PhilosophersAverroès (Ibn Rushd)

Averroès (Ibn Rushd)

Truth cannot contradict truth: philosophy and faith agree.

Falsafa (Arabic Aristotelianism) · Aristotelianism1126 – 1198 SpainPhilosopher (falsafa)Commentator on AristotleJudge (qadi) and juristPhysician

Inspirations

Aristote the master he commented on all his life

Al-Farabilogic and Greek philosophy in Arabic

Avicenne the great philosopher of Islam, whom he often criticises

Ibn Bajja (Avempace), Ibn Tufaylthe philosophers of al-Andalus before him; Ibn Tufayl introduced him to the caliph

Al-Ghazali The Incoherence of the Philosophers, which he answers

Heirs

Thomas d'Aquin reads him as "the Commentator" on Aristotle, but fights his thesis of the single intellect

Siger de Brabant"Latin Averroism" in Paris

Danteplaces him in Limbo, "Averroes, who made the great commentary"

Ernest RenanAverroes and Averroism (1852)

how it is computed

Closest

G. K. Chesterton Before clearing away a fence whose use you cannot see, find out why it was put there.

Martin Luther King Jr. Minister and leader of the civil rights movement: he defends nonviolent disobedience to unjust laws, openly and accepting the penalty.

Raymond Lulle He imagines an art of combining basic ideas mechanically, with rotating discs, to discover truths.

Avicenna The soul knows it exists before any body: the flying man.

Furthest

Richard Rorty Talk of sensations might one day disappear, replaced by the language of neuroscience.

Rudolf Carnap Member of the Vienna Circle: a statement that can be neither verified nor reduced to a rule of logic has no meaning, and metaphysics is full of them.