THE CASE OF AVERROES (1126-1198 AD)
Introduction
Since September 11, there has been a renewed interest in the
nature of Islamic doctrine and thought.
Many commentators have pointed to the fact that fundamentalism is only
one aspect of Muslim thought, albeit
presently a powerful and influential strand.
However, despite such qualifications, little attention has been paid to the
historical basis of this claim i.e. the
presence of a rationalist tradition in Islam.
In this paper, I will look at a
paradigmatic example of such Islamic reason,
the philosophy of Averroes. As we
will see, Averroes’ radical application
of rationalistic methods to the analysis of the Koran was severely opposed by
the more traditionalist wing of Islamic philosophy as well as by more
conservative Muslim theologians. Nonetheless, he was far from being an isolated
figure and his thought can be seen as the logical extension of more moderate
rationalism in earlier Islamic philosophy and the rationalist Mu’tazila school
of theological interpretation (the question of what happened to such
rationalism after the breakup of the Islamic empire will be returned to in
conclusion).
I will also highlight the significance of Averroes
(and wider Islamic thought) for the development of rationalism within the
Christian tradition, a factor which has
been a major influence on the development of the West as such. At this point, most especially in the Islamic
kingdom of Spain but also in the East, Islamic culture was by and large
tolerant and affirmative of religious diversity within its own boundaries. This
made for a rather impressive inter-cultural intellectual milieu, where Islamic
philosophers and theologians discussed and clarified their faith alongside
similar representations from Christian and Judaic thinkers. Cordoba in southern Spain, the then capital
of the Moorish empire, is perhaps the most impressive example of such
inter-cultural diversity. Here, Muslim translations and commentaries on
Aristotle from Greek into Arabic were translated by Jewish scholars into Hebrew
and by Christian scholars from Hebrew into Latin. As we will see, this led to an extraordinary
degree of mutual dependence and influence between the three religious
traditions, and by today’s standards, a surprising level of respect and
friendship between Islamic philosophers and their counter-religionists. Thus,
for example, the formidable Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides declared
himself a disciple of the Muslim Averroes while an influential (although
heretical) grouping called the Christian Averroists also sprung up in Paris,
declaring their debt to the Master. No
less a figure than Thomas Aquinas also owed a huge debt to Averroes, although
this debt was not always so explicitly acknowledged.
Having analysed some of the main aspects of this
medieval context of philosophical and theological discussion, I will in conclusion look at how the medieval
debate between theological traditionalism and theological rationalism, a debate
or conflict which took place not simply in Islam but also in Christianity and
Judaism, can shed light on the current problems surrounding fundamentalism and
its opponents (most especially as this relates to so-called Islamic fundamentalism).
Philosophy East and West
Before looking at Islamic philosophy more
specifically, I will first attempt to give some historical context to the
conditions which brought about such a unique and fertile mix of philosophical
and theological cultures in the medieval period. The origins of philosophy were in Greece in
500BC but by 300BC Athens was already being rivaled by Alexandria in Egypt as
the cultural center of the ancient world.
The great leader of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus, although often viewed as a
Greek philosopher, was actually an Egyptian. The eclipse of Greek philosophy
however began with the closing of the School of Athens by the Byzantine
Emperor, Justinian, which heralded an eastern migration of Greek thought to
Persia, which was more sympathetic to philosophers at this time (Fakhry, p.
ix). This heralded a period of great
ignorance of Greek philosophy in the West, with Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotle’s
logical treatise, alongside the work of neo-platonism being the only extant
works of the original masters. This loss of the original Greek texts is the
real source of the term ‘the dark ages’ and not, as is often suggested, the
fact that philosophy became more linked to theology at this time.
The next historic period of philosophy which
concerns us here is the so-called Arab-Islamic period, which began in 750 (and
lasted until 1258), when Baghdad inherited from Alexandria and Athens the title
of cultural center of the world. Through
Baghdad in the East and the western capital of the Islamic empire, Cordoba in
southern Spain, Islamic thought was to exert a massive and determining
influence on the history of civilization.
Medieval Islamic Philosophy Before Averroes
Any analysis of Medieval Philosophy must take
account of the extraordinary relationship which existed between philosophy and
theology during this entire period.
