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THE SUPERIORITY OF PHILOSOPHY.
So unbounded was Averroës' admiration for Aristotle that he penned the most exaggerated praise that one philosopher ever
wrote of another.
I consider that that man [Aristotle] was a rule and exemplar which nature devised to show the final
perfection of man … the teaching of Aristotle is the supreme truth, because his mind was the final expression of the
human mind. Wherefore it has been well said that he was created and given to us by divine providence that we might know all
there is to be known. Let us praise God …
1126–1198
Spanish
Islamic philosopher
THE LAST
OF THE GREAT MUSLIM COMMENTATORS.
Ibn Rushd, known as Averroës to Latin-speaking peoples, was the last of the great Muslim commentators on
Aristotle. Born in Córdoba in Spain (or al-Andalus, as the Arabs called it) in 1126 to a family of eminent jurists, Averroës
was educated in law, medicine, philosophy, and theology. In addition, he had a deep interest in and knowledge of the literature
of the Arabs, a knowledge he exploited in his commentary on Aristotle's Poetics. Averroës
was at pains to defend the vocation of philosophy, arguing that not only is the pursuit of wisdom not forbidden by the Koran,
it is expressly commanded—for those, that is, who have the intellectual acumen. No conflict need arise between the small
and exclusive class of philosophers and the common people or even the theologians, if only these classes would confine themselves
to the mode of argument of which they are capable. Of the three modes of proof outlined by Aristotle in the Rhetoric—exhortations,
dialectics, and rational demonstrations—the first was the only appropriate approach to truth for the uneducated masses;
the theologians' capacity to understand probable arguments meant that dialectics was most suitable for them; and the philosophers
were the only ones able to follow rational demonstrations. They were enjoined, however, not to lord it over the lower classes,
but to pursue their studies with the conviction that they enjoyed the most direct road to the truth.
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The Writings of AVERROËS
A century earlier al-Ghazali had written a work entitled Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of Philosophy),
in which—like David Hume centuries later—he attacked the principle of causality in an attempt to preserve God's
infinite power. He argued that human beings do not in fact cause anything, but merely provide the occasion for God to act
directly. Al-Ghazali's reasoning thus strips secondary causes of any role in action and in turn renders philosophy a useless
pursuit. Averroës answered this attack on philosophy in his work Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence),
pointing out succinctly but effectively the sophistries in al-Ghazali's arguments:Denial of cause implies the denial of knowledge,
and the denial of knowledge implies that nothing in this world can be really known, and that what is supposed to be known
is nothing but opinion, that neither proof nor definition exist, and that the essential attributes which compose definitions
are void.
THE END OF THE MUSLIM GOLDEN AGE.
Averroës' privileged status came to an abrupt end when his patron died and the
patron's son, having decided that the philosophers blaspheme the true religion, sent him into exile. Three years later, in
1198, he was exonerated and allowed to live in Marrakech where he died a short time later at age 72. With the death of Averroës
the Golden Age of Philosophy among the Muslims came to an end, a victim of religious fundamentalism. It is ironic that this
greatest commentator on Aristotle enjoyed his most avid and attentive readership, not among his own people, but in the Latin
West. 
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