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    Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy
    Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy
    Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy
    Ebook293 pages3 hours

    Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy

    By Ovey N. Mohammed

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    The introduction of Aristotelianism into the West created conflict, disruption, and turmoil. Not least, it confronted the Middle Ages with a serious problem concerning the possible conflict between reason and faith. In part, the controversy surrounding Aristotelianism in the Christian world came from the Islamic channels through which much of the Aristotelian philosophical heritage came to the West. The great turning point of Christian thought, the point at which Christian intellectual history began to be dominated by Aristotelian patterns, began when Christian scholars were exposed not only to the philosophy of Aristotle, but also to the commentaries of Averroes. The names of Averroes and Aristotle became inextricably linked by the middle of the thirteenth century.

    A clear and careful analysis of the links between the thoughts of Averroes and Aristotle, an explication of the impact of Averroes' thought on Christian theology and on Aquinas in particular, this monograph is of crucial importance in the history of Christianity. It is emphatically apposite to the discussion of monistic and qualistic theological anthropologies. Further, the discussion throws light upon a topic which should be of much greater interest to scholars: the impact of Islam upon medieval Christian thought.

    Mohammed centres specifically upon Averroes' doctrine of immortality—a doctrine that posited immortality for man as a being entire, not merely for his soul.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilfrid Laurier University Press
    Release dateOct 30, 2010
    ISBN9781554587544
    Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality: A Matter of Controversy
    Author

    Ovey N. Mohammed

    Ovey N. Mohammed, S.J., is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Regis College in the Toronto School of Theology.

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      Averroës’ Doctrine of Immortality - Ovey N. Mohammed

      EDITIONS SR

      Volume 6

      Averroes’ Doctrine

      of Immortality

      A Matter of

      Controversy

      Ovey N. Mohammed

      Published for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      1984

      Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

      Mohammed, Ovey N. (Ovey Nelson), 1933-

           Averroes’ doctrine of immortality

      (Editions SR ; 6)

      Bibliography: p.

      Includes index.

      ISBN 0-88920-178-1

      1. Averroës, 1126-1198. 2. Immortality.

      3. Scholasticism. I. Title. II. Series.

      B749.Z7M63 1984       129       C84-099253-X

      © 1984 Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/

            Corporation Canadienne des Sciences Religieuses

      84 85 86 87 4 3 2 1

      No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.

      Cover design by Michael Baldwin, MSIAD

      Order from:

      Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      Wilfrid Laurier University

      Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

      This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      The Background

      The Medieval Reaction to Averroes

      The Medieval Reaction Reconsidered

      The Modern Reaction

      The Problem of the Immortality of the Soul in Averroes

      CHAPTER

      I. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF THE AVERROISTIC CONTROVERSIES

      The Qur’anic Anthropology

      The Christian Anthropologies

      The Aristotelian Anthropology

      II. AVERROES ON REASON AND REVELATION

      Reason and Revelation in Islam Before Averroes

      Reason and Revelation According to Averroes

      Reason and Revelation According to Aquinas

      III. THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

      Soul and Intellect in the Commentary on the De Anima

      Soul and Intellect in the Tahafut al-Tahafut

      Life After Death

      IV. THE NATURE OF MAN’S BEATITUDE

      Averroes’ Theory of Intellection

      Man’s Perfection as Union with the Agent Intellect

      Reward and Punishment

      V. CONCLUSION

      NOTES

      Introduction

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      INDEX

      INTRODUCTION

      The Background

      Mid-way through the twelfth century, as the Latin West was introduced to a wealth of previously unknown scientific and philosophical literature through translations from the Greek and Arabic, a new chapter in the history of Christian philosophy began. This chapter might well have been entitled: Aristotelianism and the great turning point of Christian thought.