Although standard interpretations present Christianity as the dominant
theological influence in this context, a fairer analysis must point to the
constant inter-relationship and co-dependence which existed between the
respective theological traditions of Islam,
Judaism and Christianity.
Moreover, this strong influence
did not lead to philosophy becoming the "handmaiden" of
theology, as many critics claim. In many instances, to the contrary, the philosophical tendencies of medieval
thinkers led them to interpret their own theological beliefs in specific
ways. The initial fusion between
philosophical and theological elements in the medieval period takes place most
especially through Early Christianity (although another powerful example is
Philo of Alexandria’s Jewish philosophical theology). Augustine is here the
major figure of note but it is worth pointing out that his more sympathetic
attitude to philosophical influence is countered by a more fundamentalist
strain within Christianity (which foreshadows the more well-known Islamic
fundamentalism and also remains a source for some contemporary examples of
Christian fundamentalism, a point I will return to in conclusion). The most
vehement example of such a Christian fundamentalism or traditionalism is
Tertullian, who refused any attempt to rationalise or explain theological
faith, declaring “I believe in Christ because it is absurd”.
With Augustine however one gets a very different
approach, schooled in the pagan philosophy which Augustine once adhered to
(having converted only at age 33) of neo-Platonism, Manicheanism and Stoicism.
Thus, for example, the influence of
Plato's philosophical criticisms of art can be seen at work in Augustine's view
of the imagination as profane.
Additionally, one can wonder as
to whether Augustine's view of original sin would have been so negative if he
had not imbibed the Platonic conception of the Fall of the soul. The fusion of Hellenic and Biblical elements
made Christian philosophy, particularly
in its Augustinian guise, a subtle and influential metaphysic both in the medieval
period and well beyond (for example, both Calvin and Luther were to cite
Augustine as a major precursor).
However, it is an undeniable fact
that the most profound development of Christian philosophy took place under an
external influence, that of medieval
Islamic thought.
Whereas Early Christianity was primarily Platonic
in orientation (under the influence of both Plato's works and those of his
neo-Platonic disciple, Plotinus), later
medieval thinking began to look to Plato's successor, Aristotle,
for philosophical guidance.
Centres of Greek learning in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt were responsible for the
survival of Aristotle's works in the West during this time. Most texts were translated from the original
Greek into an intermediate Syriac version and then into Arabic. When later,
many of the original Greek texts were lost, it was these Arabic translations which were
to provide the foundation for re-translation back into late medieval
Latin. When one considers the immense
influence of Aristotelianism on later medieval Christianity and Judaism, and indeed succeeding Western history, it is instructive to remember this historical
debt to the East. But the real
intellectual contribution of medieval Islam to Western culture is less in terms
of translation and more in terms of independent philosophical analysis.
There are three great Islamic
philosophers before Averroes; Alfarabi
(870-930), Avicenna (980-1037) and
Algazali (1058-1111). Alfarabi is the
least important of these, primarily
significant because he is a pioneer in the invocation of Aristotle as a philosophical
authority (thus paving the way for the Golden Age of Muslim Aristotelianism).
He is said to have believed in the unity of the thought of Plato and Aristotle
and his work shows a confluence of their theories e.g. in his claim that God is simultaneously
identical with the neo-Platonic One and Aristotle's Self-Thinking Thought. With Avicenna however, one has the development of a Muslim
philosophy more independent of theological constraints and an Aristotelianism
less apologetic to Platonic doctrine.
Thus, Avicenna rejects the
conception of a divine creation of the world in time (God is contemporaneous
with the world) and follows Aristotle in considering the primary aim of
philosophy to be the study of being qua being.
Algazali, writing at the end of the eleventh
century, represents a critical backlash against the Aristotelianism of
Avicenna, within the Islamic
tradition. In his famous The
Incoherence of the Philosophers, he
attacks the inconsistency of the philosophical positions of Alfarabi and
Avicenna with orthodox Koranic interpretation.
