary people. For them, one should follow the example
of the Qur`an and deploy arguments from design
(*Kashf* 1.33-38 {118-22}).



In keeping with Aristotle's remarks in *Metaphysics*
XII.7, Ibn Rushd suggests that God serves not as an efficient cause,
but only as a final and formal cause. Efficient causality prevails
among natural bodies, when one actually moving body brings another
body from potential to actual motion. The heavenly bodies, however,
are already actual, and eternally so, and so in this domain efficient
causation has no place (*PossibConj* 14.86). The relationship
of First Cause to the celestial spheres, then, is that of intelligible
to intellect--that is, the eternal thoughts of the First Cause
are the forms that serve as final causes inspiring the celestial
intelligences (*LongMeta* XII.36 {1592}; XII.44 {1652};
*LongCaelo* IV.1.654; *Incoherence* I.14 {481};
*Conjunction* Epistle 1, par. 3-4). God, being wholly
immaterial, cannot directly act on the sublunary material realm at
all, but plays a causal role only through the mediation of the
celestial spheres: "the temporal cannot proceed from an
absolutely eternal being, but only from an eternal being which is
eternal in its substance but temporal in its movements, namely, the
celestial body" (*Incoherence* I.13 {467}).
(Interpretation here is more contentious than this brief summary
suggests. For various approaches see Kogan 1985 ch. 5; Davidson 1992,
227-30; Adamson 2019; Twetten forthcoming.)



God alone, among intellectual beings, has no further object of
intellectual contemplation that might serve as his final cause. On the
contrary, "the First Form thinks of nothing outside
itself" (*LongAnima* III.5 {410}; *EpiAnima* 219
{93}; *EpiMeta* 4.158 {147}; *LongMeta* XII.51 {1700}).
This helps account for God's unique simplicity as a pure mind,
always fully actualized by nothing other than God. It leads to
questions, however, about the sense in which God can be said to have
knowledge of the created world. This is "the most powerful
doubt" regarding this conception of God (*EpiMeta* 4.159
{148}), and it threatens to lead to the view al-Ghazali had
branded as heretical: that God does not know particulars
(*Incoherence* II.4 {587}). Ibn Rushd denies that he is
committed to this consequence. God has knowledge of the created world
in his own manner, neither in universal nor particular, not as if his
thoughts are caused by the world, but rather as the cause of the world
(*Incoherence* I.3 {226-7}, I.13 {462};
*Damima* 7; *LongMeta* XII.51
{1707-8}). The divine mind's "thinking its own self
is identical with its thinking all existence"
(*Incoherence* I.11 {435}).



For terms to apply to God and creatures in a non-univocal way
(*bi-ishtirak*) is a common state of affairs for Ibn Rushd
(*LongMeta* XII.39 {1620-4}). It arises, for instance,
not just in the case of knowledge but also in the case of will. For,
since God "is exempt from passivity and change," He does
not exercise will in the usual sense of the term (*Incoherence*
I.3 {148}). Still, in another sense God is "an intending and
willing agent" (*Kashf* 5.80 {163}) in virtue of the
special causal relationship that God has to the world. Similarly, Ibn
Rushd affirms, in a special sense, that God is the creator of the
world (*QPhys* 3; *Kashf* 5.78-91
{161-173}), and that God exercises providence
(*'inaya*) over all existent beings, though he denies
that any individual enjoys a special divine providence
(*LongMeta* XII.37 {1607}, XII.52; *EpiMeta*
4.176-81 {166-71}). It is difficult to assess the degree
to which, on this account, either God's will or the world is
necessitated (Belo 2007; Hourani 1962; Taylor 2014).



The various strands of Ibn Rushd's conception of God are set out
on one hand against Ibn Sina's insufficiently
Aristotelian philosophy, and on the other hand against Ash'arite
theology (*kalam*). His systematic examination of the
Ash'arites in al-Kashf establishes at length that their methods
are sophistical and delusional, drawing on two basic resources: the
intention of Islamic law and Aristotle's philosophy (Arfa Mensia
2019). But even where Ibn Rushd is examining the
*mutakallimun* and offering rival interpretations of
religious texts, it is not his intention to set philosophy at the
service of any kind of theology. Instead these writings are more
appropriately classified as philosophical considerations on religious
texts and theological issues.



