Averroës Sentence Examples
In his early thought he followed Averroes, but afterwards modified his views so far as to make himself acceptable to the orthodox Catholics.
In 1495 he produced an edition of the works of Averroes; with a commentary compatible with his acquired orthodoxy.
But in the end they became less fanatical than the Murabtis, and Ya`kub el Mansur was a highly accomplished man, who wrote a good Arabic style and who protected the philosopher Averroes.
Versatile, lighthearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes.
Philosophia Orientalis, mentioned by Roger Bacon, and now lost, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone.
The Aristotelian school in Islam did not speak with one voice upon the question; Avicenna declared the soul immortal, but Averroes assumes only the eternity of the universal intellect.
His son Samuel, who died at Marseilles about 1230, was equally prolific. He translated the Moreh Nebhukhim during the life of the author, and with some help from him, so that this may be regarded as the authorized version; Maimonides' commentary on the Mishnah tractate Pirge.Abhoth, and some minor works; treatises of Averroes and other Arabic authors.
His son Moses, who died about the end of the 13th century, translated the rest of Maimonides, much of Averroes, the lesser Canon of Avicenna, Euclid's Elements (from the Arabic version), Ibn al-Jazzar's Viaticum, medical works of IIunain ben Isaac (Johannitius) and Razi (Rhazes), besides works of less-known Arabic authors.
In the first half of the 14th century lived the two translators Qalonymos ben David and Qalonymos ben Qalonymos, the latter of whom translated many works of Galen and Averroes, and various scientific treatises, besides writing original works, e.g.
Part of his writings consist of commentaries on the portions of Aristotle then known, or rather of commentaries on the commentaries of Averroes.
AdvertisementThis anonymous writer,' he says, acquired his learning by teaching others, and adopted a dogmatic tone, which has caused him to be received at Paris with applause as the equal of Aristotle, Avicenna, or Averroes.
The chief of these, at least so far as regards the influence which they exerted on medieval philosophy, were Avicenna, Avempace and Averroes.
Fresh translations of Aristotle and Averroes had already been made from the Arabic (IIepi ret ivropiat from the Hebrew) by Michael Scot, and Hermannus Alamannus, at the instance of the emperor Frederick II.; so that the whole body of Aristotle's works was at hand in Latin translations from about 1210 to 1225.
If individuality depends in matter, must we not conclude with Averroes that individuality is extinguished at death, and that only the universal form survives ?
His friend and pupil AvERROES of Cordova (q.v.), so well known for his philosophical writings, was also an author in medical subjects, and as such widely read in Latin.
AdvertisementHe was a contemporary of Averroes, who, according to Leo Africanus, heard his lectures, and learned physic of him.
During the time he held this office he publicly defended the Dominicans against the university of Paris, commented on St John, and answered the errors of the Arabian philosopher, Averroes.
In his writings he expounds and advocates the medical and philosophical systems of Averroes and other Arabian writers.
The Arabic scholar Averroes gave Aristotle to western Europe in a pantheistic garb, and thus influenced medieval scientists.
Ragel wrote a book on naevi; Rhazes (1040) devoted several chapters to it; and Averroes (1165) made many references to it in his De sanitate, p. 82 (Leiden, 1537).
AdvertisementIt was Ibn-Tufail (Abubacer), the philosophic vizier of Yusef, who introduced Averroes to that prince, and Avenzoar (Ibn-Zuhr), the greatest of Moslem physicians, was his friend.
Averroes, who was versed in the Malekite system of law, was made cadi of Seville (1169), and in similar appointments the next twenty-five years of his life were passed.
Averroes was accused of heretical opinions and pursuits, stripped of his honours, and banished to a place near Cordova, where his actions were closely watched.
Averroes was recalled to Morocco when the transient passion of the people had been satisfied, and for a brief period survived his restoration to honour.
He died in the year before his patron, al-Mansur, with whom (in 1199) the political power of the Moslems came to an end, as did the culture of liberal science with Averroes.
AdvertisementThe personal character of Averroes is known to us only in a general way, and as we can gather it from his writings.
The literary works of Averroes include treatises on jurisprudence, grammar, astronomy, medicine and philosophy.
The larger commentary was an innovation of Averroes; for Avicenna, copied by Albertus Magnus, gave under the rubrics furnished by Aristotle works in which, though the materials.
His name is perhaps best known in the history of logic in connexion with the fourth syllogistic figure, the first distinct statement of which was ascribed to him by Averroes.
This possibility, according to Averroes, led to the adoption by the physician Galen of the so-called fourth figure, in which the middle term is predicate of the major and subject of the minor.
In this way, by a theory which, according to Averroes, involves the negation of science, the Moslem theologians believed that they had exalted God beyond the limits of the metaphysical and scientific conceptions of law, form and matter; whilst they at the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines, attributing a causality to things.
His order and enumeration of the principles of being, his doctrine of the double aspect of intellect, and of the perfect beatitude which consists in the aggregation of noble minds when they are delivered from the separating barriers of individual bodies, present at least in germ the characteristic theory of Averroes.
This indictment against liberal thought from the standpoint of the theological school was afterwards answered in Spain by Averroes; but in Bagdad it heralded the extinction of the light of philosophy.