What makes this work philosophically significant is that it does not
rule out the possibility of philosophy de jure,
but rather points to the misuse of philosophy by both of his
predecessors. In particular, he was
concerned with the philosophical theories of the eternity of the world and the
denial of bodily resurrection, theories
which he regarded not simply as theologically heterodox but as the result of a
misapplication of Aristotelian logical methods.
For reasons which are more political however, to do with power struggles
between various Islamic sects, Al-ghazali’s defence of theological orthodoxy
was to become associated with a form of theological traditionalism, which
refused to enter into dialogue with theological or philosophical rationalism.
Thus, Al-Ghazali’s philosophy and
theology are an important influence on the movement which will later be termed
Islamic fundamentalism. It can also be
said that the upshot of Al-Ghazali’s and his followers’ influence in Baghdad
was the virtual death of philosophy in the East, although it was soon to receive a new lease
of life in the Western part of the Islamic kingdom. This was to be through the
work of Averroes primarily.
Averroes and Philosophy
Averroes (1126-1198) is generally
regarded as the greatest of the Islamic philosophers of the Medieval period and
one of the greatest philosophers of the Medieval period as such. Nicknamed "The Commentator"
(because of his incisive commentaries on Aristotle), Averroes' thought has two main strands. On the one side, he seeks to rid Islamic
Aristotelianism of what he reads as a neo-Platonic bias which conflates the
very different philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Here,
he is critical of both Alfarabi and Avicenna. It is important to note here in sympathy to
these early Islamic philosophers that part of their difficulty in interpreting
Aristotle correctly lay in the incorrect attribution of some neo-Platonic texts
to Aristotle; thus works of both Plotinus and Proclus became known as works of
Aristotle and thus led to a misconception of his thought as inconsistent. It is
also worth noting here however that Averroes was the first philosopher to point
out that these texts were wrongly ascribed to Aristotle, given their
inconsistency with his general thinking.
Averroes is however not simply in conflict with
preceding Islamic philosophy but also with a kind of theological traditionalism
present in Al-Ghazali’s criticisms of Aristotelianism, which Averroes seeks to
undermine. In his ironically titled (but
nonetheless intently serious) response to Algazali, The Incoherence of the Incoherence (a
direct response to Al Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers) Averroes seeks to philosophically defend a
consistent Aristotelianism, freed from
Neo-platonic residue and theological prejudice.
In so doing, he creates a complicated
relation between his philosophy and his religious tradition.
In defending a consistent Aristotelianism, Averroes is critical of philosophical
compromises made in the name of theological orthodoxy. What is most significant about this defence
of philosophy is that Averroes defends it through recourse to the Koran. The study of philosophy Averroes argues is
imperative according to Islamic doctrine. He begins by defining philosophy as
“the investigation of existing entities insofar as they point to the Maker, I
mean insofar as they are made, since existing entities exhibit the Maker”
(Fakhry, p. 2). He then cites two passages from the Koran, verse 59:2, which
urges “people of understanding to reflect” and verse 7:184 which asks “ have
they not considered the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and all the things
God has created?” (Fakhry Intro to Abrah, . 2).
He also importantly distinguishes between two different kinds of passage
in scripture; those which the Koran refers to as “unambiguous” (which must be
interpreted literally) and those which are “ambiguous” (Fakhry, p. 3), which
must be reflected on and interpreted. The Koran refers to the interpretation of
ambiguity as “imperative” and also clarifies that this interpretation can be
done by “only God and those
well-grounded in knowledge” (p. 3). This phrase allows Averroes to introduce
his very important distinction between different discourses on truth and
interpretation, his so-called three-tiered conception of truth. This privileges what he terms
"demonstrative truth" (i.e. philosophical truth) over what he terms
"dialectical" and "rhetorical" truth (both the latter being
under the province of theology). Simply
described, it is only philosophical or demonstrative discourse which proceeds
from first principles; theological or dialectical discourse proceeds from assumptions;
while rhetorical discourse refers to the use of allegory or narrative to make
difficult truths palatable to the public at large. Here Averroes again resorts to the Koran for
justification, citing verse 16:125, “call to the way of your Lord with wisdom
and mild exhortation and argue with them in the best manner” (Fakhry, p.