Prophecy is a good example of how Ibn Rushd distinguishes himself both
from the theologians and from previous philosophical approaches
(Taylor 2018). The trustworthiness of prophecy is foundational to
Islam: "the sending forth of prophets is based on the fact that
revelation comes down to them from heaven, and on this our religion is
based" (*Kashf* 4.58 {142}). The Ash'arites had
relied primarily on miracles to establish the veracity of the Prophet
Muhammed. Ibn Rushd evaluates this approach from his Aristotelian
background. His first step is to situate the miraculous
(*mu'jiz)* as a tool of persuasion belonging to the art of
rhetoric, standing to the prophetic claim as an extrinsic argument
(Ben Ahmed 2012). Analogously, when I swear that something is true,
the oath I advance has no intrinsic connection to what is claimed as
being true. The Ash'arites conceive of the relation between being
prophetic and a miracle as that of a quality to its act. The miracle
must be, in principle, an act that is generated from that quality,
just as the act of healing the sick emanates from the quality of being
a physician (*Kashf* 5.95-6 {177}). Accordingly, the
proof that I am a prophet is that I can produce an extra-ordinary act,
such as walking on water, turning a stick into a snake, or splitting
the moon. Ibn Rushd responds by identifying a miracle as merely
"an external sign" of prophecy. The act that more closely
demonstrates prophecy is to establish a law that is useful for people.
Thus it is the Qur`an that proves Muhammad's veracity:
"Because of the universality of the teaching of the Precious
Book and the universality of the laws contained in it--by which I
mean their liability to promote the happiness of all
mankind--this religion is common to all mankind"
(*Kashf* 5.103 {184}). A miracle alone, in contrast, is at best
complementary, and an argument from miracles is merely persuasive or
rhetorical. (See further Arfa Mensia 1999, Ben Ahmed 2012).


### 6.2 Law



*The Decisive Treatise* argues forcefully that philosophy
should have a prominent place in religious reflection, and
specifically in Islamic law (*shari'a*). This stance,
alongside his devotion to Aristotelian demonstration (see SS2),
might raise the question of Ibn Rushd's
"rationalism": Does he regard philosophy as having some
kind of priority in religious contexts? But this question is not Ibn
Rushd's, inasmuch as he establishes no hierarchy between
philosophy and true religion. The law can serve as a kind of preamble
to philosophy, addressed to a much wider audience and containing clues
to guide the philosopher in theoretical matters. But there is no
question of priority. As he famously writes, in a passage that
(perhaps tellingly) echoes Aristotle's *Prior Analytics*
I.32, "Since the law is true, ... we, the Muslim community,
know firmly that demonstrative reasoning does not lead to disagreement
with what the law sets down. For truth does not oppose truth, but
rather agrees with and bears witness to it" (*Decisive
Treatise* 12; see Taylor 2000).



The implicit target of the *Decisive Treatise* is
al-Ghazali's notorious fatwa against metaphysics. By
characterizing philosophy in narrowly metaphysical terms, as a science
that leads from artifacts back to the Artisan through demonstrative
methods, Ibn Rushd means to show that God cannot be demonstrably known
without these methods. To prohibit this path to knowledge from those
who are capable of it is an injustice both to God and to these
scholars. In his *Long Commentary on the Metaphysics* (I.2
{10}), he goes so far as to distinguish between two types of
*shari'a*, one general for everyone or most people,
and the other "specific" to the philosophers. This might
suggest that philosophy, for those capable of it, transcends the
teachings of Islamic law (Taylor 2012), but it is not at all clear
that Ibn Rushd ever commits himself to such a claim. Here in
*LongMeta*, he may be speaking of *shari'a*
only loosely, as a "way" or "method." And even
if he does mean that philosophy is literally a
*shari'a*, it does not follow that it is a law that
competes against religion. After all, the specific stands to the
general as something that is complementary, not conflicting.



To be sure, the general *shari'a* of Islam is
partially subject to the interpretation of philosophers, since they
are the only ones who have the arsenal, namely demonstration, to bring
out its hidden meanings, allegories, signs, and symbols. In the end,
however, this serves shari'a itself, and cannot do otherwise
since, as Ibn Rushd never tires of declaring, Islamic Law is true and
it calls on everyone, including philosophers, to follow its
prescriptions (e.g., *Incoherence* II.4; *Decisive
Treatise* 11). Philosophers pursue one path to this
truth--the most exalted path available to human beings--but
there are other paths, such as the rhetorical and dialectical, that
also arrive at this truth.