      During patristic times, Plato had exerted much more influence on Christian philosophy than Aristotle; of all of Aristotle’s works, only his logic was then known. Two Christians, Marius Victorinus and Boethius, had transmitted the logic to the Middle Ages as the instrument of philosophy and theology. It was only about 1128 that James of Venice translated the two Analytics, the Topics, and the Sophistics from Greek into Latin. These became known as the logica nova, in contrast to the logica vetus of Boethius, which included the Categories and On Interpretation. Through these translations, the cultural horizon of the medieval world was suddenly broadened, and the scholastics were exposed to the breadth of the philosophic genius of Aristotle. For the first time, they were confronted with a philosophy that relied on reason to an unprecedented degree. Plato, for instance, for all his dependence upon the devices of human reason, was heavily influenced nevertheless by such factors as Orphism and Pythagorean religiosity. To be sure, Plato was a philosopher. But he was, of course, hardly a philosopher in the sense of the term that corresponds to the practice of philosophy since, say, the age of Descartes. This is not, on the other hand, to take away the theological import of the work of Aristotle. It is simply to remember that there is a vast difference between the empirical attitude reflected by the philosophical activity of an Aristotle -- an attitude that ultimately became normative of the philosophical orientation -- and the philosophical yet intuitive, aprioristic, and mythological procedures of a Plato. This difference is worth recalling because it was, to a large measure, on account of it that the Middle Ages were eventually confronted with a serious problem concerning the relationship -- and more particularly, the possible conflict -- between faith and reason. Plato had never posed quite the same sort of difficulty for earlier Christian thought.

      If the introduction of Aristotelianism into the West may be truthfully described as the introduction of a ferment, however, it may equally be spoken of in terms of conflict, disruption, and turmoil. Because of Aristotle, certain Christian authors felt inspired to create some of the most impressive achievements of a Christian intellect that knows itself to be activated by its Christian belief. Others, however, found their most cherished beliefs challenged by the new world view, which they deemed almost entirely at variance with their Christian faith: in not a few quarters the reaction to Aristotle was from the first one of distrust. Thus, in 1210 the Provincial Council of Paris forbade the public or private teaching of Aristotle’s writings on natural philosophy or commentaries on them in the schools. In 1215, Robert Courson, the papal legate in Paris, extended the prohibition to include the metaphysics or commentaries on them. Yet such prohibitions, renewed in 1231 by Pope Gregory IX, did not prevent the growing popularity of these works.

      In the light of the eventual vogue of Aristotelianism in Catholic intellectual circles, the initial and longheld suspicion -- mixed, to be sure, with equal parts of fascination -- with which it was received in the Christian world requires some explanation. Part of the reason has to do with the nature of Aristotle’s own doctrine. For example, the doctrine of creation is unsuspected by Aristotle; indeed, it is foreign to his mind. The reconciliation of Aristotle and the Christian faith required a transformation of Aristotle, rather than a simple acceptance of him. However, part of the explanation has to do with the historical context and the circumstances of Aristotle’s reception in the West, and, in the first place, with the fact that the Arabs were one of the channels of the Aristotelian philosophical heritage for the Latin West.

      The vicissitudes of the works of Aristotle after the closing of the Academies by Justinian in 529 need not be recounted here. Suffice it to recall that by the ninth century, while Aristoteles Latinus comprised no more than the logica nova, the Aristotelian corpus was known and preserved in the Arabic-speaking world almost entire, together with the pseudo-Aristotelian treatises as the Theology of Aristotle and the Liber de causis. As is well known, though the latter works were ascribed to Aristotle, the first was really an excerpt of the Enneads of Plotinus, and the second was taken from the Element of Theology by Proclus. This probably explains why the Aristotelian philosophy of Al-Kindi (ca. 800-70), Alfarabi (875-950), and Avicenna (980-1037) in the Islamic East is highly Neoplatonized. Aristotelianism proper developed in the twelfth century in Spain, where the effort was made to cleanse Aristotle’s doctrines of the Neoplatonic accretions, and where it reached its climax in the Islamic West with Averroes (1126-98). Thus, when the Aristotelian corpus was translated into Latin from Arabic and Greek, in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Christian interest in Aristotle created a simultaneous interest in the philosophical writings of Arab Aristotelians, which had also been translated and circulated at the same time. Indeed, because of the profundity of Aristotle’s thought, the medieval scholastics sought instruction in Aristotle’s meaning from Averroes, the most celebrated of his non-Christian interpreters. In short, the great turning point in Christian thought may be defined as that period of Christian intellectual history when Christian scholars were exposed not only to the philosophy of Aristotle, but also to the commentaries of Averroes.