Whilst the native Spaniards were narrowing the limits of the Moorish kingdoms, and whilst the generally fanatical dynasty of the Almohades might have been expected to repress speculation, the century preceding the close of Mahommedan sway saw philosophy cultivated by Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes.
It was this theory which Averroes (1126-1198), the last and most famous of the thinkers of Moslem Spain, carried out to his doctrine of the unity of intellect.
For Aristotle the reverence of Averroes was unbounded, and to expound him was his chosen task.
But in his conception of the relation between philosophy and religion, Averroes had a light which the Latins were without.
Averroes maintains that a return must be made to the words and teaching of the prophet; that science must not expend itself in dogmatizing on the metaphysical consequences of fragments of doctrine for popular acceptance, but must proceed to reflect upon and examine the existing things of the world.
In this spirit Averroes does not allow the fancied needs of theological reasoning to interfere with his study of Aristotle, whom he simply interprets as a truth-seeker.
The points by which he told on Europe were all implicit in Aristotle, but Averroes set in relief what the original had left obscure, and emphasized things which the Christian theologian passed by or misconceived.
Thus Averroes had a double effect.
On three points Averroes, like other Moslem thinkers, came specially into relation, real or supposed, with the religious creed, viz.
The real grandeur of Averroes is seen in his resolute prosecution of the standpoint of science in matters of this world, and in his recognition that religion is not a branch of knowledge to be reduced to propositions and systems of dogma, but a personal and inward power, an individual truth which stands, distinct from, but not contradictory to, the universalities of scientific law.
Hence, to Averroes the eternity of the world finds its true expression in the eternity of God.
But beyond these, Averroes claims as the highest bliss of the soul a union in this life with the actual intellect.
Averroes, rejected by his Moslem countrymen, found a hearing among the Jews, to whom Maimonides had shown the free paths of Greek speculation.
Meanwhile, before 1250, Averroes became accessible to the Latin Schoolmen by means of versions, accredited by the names of Michael Scot and others.
William of Auvergne is the first Schoolman who criticizes the doctrines of Averroes, not, however, by name.
At Oxford Averroes told more as the great commentator.
In Duns Scotus, Averroes and Aristotle are the unequalled masters of the science of proof; and he pronounces distinctly the separation between Catholic and philosophical truth, which became the watchword of Averroism.
Petrarch refuses to believe that any good thing can come out of Arabia, and speaks of Averroes as a mad dog barking against the church.
In works of contemporary art Averroes is at one time the comrade of Mahomet and Antichrist; at another he lies with Arius and Sabellius, vanquished by the lance of St Thomas.
As early as 1300, at Padua, Petrus Aponensis, a notable expositor of medical theories, had betrayed a heterodoxy in faith; and John of Jandun, one of the pamphleteers on the side of Louis of Bavaria, was a keen follower of Averroes, whom he styles a " perfect and most glorious physicist."
Questions of permanent and present interest took the place of outworn scholastic problems. The disputants ranged themselves under the rival commentators, Alexander and Averroes; and the immortality of the soul became the battle-ground of the two parties.
Nifo had edited the works of Averroes (1495-1497); but his expressions gave offence to the dominant theologians, and he had to save himself by distinguishing his personal faith from his editorial capacity.
The editors of Averroes complain that the popular taste had forsaken them for the Greek.
One of the scholars to whom Frederick gave a welcome was Michael Scot, the first translator of Averroes.
But Bacon is apparently hypercritical in his estimate of the translators from the Arabic. Another protégé of Frederick's was Hermann the German (Alemannus), who, between the years 1243 and 1256, translated amongst other things a paraphrase of al-Farabi on the Rhetoric, and of Averroes on the Poetics and Ethics of Aristotle.
It was amongst them, especially in Maimonides, that Aristotelianism found refuge after the light of philosophy was extinguished in Islam; and the Jewish family of the Ben-Tibbon were mainly instrumental in making Averroes known to southern France.
Renan, De Philosophia Peripatetica apud Syros (1852), and Averroes et l'Averroisme (Paris, 3rd ed., 1867); Am.
The conception of reason in the world passed from him to Aristotle, to whom it seemed the dawn of sober thought after a night of disordered dreams. From Aristotle it descended to his commentators, and under the influence of Averroes became the engrossing topic of speculation.
Michael Scott, the translator of some treatises of Aristotle and of the commentaries of Averroes, Leonardo of Pisa, who introduced Arabic numerals and algebra to the West, and other scholars, Jewish and Mahommedan as well as Christian, were welcome at his court.
In 1852 his book on Averroes had brought him not only his doctor's degree, but his first reputation as a thinker.
He had a distinct influence upon Averroes (see Arabian Philosophy).
But as early as Aegidius Romanus (1247-1316), Averroes had been stamped as the patron of indifference to theological dogmas, and credited with the emancipation which was equally due to wider experience and the lessons of the Crusades.
Raymond Lully, in a dialogue with an infidel thinker, broke a lance in support of the orthodox doctrine, and carried on a crusade against the Arabians in every university; and a disciple of Thomas Aquinas drew up a list (De erroribus philosophorum) of the several delusions and errors of each of the thinkers from Kindi to Averroes.