For all of Ibn Rushd's involvement in esoteric questions of
Aristotelianism, he was, at the same time, a practicing judge, deeply
concerned with jurisprudential theory. Ibn Rushd's principal
work in this domain is the *Distinguished Jurist's
Primer*, a lengthy handbook on the causes of the jurists'
disputes and a comparison between the rationales for decision-making
by different Sunni schools of jurisprudence. Its originality lies in
the rational mechanisms that Ibn Rushd employs to establish general
rules for understanding agreements and disagreements among jurists. He
writes that "our intention in these matters is only the rules
governing the law, not an enumeration of the branches, which would
have no end" (*Jurist's Primer* 26.241 {ii.202}).
So rather than focus on counting the differences that exist between
jurists and schools of jurisprudence, Ibn Rushd attempts to explain
these differences by referring them to their principles, rules, and
the causes that regulate them. By following the points of disagreement
between the jurists and deducing the causes of this disagreement, and
then bringing them back to the general principles and rules equivalent
to a general maxim rooted in his soul (*Jurist's Primer*
24.179, 220-1 {ii.148, 184-5}), the assiduous jurist
(*al-mujtahid*) becomes capable of deciding about the unknown
situations he will face.



What makes these general rules so important is the imitative and
repetitive style of jurisprudence in Ibn Rushd's day, which had
been overwhelmed by a focus on individual cases and the endless
branching of views. Thus, either the jurist works according to a rule
that distinguishes similar cases from others, or he works according to
ordinary common sense to produce controversial answers. This is what
the writings of the Malikites suffered from in his time. Ibn Rushd
insists on establishing jurisprudential maxims that make
understandable the disagreement among schools of jurisprudence and
jurists and provide the diligent jurist with basic mechanism for
making decisions regarding emerging problems and cases.


## 7. Medicine



Writings in medicine occupy an important place in Ibn Rushd's
career. The practice of medicine was not his profession: "it is
this part of medicine that I believe restrains me from being perfect
in this art. And that I haven't had much practice"
(*Kulliyyat* VII.517). Even so, he left many interesting
texts: a *Commentary on Ibn Sina's Medical
Poem*, his *al-Kulliyyat* (*General Principles of
Medicine*), and various writings and commentaries on Galen.
Indeed, it has been suggested that, near the end of Ibn Rushd's
career, he was forced to set aside his philosophical project of
writing the long commentaries on Aristotle's texts, and turn
instead to Galen's text on medicine (Al-'Alawi
1986a).



The commentary on Ibn Sina challenges the usual conception
of a rivalry between the two great Islamic philosophers. He says that
he chose to comment on Ibn Sina's *Poem*
because it is "better than many of the introductions written in
medicine" (*CommIbnSina* 40). Even so, during
the last decade of Ibn Rushd's life, it is Galen who becomes one
of his principal authorities. Still, Galen is often a target of
criticism. In *al-Kulliyyat,* for example, a work that he
repeatedly revised (Gatje 1986), the revisions often move in a
direction that is increasingly critical of Galen
(*Kulliyyat* II.162, II.184, etc.).



Medicine, for Ibn Rushd, is an art rather than a science, concerned
with practice rather than theory (Chandelier 2019). According to the
prologue of *al*-*Kulliyyat,*



> 
> The art of medicine is an art that acts (*sina'a
> fa'ila*) based on true principles; we seek through it to
> preserve the health of the human body and to eliminate disease as much
> as possible in each body. So the goal of this art is not to heal
> without fail (*la budda*), but rather to act
> appropriately, to the appropriate extent and time, while waiting to
> achieve its goal, as with the art of navigation and the command of an
> army. (prol. 127)
> 



This definition is based on the famous division of the arts into what
belongs to the sphere of necessity and what belongs to the sphere of
possibility. The art of medicine does not belong to the sphere where
consequences follow actions necessarily, as with arts like carpentry.
In medicine, even if the physician acts based on scientific
principles, the intended end does not necessarily follow. As he puts
it, "Apparently, we do not have any of the premises that bring
us certainty in many of these pursuits. But even so we must try,
insofar as we are able" (*Kulliyyat* II.208). The
practical dimension of medicine is similarly central to his commentary
on Ibn Sina, which begins with Ibn Sina's
statement that "Medicine is preserving health and curing
disease," and comments: "This is the definition of
medicine, and its completion would be to say that medicine is an art
whose action is preserving health and curing disease, based on science
and experience" (*CommIbnSina* 46; see also
*Kulliyyat* prol.131). As one may notice, Ibn Rushd
insists on acting in both texts.