      Averroes’ commentaries on the writings of Aristotle were made known to Christian Europe in Latin translation through the work of the court of Frederick II of Sicily and Archbishop Raymond’s school of translators at Toledo, Spain. Among the best-known translators were: Adelard of Bath, Herman the German, Dominicus Gundalissalinus, John of Spain, Gerard of Cremona, and Michael Scot. It has been well established that Averroes’ commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle was among the works translated into Latin by Michael Scot at the court of Sicily from 1227 to 1230. It was made available to a number of universities by Frederick II in 1231. In any event, by the middle of the thirteenth century there was a tendency for the doctrine of the Philosopher to be identified with that of the Commentator, as Averroes soon became metonymically known: Aristotle meant, for some, neither more nor less than the Commentator and his interpretations. Thus, the name of a Muslim philosopher became bound up with the efforts of the medieval scholastics to establish a stable synthesis between the Christian faith and the Aristotelian science that so seductively appealed to the human reason. The reason was that, if Aristotle by himself appeared to resist the reconciling efforts of Christian scholars, Aristotle as interpreted and complemented by Averroes seemed to make the task an impossible one. Of all those positions of Aristotelianism intrinsically least easy to harmonize with Christianity, his doctrine of the soul was prominent. More particularly, it seemed to many Christians that Averroes’ teaching -- and, therefore, supposedly Aristotle’s -- that there is one intellect for all men demanded a denial of the spirituality and immortality of the soul.

      The Medieval Reaction to Averroes

      The theologians were quick to react. St. Bonaventure in his commentary on the Sentences,¹ composed about 1250, was the first to criticize Averroes’ theory of the intellect, which to him meant that mortal man cannot attain immortality. His In Hexaemeron of 1273 witnesses to the bitterness of his opposition to Aristotle and the Latin Averroists.² In 1256, Albert the Great wrote his De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroem³ at the request of Pope Alexander IV. Following the current method of the philosophers, in contrast to that of the theologians, Albert presents his thought on the immortality of the soul in syllogisms. He offers thirty arguments for the survival of only one soul after death and thirty-six arguments against it, in support of the survival of each human soul. To Albert the doctrine of the unicity of the intellect seems pernicious, pessimistic, and very improbable,⁴ but he admits and maintains that there must be unity of knowledge.

      The position of Aquinas in this matter is much more complex than that of most of his contemporaries. On the one hand, Aquinas must be said to have been, in some reasonable and recognizable sense of the term, an Aristotelian. This is not to dispute the view that Aquinas transformed, and did not merely reproduce, the doctrine of Aristotle. The point is rather that in certain key respects Aquinas based himself upon the doctrine of Aristotle, as understood by him. On the other hand, Aquinas clearly shared with the anti-Averroists the view that the incompatibility of Christian belief and the doctrine of Averroes is beyond reasonable doubt. Thus, in the De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas of 1270, Aquinas states that his refutation of the Averroistic doctrine of the unicity of the intellect⁵ is based upon a faithful understanding of Aristotle. Aquinas, thus, was one of the principal sources of a historical trend that eventually resulted in placing upon Averroes’ shoulders the major burden of responsibility for the genesis of a doctrine that disrupted the intellectual well-being of Christian thought.

      Aquinas’ De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas is devoted exclusively to the problem of the unicity of the intellect. He regards it as evident that Averroes’ view of the intellect is contrary to the truth of the Christian faith. Yet Aquinas has a paradoxical relation to Averroes. He has great respect for him, and even honours him with the title The Commentator.⁶ However, he envisages Averroes as an antagonist, the exponent of an anti-Christian creed that he has to refute. Since Aquinas’ analysis and refutation of Averroes was probably one of the most decisive and influential Christian reactions to Averroism, perhaps we should examine it in slightly greater detail.