7). It is also worth noting here that
this threefold division of discourses is a development of Aristotle’s own
classification of discourses and truths in the Topics and the Rhetoric.
With regard to Algazali, the latter for Averroes confuses the category
of religious or even rhetorical truth with that of philosophical truth, seeking to subordinate the category of reason
to the category of revelation. But this
is simply to repeat the dogmas of Islamic theology, with little philosophical relevance. For
example, Averroes rejects Al Ghazali’s defence of a divine creation of the
universe in time. Allthough many Koranic verses seem to suggest the creation in
time, here according to Averroes Scripture has resorted to what he terms “
sensuous representation”, that is the third category of rhetorical discourse
which frames truths in terms palatable to the many (in this context, rhetorical
embellishment is required because the idea of creation ex nihilo or out of
nothing is an idea which common people are unable to grasp according to
Averroes). Similarly, Averroes rejects Al Ghazali’s orthodox claim of the
personal immortality of the soul after death, again arguing that the
philosophical truth consists in impersonal immortality, but this has to be made
more bearable for the common people who find it difficult to accept that their
individuality doesn’t survive death.
Averroes in both these cases is defending Aristotle’s claims; both that
the universe is eternal and not created in time and also that the soul is only
impersonally immortal, but also significantly claiming that these views are
compatible with Islamic orthodoxy insofar as the real truth of the Koran lies
not in theological embellishment but philosophical rationalization (we will see
below how these views also bring Averroes into conflict with Aquinas in the
context of Christian orthodoxy and its relation to Aristotle’s thought).
In contrast to Al Ghazali’s work, the work of
Alfarabi and Avicenna lays claim to philosophical relevance and seeks to
distance itself from the mere repetition of theological orthodoxy. Nonetheless,
according to Averroes, the
philosophical systems of Alfarabi and Avicenna both fall into the category of
theological rather than philosophical truth. This is perhaps more clearly the
case with Alfarabi, whose work shows a
certain caution in its attempt to be consistent with Islamic orthodoxy (this is
most notable in Alfarabi's defence of the doctrine of creation of the world in
time). However, Avicenna had already begun to distance
himself from these theological residues and,
for example, is explicit in his
avowal of the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world.
Despite this apparent philosophical
progression, Averroes remains critical
of what he sees as implicit deferral to orthodoxy on crucial philosophical
points. Thus, he censures Avicenna's theory that essence
precedes existence. Rather, for Averroes,
existence precedes essence. He is
also critical of Avicenna's proofs of the existence of God from the relation of
necessity to contingency, as this argument imports too much metaphysical
baggage for Averroes' liking.
Rather, any proofs of God's existence
must avoid metaphysics de jure and rely on physical causation alone. In both these cases, it is arguable that Avicenna is in fact
closer to the literal meaning of Aristotle's original texts than Averroes and
that Averroes is already moving beyond mere commentary on Aristotle, to something approaching an independent philosophical
system.
Whatever the truth of this hypothesis, it is undeniable that Averroes has certainly
succeeded in releasing Islamic philosophy from the fetters of Islamic
theological dogma. In this context, it is perhaps not surprising to find that Averroes
did not find too many disciples within Islam itself. In fact in later life he was accused of
‘irreligion’ and temporarily exiled from Morocco where he had gone to live and
sent back to Spain. However this was less the result of intolerance of philosophy
and more the result of in-fighting between Islamic tribal factions. Averroes
was eventually pardoned although in the meantime his books had been burned and
his exile used as an excuse to ban the study of Aristotle. In general, however,
he was allowed to express his views freely and with influence. In the immediate
future his influence was nonetheless to be greater beyond the boundaries of his own culture than within
it, in particular as it influenced the later development of Christian
philosophy and it is to this influence on Christianity that I now turn. I will return in conclusion to his influence
on later and contemporary Islamic thought.
Averroes and Christianity
In hindsight,
it is clear that Averroes was too radical a figure to be compatible with
any of the religious orthodoxies of the medieval period. His work,
which privileges philosophical reason (what he terms "demonstrative
truth") over theological revelation ("dialectical" and
"rhetorical" truth), looks
forward to the modern paradigm of an independent rational enquiry; that is, for
Averroes, reason is superior to faith, although in principle they should always
reach compatible conclusions.