The purpose of *al-Kulliyyat,* according to its prologue,
is to draw from the art of medicine



> 
> a summary (*jumla*), sufficiently concise and brief to serve as
> an introduction for those who would like to explore the parts of the
> art, and also as a memorandum (*tadhkira*) for those who would
> like to reflect on the art. We seek those statements that correspond
> to the truth, even if they contradict the opinions of people who
> belong to the art. (prol. 127)
> 



However, *al*-*Kulliyyat* is not a book of medical
generalities, as some translations tend to suggest. It is rather a
book on the universals of medicine *(kulliyyat fi
al-tibb),* as its title suggests--that is, on the
foundations, principles, and basic rules that regulate medical theory
and practice. It thus provides the foundations
(*ustuqsat*) of the medical art
(*Kulliyyat* III.282).



In the same vein, *al-Kulliyyat* is far from being a
textbook (*kunnash*); it is rather written against the
tradition of textbooks that prevailed in the art of medicine. It is a
defense of the art of "syllogistic" medicine against
experiential medicine. He says: "As for those who limit
themselves to the method of the textbooks without knowing the
universal method, they will certainly make mistakes, as do the doctors
of our time. As for limiting oneself to universal matters, this may be
possible if the doctor is very skilled. Therefore, one of the
considered conditions of perfection in the arts is that the craftsman
have the power to deduce what he needs to deduce"
(*Kulliyyat* VII.552). The status of experience in
medicine is limited but not entirely excluded: "Once the
universals of the art of medicine are acquired, one needs the
experience from which particular premises are acquired in order to be
used in each particular case. These premises cannot be written in a
book, because they are unlimited" (*Kulliyyat*
VII.517). Ibn Rushd makes an exception, however, in criticizing the
manuals and textbooks on medical particulars, for Abu Marwan
Ibn Zuhr, whose *al-Taysir* can be trusted because the
particulars it contains conform to the universal teachings of
theoretical medicine (*Kulliyyat* VII.583).



In sum, *al-Kulliyyat* is an attempt to advance medical
practice from the level of the infinite particulars, which cannot be
assembled in a book, to the level of the rules
(*qanun*) and established principles
(*dustur*) that govern them (*Kulliyyat*
III.282). It is an attempt to upgrade medical discourse to the level
of a science, linking its premises and principles to the Aristotelian
natural sciences (Al-'Alawi 1986a, 180). This holistic
methodology is characteristic of how Ibn Rushd approached the arts and
sciences of his time. It shows his inclination to organize them in a
way that protects them from chaos and elevates them to the level of
scientific practice, established on the basis of universal principles
and foundations. Particular cases, since they are unlimited, cannot be
dealt with unless there are general laws that help us to deduce
decisions about particulars on the basis of principles and
foundations.


## 8. Ethics and Politics



The sciences, for Ibn Rushd, fundamentally divide into the theoretical
(*nazariya*), which is aimed at knowledge
(*'ilm*), and the practical (*'amaliya*),
which is concerned with voluntary action (*Republic* I.21;
*LongPhys* proem). The chief practical science is politics,
which Ibn Rushd sees as dividing, much like medicine, into a more
theoretical and a more practical part. The first and more theoretical
part examines voluntary actions in general, their associated
dispositions (the virtues and vices), and the relationships between
these elements. The second, more practical part examines how these
dispositions become established within souls and how they are
perfected and impeded (*Republic* I.21). The first part is
found in Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics*, and the second
part in his *Politics.* Although Ibn Rushd composed a
commentary on the first of these, and although he knew the second was
available in Arabic elsewhere, he complains that it "has not yet
reached us on this peninsula" (*ParaEthics* X.160G).
Accordingly, he chose to comment on Plato's *Republic* as
an alternative source for the second part of political science.



