The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1055 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1126–98 (AH 520–95)).
Spanish Muslim theologian, philosopher,
Qur’
n
scholar, natural scientist, and physician, known in the West as Averroes.
He is known particularly for his commentary on Aristotle, and for other works dealing with many aspects of philosophy and theology. One concerns ‘the convergence which exists between the religious law (
shar
‘a
) and philosophy (
ikma
)’. Another work considers the problem of predestination. One of his most famous writings,
Tah
fut al-tah
fut
(The Incoherence of the Incoherence), criticizes
al-Gha(z)z
l
's
work,
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
, and upholds the value of philosophy as a wisdom applied to God's creation.
Among Ibn Rushd's doctrines,
Neoplatonist
in origin, were the eternity and potentiality of matter (the world is eternal but caused, the
natura naturata
of God who is eternal and uncaused,
natura naturans
), and the unity of the human intellect, i.e. the doctrine that only one intellect exists in which every individual participates, to the exclusion of an isolated personal immortality. When his theories became known in N. Europe
c.
1230, the contradiction with Christian doctrine was not at first clear, and there emerged a party of ‘Averroists’ at the University of Paris led by Siger of Brabant (
c.
1240–
c.
1284). A treatise of Thomas
Aquinas
was directed against them in 1270, and they were later accused of saying that ‘things are true according to philosophy but not according to the Catholic faith, as though there were two contradictory truths’, i.e. the theory of ‘double truth’. Ibn Rushd's own understanding of ‘double truth’ was one of reconciliation. It rested on
ta’w
l
, understood as producing, not two contradictory interpretations or truths, but rather the same single truth under two different styles of presentation.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search