Averroes

Key ideas

Truth does not oppose truth

Demonstrative reasoning can’t disagree with what the religious law sets down, “for truth does not oppose truth, but rather agrees with and bears witness to it”. Philosophy belongs at the centre of religious inquiry, not as an alternative to religion.

Aristotle as guide

Averroes wrote commentaries on nearly all of Aristotle’s works, holding that no one after Aristotle had “been able to add a word worthy of attention” to what he said. In Latin Europe he became known simply as “the Commentator”.

Against occasionalism

Averroes scorned the theologians’ view that when a man pushes a stone, God and not the man creates the motion. Things have natures that determine what each of them does.

One intellect for all

In his final view, the “material” intellect by which we understand is, like the agent intellect, a single, separate, eternal substance that all human beings share. He admitted he had never seen the idea in anyone before him.

Arguments for every audience

Where strict demonstration isn’t practical, other kinds of argument must be used. Ordinary people are better persuaded of God’s existence by arguments from design, as in the Qur’an, than by the theologians’ abstract proofs.