Following the *Nicomachean Ethics*, Ibn Rushd takes the goal of
human life to be happiness (Hourani 1962). For ordinary people, the
ultimate guide to happiness is the Qur`an, which exhibits
miraculous wisdom in the rules it sets out to promote human
flourishing (see SS6.1). But the ultimate human happiness, for
those who are capable of it, is to become perfect in the theoretical
sciences (*LongPhys* proem). Such perfection arrives when human
beings conjoin themselves to the separate Agent Intellect, which is to
say that they pass from a partial conception of intelligible objects
to a conception of the Agent Intellect itself. At this point a human
being in some sense takes on an "eternal existence"
(*PossibConj* 5.41; *LongPhys* proem), and is
"made like unto God" (*LongAnima* III.36 {501}),
and even "becomes one of the eternal, incorporeal beings"
(*PossibConj* 5.40). This notion of conjunction
(*ittisal*) had a complex history among earlier
Aristotelians, and Ibn Rushd's views about what it involves, and
whether it is possible, developed over time (Davidson 1992,
321-56; Black 1999). The texts here are complicated, but suggest
that he rejected al-Farabi's complaint that
conjunction is nothing other than "an old woman's
tale" (*PossibConj* 14.85; *Epistle 1* par. 40),
and that he accepted it as, in some sense, the goal of human life, one
that would be achieved through contemplation, with the assistance of
prayer and the Qur`an (*PossibConj*
15.103-4).



A perfect, conjoined grasp of the theoretical sciences carries with
it, necessarily, the complete possession of the moral virtues. One so
possessed will be perfect both in intellectual understanding and in
"the activity proper to him" (*LongAnima* III.36
{500, 501}). If this sort of moral excellence is not much on display
in those we see make the greatest claims to the possession of science,
this only testifies to the poverty of their achievements
(*LongPhys* proem). The perfection Ibn Rushd describes,
however, through conjunction with the Agent Intellect, seems to entail
something other than personal immortality. For he expressly refuses,
against al-Ghazali, to endorse bodily resurrection
(*Incoherence* II.4 {580-6}), and yet he also insists
that the human soul is individuated in virtue of its body. So, as he
explicitly concludes, "if the soul does not die when the body
dies, or if there is anything of this kind within the soul, then it
must, once it has left the bodies, be one in number"
(*Incoherence* I.1 {29}). So--although scholarship is not
unanimous on this point--it seems that Ibn Rushd, whatever he
might have thought about conjunction, did not mean for the promise of
the *soul's* immortality to extend to each of us as
individuals (Taylor 1998).



Just as the theoretical part of medicine has as its aim the more
practical business of preserving health and curing disease, so too, in
the political sphere, the first part has as its end the perfection of
the second part. This is to say that the goal of ethical inquiry is
ultimately "the governance of cities" (*ParaEthics*
I.3, 3F). This instrumental conception of ethics looks strange from
the perspective of later European philosophy, but it is what Aristotle
himself expressly affirms at *Nicomachean Ethics* I.2, and it
comports well with Ibn Rushd's orientation away from individual
human beings as the ultimate locus of value in the universe.



From the start, Ibn Rushd announces that the goal of his commentary on
the *Republic* will be to strip away the parts that are merely
dialectical, so as to identify the claims that achieve the level of
demonstrative science (*Republic* I.21). Accordingly, he
attends very selectively to the ten books that comprise Plato's
*Republic*, dispensing entirely with the first and tenth books
and the first half of the second book, and merging the rest into three
books. The first presents political science and reflects on the
components of the virtuous city, especially the guards. The second
considers virtuous governments and the qualities of the ruler of the
virtuous city and the philosopher. The third is devoted to
non-virtuous governments, comparisons between them, and the transition
from one to another.



The Platonic text is subjected to two parallel frameworks. The first
is Aristotelian, both in its overarching theoretical
framework--replacing the dialectical and dialogical character of
the Platonic text with Aristotle's ethical and logical framework
(Butterworth 1986)--and in its particular details, as when Ibn
Rushd emphasizes the role of logic rather than mathematics in the
training of the guards and the ruler of the virtuous city
(*Republic* II.76-7). The second is the contextualization
of this text in the Islamic and Andalusian environment. Ibn Rushd
takes the Umayyad, Almoravid, and Almohad dynasties as examples of
many of the issues he deals with in the text, and harshly criticizes
the current Almohad reign (e.g., *Republic* III.103) as well as
the position of the philosopher at the time, which he compares to
being surrounded by ferocious monsters (*Republic* II.64). This
critical attitude is particularly notable when he discusses how women,
sharing the same natures as men, are suited to the same activities,
fit to serve as guardians, philosophers, and rulers. Yet, as things
are, these capacities are not fostered: "since women in these
cities are not prepared with respect to any of the human virtues, they
frequently resemble plants. Their being a burden upon the men in these
cities is one of the causes of poverty" (*Republic*
I.54).