      It is pertinent first to point out that Aquinas does admit two difficulties in writing against Muslims and Jews: his imperfect acquaintance with their views and the fact that the appeal to Scriptural authority cannot be used in controversy against Muslims, because they do not recognize the Bible as the final revelation of God.⁷ In the circumstances, Aquinas argues in favour of the revelation of the Bible by claiming that its truth is authenticated by miracles and is of a supernatural character. He observes that the religion founded by the Prophet Muhammad can produce no such evidences.⁸

      Now, Aquinas’ argument is based on the consideration that, according to Averroes, every form of a body is completely immersed in matter and is consequently material. From this it follows that an immaterial substance cannot be the form of the body. Because man possesses a soul that is a material perishable form, the intellect cannot be a part of that soul but is somehow a separate unique substance. Aquinas accepts Averroes’ theory of the universality of knowledge and the immateriality of the intellect. However, he rejects Averroes’ conclusion that these characteristics necessitate a separate intellect for all men. On the other hand, he agrees with Averroes that matter is the principle of individuation in one and the same species. For Aquinas, the soul and the intellect are one, multiplied and individual, even though they are the perfection and form of the human body. Against Averroes he argues a Christian position: although man’s existence is the existence of a composite, his existence is that of the soul in itself. The soul realizes its individuality from the body but is not dependent on the body for its existence.⁹ According to Aquinas, Averroes’ position would leave man without any incorruptible part of the soul; thus, there could be no personal immortality and, a fortiori, no reward and punishment in the afterlife.¹⁰ But the human soul, Aquinas argues, must by its nature be, on the contrary, immortal and incorruptible.¹¹

      It may be relevant to recall in the present context that the Dominicans of the thirteenth century had set for themselves the objective of evangelizing Muslims and Jews. They even trained polemicists in Hebrew and Arabic with this end in view. Raymond Martin, for example, was an outstanding orientalist and, unlike his fellow Dominican, Aquinas, fully conversant with Islam and Islamic philosophy. His Pugio Fidei Adversus Mauros et Judaeos, completed in 1278, gives abundant proof of this. Like Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, the Pugio Fidei is an attempt to argue for the truth of the Christian faith against non-Christian beliefs.¹² In this work Martin acknowledges that Averroes explains how his theory of the intellect is related to the subject of the soul in the Tahafut al-Tahafut, unknown in Latin translation at the time. However, in keeping with the apostolic nature of the Pugio Fidei, Martin summarily dismisses the explanation, calling Averroes’ doctrine of the intellect Platonic, and his view of the soul the nonsense of madmen.¹³

      The feeling that the philosophy of Averroes, if not also that of Aristotle, posed a threat to the Christian faith was clearly growing stronger with the passage of time. Whatever the nature of the Islamic revelation, Averroes had made Aristotle highly respectable and, in the opinion of some, appeared to give a more systematic treatment of Aristotle’s doctrine of the soul than Aquinas and other orthodox theologians. As a growing number of Christians chose to follow Averroes, the problem of reason and revelation deepened. The eventual result was that interesting, if somewhat elusive, phenomenon which has been abuilding since the middle of the thirteenth century: Latin Averroism. Maintaining that the intellect was one for all men, the Latin Averroists supported a view of human immortality incompatible with their religious allegiance. In the face of the obvious difficulty, they claimed that they were merely defending the position of philosophy, represented by Aristotle, and not denying the truth of the Christian revelation. Reason and revelation were in conflict, and the Latin Averroists could devise no better way to solve the conflict than to try to prevent it, that is, to introduce a radical separation of philosophy from revelation.