Nonetheless, the influence of his
work was powerfully felt in the later medieval period, albeit rather negatively. An understanding of this negative reaction is
crucial to an understanding not simply of the development of later medieval
thought (in particular, that of Christianity),
but to an understanding of the formation of the modern Western identity.
The crucial figure in understanding Averroes in the
context of later medieval thought is Siger of Brabant (1240-1284). Siger is referred to as a "Christian
Averroist", a phrase which
perfectly captures the assimilation of Islamic thought into Later
Christianity. The Christian Averroists
represented the most radical assimilation of Muslim Aristotelianism, adhering to Averroes' supremacy of reason over
revelation and the theory of the eternity of the world. Such heterodox views brought Siger and the
Averroists into conflict with the Established Church and many of their
propositions were rejected in The Condemnation of 1277.
What is doubly significant is that
several of the theories of the more orthodox (and historically influential)
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) were also condemned in 1277. The condemned Thomistic propositions were
exclusively those which Thomas himself had assimilated from Islamic thought, in particular the view that individuation
depended on matter rather than form.
Apart from the explicitly condemned propositions however, it is clear that the 1277 Condemnation is an
admission of the extraordinary "contamination" of pure Christian
dogma by Christian philosophy (under the influence of Islamic thought). Without Islamic Aristotelianism there would
certainly be no Christian Aristotelianism,
and although the 1277 Condemnation is an attempt to reinforce the
Augustinianism of earlier Christianity,
it is the Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas which eventually wins the
day (being today for example the orthodox Catholic philosophy). I think it is
interesting to thus look at some of the points of affinity and disaffinity
between Averroes and Aquinas. It is
clear for example that Aquinas was very critical of the Christian Averroists,
but it is also clear that they represented a radicalization if not a distortion
of Averroes’ original thinking. For example, the Christian Averroists affirmed
the theory of the “double truth” (which was also condemned in 1277), the view that
one view could be held in philosophy while simultaneously holding to its
contradiction in theology e.g. that philosophically one could hold to the
eternity of the world thesis while theologically one could hold simultaneously
to the view that the universe was created by God in time. The Averroists
claimed to derive this view from Averroes’ own three-tiered conception of
truth, but it is clear that this represents a distortion of his original
meaning. Averroes rather claimed that if
‘creation in time’ was a theological claim (for example in the Koran) that this
could not be true but rather was an attempt to make a rather difficult
philosophical conception of eternity more acceptable to the general population.
This is not a double-truth theory; there is only one truth for Averroes – that
the world is eternal.
Thomas Aquinas, as the other great interpreter of
Aristotle in the medieval period, also faced difficulties reconciling
Aristotelian philosophy with his own, in this case, Christian orthodoxy. The influence of Averroes on Aquinas’s own
rationalism is clear. As Etienne Gilson
has observed, “rationalism was born in Spain in the mind of an Arabian
philosopher, as a conscious reaction against the theologism of the Arabian
divines…he bequeathed to his successors the ideal of a purely rational
philosophy, an ideal whose influence was to be such that, by it even the
evolution of Christian philosophy was to be deeply modified” (quoted Fakhry, p.
6 Averroes). Indeed Ernest Renan in his pivotal text Averroes et
l’averroesisme goes as far as to refer to Aquinas as the first authentic
disciple of Averroes.
This is in my view to go too far but the important
influence is nonetheless undeniable. The
two areas where Aquinas and Averroes differ most are in relation to the
‘creation in time’ principle and the conception of intellect, Aquinas arguing
for the notion of creation as against eternity, and arguing for the
individuality of each intellect and thus personal immortality. But on the positive side, Aquinas’ thesis of
the compatibility of theological and religious truth owes a large debt to
Averroes’ three tiered conception of truth. Averroes’ philosophical defence of
the idea that God knows each individual is also adopted wholesale by Aquinas as
is Averroes’ defence of an immanent causality in the world and his conception
that ‘being is to essence as actuality is to potentiality’ (Fakhry, p. 142).