It is clear that Ibn Rushd comments on the *Republic* only for
lack of Aristotle's superior work. At the end of his paraphrase
on the *Nicomachean Ethics,* he describes the shortcomings in
Plato's treatise, and criticizes Ibn Bajja for having
judged the *Republic* as the perfect treatise on the virtuous
city. What is less clear is exactly what Ibn Rushd's own textual
sources were. Did he deal directly with Plato's text, with the
assistance of Galen, al-Farabi, and Aristotle's
*Rhetoric*? Or was the Platonic text not in his hands, which
means that he was commenting on Galen's *Compendium on
Plato's Politics*, with the help of al-Farabi
and Aristotle? While the use of Aristotle's and
al-Farabi's texts is clear, the question of his
access to Plato remains obscure (Mahdi 2016).


## 9. Reception



Our focus has been Ibn Rushd. But in studying this subject one cannot
help but notice the strange way in which modern scholarship has
concerned itself more with the later reception of his ideas than
around Ibn Rushd himself. Here we briefly consider the reception of
his thought in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian contexts.


### 9.1 Arabic



Ibn Rushd is often described as a philosopher who failed to attract
the attention of his first audience, resulting in the death of his
philosophy at the hands of its intended Islamic readers, a state of
affairs that is said to have continued until its revival in the
ideological debates of the Arab Renaissance (*nahda*)
(Kugelgen 1994, al-Jabiri 1998). To be sure, Ibn
Rushd's influence in Muslim contexts cannot compare to the
overwhelming influence of Ibn Sina, nor even to Ibn
Rushd's own influence in Europe. Still, the commonly heard claim
that he had no influence on Islamic thought is false.



First, recent scholarship has shown that Ibn Rushd had successors. Ben
Sharifa (1999) identifies 39 direct disciples of Ibn Rushd, most
of whom were faithful, and some of whom continued his work in
philosophy and related sciences.



Second, after Ibn Rushd's death, his works were hardly ignored
by the leading scholars in Andalusia and Morocco. Theologians,
mathematicians, sufis, historians, physicians, philosophers and
literary figures used Ibn Rushd's works extensively. In medicine
and logic, his influence on Ibn Tumlus has recently become
apparent (Ibn Tumlus 2020; Ben Ahmed 2016, 2017, 2019c,
2020a). His influence also extended to Ash'arite theology, as
when Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf al-Miklati
quoted Ibn Rushd's epitome on the *Metaphysics* and the
*Incoherence of the Incoherence* to refute the philosophers
(Hamdan 2005). The same can be said of certain Maghrebi
mathematicians who benefited from the conceptual arsenal provided by
Ibn Rushd's philosophical writings. In this context, one can
cite the example of Ibn Haydur al-Tadili, who put
forward the concept of "the one" (*al-wahid*)
as crystallized by Ibn Rushd (Ibn Haydur 2018). Ibn
Tumlus, al-Miklati, Ibn 'Amira
al-Makhzumi, and Ibn Haydur, among others, appropriate
Ibn Rushd's philosophical analysis without naming him, whereas
Ibn Sab'in on occasion uses Ibn Rushd's writings
without name even while in other places he criticizes him by
name--thus complicating the task of identifying the texts used.
Some of these texts, in particular in jurisprudence and religion, were
part of the curriculum in Andalusia until its fall (Ben Sharifa
1999; Akasoy 2008; Ben Ahmed 2019b). Indeed, in Muslim contexts, some
of Ibn Rushd's works have been in constant use from the
latter's lifetime until today. They formed part of the training
of scholars such as Ibn al-Tilimsani and Ibn Khaldun,
as well as part of the curriculum of important teachers such as
Abu 'Abd al-Lah al-Abili (Ibn
al-Khatib 1975, iii: 507; Ibn Khaldun 2004).



