Latin Averroism

Aristotle and the University of Paris.

While the works of the Muslim commentators on Aristotle were certainly cited by the Oxford masters, it was only at Paris that a distinct school evolved that took its inspiration from one of these commentators. The movement was known as "Latin Averroism," after the Spanish Islamic philosopher Averroës, the principal commentator on Aristotle's work, and originated in the arts faculty in the course of the 1260s. With its concentration on philosophy in its many branches (including disciplines that would today be counted among the sciences, like botany and physics), the bachelor of arts degree was the first earned by a university student in the Middle Ages. The professors in the arts faculty were expected to "reign" for a respectable time and then move on to one of the higher faculties, such as theology, law, or medicine. Non est senescendum in artibus—"do not grow old in the arts"—was a well known and widely observed saying.

Philosophy as a Separate Discipline.

It was, at any rate, among these philosophy professors that the conviction took hold that Aristotle represented the incarnation of the purest reason and that one could not go beyond the philosopher in matters of the human reason. Not only did they have a model in the great Aristotle, but masters were also gradually becoming more conscious of the value of philosophy as a discipline, a subject of study that could be pursued as an end in itself and not simply as a "handmaid" to theology. In other words, they wished to investigate what the philosophers had to say without concerning themselves about the implications for religious belief. The leaders of the movement, Siger of Brabant (c. 1240–between 1281 and 1284) and Boethius of Dacia (d. before 1277), saw their roles as ascertaining what the philosophers had held on the subject of the soul, for example, "by seeking the mind of the philosophers rather than the truth, since we are proceeding philosophically." In his earlier writings on the soul (before 1270) Siger maintained that the human intellect was eternally caused by God as Aristotle professed, a view which he regarded as more probable than Augustine's view that God created the soul in time and upon the conception of the body. He later modified this view somewhat, and in a recently discovered treatise he is seen to hold a view that is quite orthodox. Whether orthodox or not, the stratagem adopted by Siger and his associates was that they were presenting views that were not necessarily their own, but rather the views of Aristotle.

The Problem of "Double Truth."

Siger and Boethius and other Latin Averroists were clerics and hence bound in a kind of institutional way to uphold Christian teachings. So when some of these teachings contradicted positions argued by the pagan Aristotle, as was the case with the mortality of the rational soul and the eternal duration of the world, these philosophers were faced with the difficulty of reconciling their religious beliefs with their philosophical convictions. Although no textual evidence survives to support this, the claim was made by the Averroists' enemies that they held a doctrine of "double truth"—that is, that one could hold one proposition as true according to one's faith and its precise opposite as true according to one's reason. In other words, it was possible for the same intellect to maintain that the soul was immortal (by faith) and yet not immortal (by reason).

Lasting Influences.

This movement came under official condemnation by the bishop of Paris and the archbishop of Canterbury in 1277, but it managed to continue into the Renaissance as a viable school of philosophy. It found a welcome home in northern Italian universities such as Padua, and some say that even Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, was influenced by it. Curiously, he places one of its leading lights, Siger of Brabant, in his Paradiso, in the company of Aquinas, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Boethius, Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, and a half dozen other saints and doctors.

sources

B. Carlos Bazán, "Siger of Brabant," in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Eds. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (London: Blackwell, 2003): 632–640.

David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London: Longmans, 1962): 269–277.

Armand Maurer, Medieval Philosophy. 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1982): 192–204.

John F. Wippel, "The Parisian Condemnations of 1270 and 1277," in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Eds. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone (London: Blackwell, 2003): 65–73.