The influence of Averroes (and also of Avicenna) on
the development of Later Medieval Christian thought therefore is
unequivocal. But this intellectual debt
to Islam is very rarely mentioned in our times.
When one considers the further development of the modern West, based on a paradigm of rational enquiry, it is Averroes who seems to best anticipate
this model within the medieval epoch. On
both these counts, it seems clear that
Averroes truly was a philosophical visionary,
anticipating and also influencing progressive developments far beyond
his own milieu.
Section 6 - The
Contemporary Debate on Islamic ‘Fundamentalism’
This brings me on to the final question of how the
medieval debate between theological traditionalism and theological rationalism,
a debate or conflict which took place not simply in Islam but also in
Christianity and Judaism, can shed light on the current problems surrounding
fundamentalism and its opponents (most especially as this relates to so-called
Islamic fundamentalism). Here, much
depends upon how we interpret the very nature of ‘fundamentalism’. One recent definition of fundamentalism
states that the latter refers to a “religious idealism….in which the
transcendent realm of the divine, as
revealed and made normative for the religious community, alone provides an
irreducible basis for communal and personal identity” (Fundamentalism Project,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences).
This definition is however interpreted differently by the two main
schools in this debate. In the one case, fundamentalism is interpreted as a
recent phenomenon, developing out of a
reaction against modernity; so for example Bruce Lawrence interprets
fundamentalism as based on a “hatred, which is also a fear of modernism,
rationalism and the Enlightenment” (quoted Martin p. 6). What this account fails to recognize however,
when for example applied to Islamic fundamentalism, is the tradition of
‘theological rationalism’ which existed well before the Enlightenment or
so-called ‘modernist’ period. Our
analysis of Averroes has shown at the very least that a rationalist tradition
in Islam predates the modern Enlightenment. Indeed, as for example Gilson has
argued, Averroes’ philosophy can be seen as a great influence on the
Enlightenment and modern reason. But if this is the case, where does this leave the debate on Islamic
fundamentalism?
It is clear that the above definition of
fundamentalism as a theological idealism makes fundamentalism indistinguishable
from theological traditionalism, exemplified in Islam by for example the work
of Al Ghazali. Just as the rational
philosophy of Averroes seems to suggest that modernity does not have a monopoly
on rationalism, so too the existence of theologians such as Al Ghazali (and
indeed the more conservative wing of medieval Islamic theology per se) suggests
that fundamentalism is not a new phenomenon.
This has led some philosophers of religion to offer a different
definition of fundamentalism. Richard
Martin for example has claimed that fundamentalism belongs to a wider and older
discourse than simply the discourse of modernity: “it necessarily follows that
the historical nature of the theological discourse of which fundamentalism is a
part must be re-asserted” (Martin, p. 7).
It seems to me that this conception of
fundamentalism is more historically accurate and I am thinking here
particularly of Islamic fundamentalism but also of for example Christian
fundamentalism as represented by a thinker such as Tertullian in the early
period AD. Fundamentalism is as old as theology, and indeed philosophy. But
historical accuracy is not the only advantage that such a reading of
fundamentalism allows us. It also allows
one to demystify the idea that fundamentalism is some kind of strange
contemporary ‘evil’, explicable only in terms of some bizarre backwardness of
Islamic culture. Rather ‘fundamentalism’
is merely a hyberbolic term for a form of theological traditionalism which has
existed and continues to exist in every theological culture.
Once such a concession is allowed, one can start to
address questions concerning the particular virulence and ubiquity of such fundamentalism
in contemporary Islamic cultures. My analysis of Averroes has sought amongst
other things to discredit the idea that there is something intrinsic to Islam
or the Koran, which would make for more extreme and darker forms of
fundamentalism. It seems to me that the explanation for such trends would
require more than merely one kind of answer; here philosophical considerations
would have to be accompanied by a socio-political and historical analysis, and
Western colonization of the Arab-Islamic world since 1800 would be one major
factor. It is in the final analysis dreadfully ironic that such colonization
took place under the arrogant banner of Western Enlightenment, an enlightenment
which itself owed so much to the rediscovery of Aristotle and the tradition of
rationalist Islam