Third, evidence has emerged that some of Ibn Rushd's books were
transmitted east, to Egypt and the Levant, and used by philosophers
and scholars there. In addition to copies of the *Kashf* and
the *Incoherence* found in Turkey, Egypt, and India, and the
testimony of
 Maimonides,
 who from Egypt was able to acquire most of Ibn Rushd's
commentaries (Davidson 2005, 108-10), we can identify the spread
of Ibn Rushd's ideas among some philosophers, as is the case
with the theory of the unity of truth adopted by
 Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi
 (Ben Ahmed 2019a). Moreover, some of Ibn Rushd's philosophical
and metaphysical positions concerning causality and location were
adopted by thinkers who were generally regarded as enemies of
philosophical and rational thought, as is the case with Ibn Taymiyya,
who made extensive and explicit use of Ibn Rushd's texts and
adopted some of his positions in his crystallization of his conception
of the history of philosophy and *kalam* (Ben Ahmed 2019b,
2020b, 2020d; Hoover 2018).



Fourth, we now also have evidence that Ibn Rushd's texts reached
Iran in the sixteenth century and became widely known to scholars in
the seventeenth century. The catalogues indicate that dozens of them
were transcribed during this time. The large number of copies reflects
another phenomenon that we should not continue to ignore: the demand
for the teaching of these books and their use by students and teachers
in madrasas in Safavid Iran. Some thinkers and philosophers used them
in their debates and teaching. Suffice it to mention here Abd
al-Razzaq al-Lahiji, Mullah Rajab 'Ali
Tabrizi, and Muhammad Tahir
Wahid al-Zaman Qazwini (Endress 1999, 2001,
2006; Pourjavady and Schmidtke, 2015; Ben Ahmed forthcoming).


### 9.2 Hebrew



Ibn Rushd's philosophy quickly found a second home in Judaism,
where it became so prominent as even to supplant Aristotle as the
paramount authority in philosophy and science (Harvey 2000). The first
and critical event was Maimonides' acquisition of Ibn
Rushd's commentaries, perhaps around 1190. His subsequent praise
of this work precipitated a four-century fascination with Ibn Rushd
among Jewish philosophers (Harvey 1992), especially focusing on his
commentaries but even extending to some of his religious
treatises.



As Jewish authors began to write increasingly in Hebrew, Ibn
Rushd's texts followed, thanks to a series of Arabic-to-Hebrew
translations from 1230 onward (see Zonta 2010 and, in more detail,
Tamani and Zonta 1997, 31-49). By 1340, virtually all of the
commentaries were available in Hebrew, even while very little of
Aristotle himself was translated. In parallel with this process,
Jewish authors began to write commentaries on Ibn Rushd, giving rise
to a extensive series of "supercommentaries" (Glasner
2011). The leading example of this phenomenon is
 Gersonides'
 series of supercommentaries on Ibn Rushd in the 1320s (Glasner
1995).



The extent to which Ibn Rushd took precedence over other sources of
Aristotelianism is quite startling. A typical example is Shem Tov Ibn
Falaquera, whose introduction to his thirteenth-century encyclopedia
clarifies that "all that I write are the words of Aristotle as
explained in the commentaries of the scholar Averroes, for he was the
last of the commentators and he incorporated what was best from the
[earlier] commentaries" (in
 Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera SS4).
 Each of the various types of Rushdian commentary had their champions
at different times. Here is the advice of Moses Almosnino from the
sixteenth-century: "do not squander your time with the epitomes
and middle commentaries of Averroes, but read only the long
commentaries, for if you read the long commentaries carefully you will
have no need to read any other book in order to understand anything of
natural science" (in Harvey 1985, 61).



Other important figures from the thirteenth century are
 Isaac Albalag
 and
 Isaac Polqar.
 Prominent fourteenth-century figures are Gersonides and Moses Narboni
(see Hayoun 2005), whose commentary on Ibn Rushd's theory of
conjunction has been translated into English along with Ibn
Rushd's epistle. Prominent names from the fifteenth century
include Abraham Bibago and
 Elijah Del Medigo
 (see Hayoun 2005). Sixteenth-century figures such Abraham de Balmes
attempt more accurate Latin translations of Ibn Rushd, drawing on
earlier Arabic-to-Hebrew translations (Ivry 1983, Hasse 2016).



See also the entries on the
 influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on Judaic thought
 and the
 influence of Islamic thought on Maimonides.