      We have noted above some of the earliest condemnations of Aristotelianism between 1210 and 1231. This was hardly the end of the matter. In 1270, Etienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, found it necessary to declare anathema thirteen propositions bearing the name of Arabian authorship, and in 1277 these same views, along with others, were once more censured.¹⁴ In addition, Giles of Rome included in his Errores Philosophorum of 1270 the errors of Aristotle and Averroes.¹⁵ Tempier’s condemnations were aimed at Siger de Brabant (ca. 1240 - ca. 1284) and Boethius of Dacia as propagators of the errors condemned. Bernier of Nivelles and Goswin of La Chapelle are other names usually associated with Latin Averroism in the thirteenth century.

      Despite the refutation of Latin Averroism by Aquinas and other scholastics, and despite the official condemnations, Latin Averroism did not wither away and, indeed, in some respects gained ground. At the University of Paris, the complete Organon of Aristotle with Averroes’ commentaries had been in use in 1255, and, by the fourteenth century, John of Jandun (1275-1328) was the best known Averroist in Paris. In England, John Baconthorp (1290-1348), though not an Averroist, wrote commentaries on Aristotle and Averroes that won the respect of Renaissance Averroists, and Thomas of Wilton (1288-1327) believed that human reason alone could not refute the doctrine of Averroes on the soul.

      We know through Francesco Petrarch (1304-74), a violent critic of Averroism who complained that many scholars of the Renaissance honoured Aristotle in place of Christ and Averroes in place of Peter, that the Averroist movement had reached Italy in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, the movement came to dominate the Italian universities, where it was stronger than in Paris, perhaps because the study of philosophy in Italy was associated with medicine rather than with theology. The Council of Florence and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 also brought many learned Greeks to Italy, and with them their interest in Aristotle’s thought. Well-known Averroists in the fifteenth century are Paolo Veneto (1369-1428), Alexander Achillini (1463-1512), and Nicoletto Vernias (1420-99).

      By the sixteenth century there were two rival camps of interpreters of Aristotle on the soul. According to the Averroists, the intellect was not individual but one for all men and immortal. Then there were those who, following Aquinas, made the possible intellect a power of each human soul, but who were dissatisfied with the proofs offered by Aquinas for the capacity of the individual soul to survive the dissolution of the body of which it was the form. These interpreters were known as Alexandrists, since their view coincided with that of Alexander of Aphrodisias.¹⁶ They, like the Averroists, denied the personal immortality of the soul. They differed from the Averroists in thinking that the possible intellect was a power of each individual soul, and therefore mortal.

      So influential were the positions of the Averroists and the Alexandrists that the Fifth Lateran Council condemned both on December 19, 1513.¹⁷ The decree also ordered professors to refute those who taught the mortality of the soul as dangerous to the Christian faith. However, the decree did not have much effect in Italy, and, in 1518, Agostino Nifo (1473-1538) excused his interest in Averroes on the ground that he is so famous in our time that no one seems to be a peripatetic unless he is an Averroist.¹⁸

      Furthermore, in 1516, Pietro Pomponazzi (1464-1525), drawing support from Alexander of Aphrodisias, wrote his celebrated treatise De Immortalitate Animae¹⁹ against the immortality of the soul. This aroused the opposition alike of both the orthodox theologians and the Averroists, whose favourite doctrine of the unicity of the intellect was denied. Pomponazzi wrote two apologies in defense of his view. The earlier of these is his Apologia of 1517 against Caspar Contarini, afterwards bishop of Belluno. The other is his Defensorium of 1518 against Agostino Nifo, who tried to reconcile the doctrine of Averroes with that of the immortality of the individual soul in his own De Immortalitate Animae. In both apologies Pomponazzi maintained that natural reason alone cannot prove the immortality of the soul, and contended that the doctrine of the mortality of the soul is the proper consequence of the doctrine of Aristotle and Averroes that the soul is the form of the body, though he did accept immortality as an article of faith.²⁰ His position reflects the dilemma of the Christian student of Averroes.

      The Averroist controversy on the immortality of the soul faded away with the waning of interest in Aristotle in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It faded with the Italian Renaissance, which was Platonic rather than Aristotelian. It faded

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