The Islamic world · 1126–1198
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
Córdoban judge, known in Europe simply as “the Commentator”
The Qur’an itself commands philosophical study, and where demonstration conflicts with the literal text, the text must be interpreted. He defended Aristotle against al-Ghazālī and against Avicenna’s Neoplatonic additions.
Life and thought
Ibn Rushd, Averroes in Latin, was born in Córdoba in 1126 into a family of leading jurists. He became a judge in Seville and chief judge of Córdoba, and court physician in Marrakesh, after Ibn Ṭufayl introduced him to the Almohad caliph, who asked him to explain Aristotle clearly. Late in life he fell out of favour, was briefly exiled and his books were burned; he was soon pardoned and died in Marrakesh in 1198.
He wrote commentaries on almost all of Aristotle, short, middle and long, which made him simply “the Commentator” in Latin Europe. In The Decisive Treatise he argued, as a jurist, that the Qur’an itself commands rational reflection on creation, so philosophy is obligatory for those capable of it; where a demonstration conflicts with the literal text, the text must be interpreted. The Incoherence of the Incoherence answers al-Ghazālī point by point. His view that the material intellect is one for all humans became the centre of the “Averroist” controversy in Paris.