### 9.3 Latin



Ibn Rushd's influence on Christian Europe, from the early
thirteenth-century through the Renaissance, was massive, and has been
extensively studied. Translations from Arabic into Latin began with
Michael Scott, around 1220, and by the middle of the century most of
the Aristotelian commentaries had been translated (Burnett 2010,
820-21; Hasse 2016, 341-57). Almost immediately after the
work of translation began his ideas grew in influence (Gauthier 1982),
and already by the 1230s he is known as "the Commentator."
Concerns quickly arose, however, over certain contentious claims, and
by the 1260s the term 'Averroist' was used in a pejorative
sense, particularly with regard to the unicity of the intellect
(Kuksewicz 1968; see SS5 above), the eternity of the world (Dales
1990; see SS4), and the threat of determinism (Martin 2015, see
SS6.1). Even usually temperate authors such as Thomas Aquinas
roused themselves to heated invective in considering these doctrines,
and in 1270, and again in
 1277,
 lists of condemned propositions were directed at the arts faculty at
the University of Paris, many concerning views associated with Ibn
Rushd (Brenet 2015; Wippel 1995).



The situation was, however, more complex than a simple opposition
between the "Averroists" and their opponents. At a
minimum, the field divides into three groups. First are those whose
enthusiasm for a Rushdian reading of Aristotle leads them take boldly
heterodox views in tension with Christianity. Leading figures here are
Siger of Brabant,
 Boethius of Dacia,
 and John of Jandun (Brenet 2003). Even in this case there are doubts,
however, regarding whether Ibn Rushd is the prime impetus behind their
views; Van Steenberghen (1980) prefers the label "radical
Aristotelianism." Second are those at the opposite extreme,
opposing not only Ibn Rushd's most radical ideas but even
Aristotelianism itself, as when Peter John Olivi complains of
Aristotle that "without reason he is believed, as the god of
this age"
 (Peter John Olivi SS3).
 Bonaventure becomes a leading figure in this movement (Mahoney 1988).
Third are the great majority of philosophers in between, including
Thomas Aquinas and other leading figures of the age, who reject Ibn
Rushd's readings of Aristotle when they conflict with Church
authority, even while in most matters they continue to rely on
"the Commentator." Thus a papal decree from 1341 calls on
the arts faculty at Paris to follow "the science of Aristotle
and his commentator Averroes, and other ancient commentators and
interpreters of Aristotle, except in cases that run counter to the
faith" (in Putallaz 2010, 111).



Where that third group agrees most fundamentally with Ibn Rushd is in
the conviction that the way forward in philosophy, at least in
general, is to adhere faithfully to the mind of Aristotle (SS1.2
above). Here Ibn Rushd looms particularly large over the history of
European philosophy, all the way through the Renaissance (Akasoy and
Giglioni 2010, Hasse 2016). During these later years his name
continues to be divisive: large numbers of theologians make common
cause with the new breed of humanists against a persistent line of
"Averroists" who continue to defend even Ibn Rushd's
most notorious doctrines. The most controversial figures are now
Italian, and often associated with the University of Padua, such as
 Paul of Venice,
 Pietro Pomponazzi, Agostino Nifo, and
 Giacomo Zabarella.
 Yet even while fierce debate endures over the unity of the intellect
and other such *causes celebres*, the general run
of scholars and students continues, page by page, to rely on Ibn Rushd
as the paramount guide to Aristotle. New editions, new
supercommentaries, and even whole new translations appear until nearly
the end of the sixteenth century, most famously the Junta editions of
Aristotle with Ibn Rushd's commentaries, from 1552 and again
1562, which remain in use to this day.



Where Ibn Rushd's influence is perhaps even more important, but
less easy to pin down, concerns the relationship between philosophy
and religion (Klima 1998, Marenbon 2007, Normore 1995). The most
distinctive feature of the "Averroists" is their
inclination to pursue philosophical arguments to their logical
conclusion, regardless of Church doctrine. To be sure, this has close
affinities with Ibn Rushd's insistence that philosophy should
inform religious study (see SS6.2), but in the censorious context
of premodern Christianity such an approach was especially perilous.
Figures like Siger of Brabant would stake out boldly heterodox-looking
claims, only to backtrack and insist that they were merely describing
what pure philosophical reason would show, not defending these views
as true. Often they would later disavow even their earlier strictly
philosophical claims. The autonomy of reason, against the claims of
religion, was not a principle that could be easily defended at this
time.



For further information see the entry on the
 influence of Arabic and Islamic philosophy on the Latin West.
 A particularly valuable collection of papers is found in
Niewohner and Sturlese (1994).