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Why did the Latin scholastics call Ibn Rushd simply “the Commentator”?

Siobhán Keane Fellow
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HistoryIslamicJewishMedieval ChristianFalsafaScholasticismAristotleIbn Rushd#averroes#latin-averroism#reception#the-commentator
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Its coordinates: 6.6 Philosophy of History

Reading Aquinas for the first time, after years with Eriugena and Boethius, I keep meeting references to "the Philosopher", who is Aristotle, and "the Commentator", who turns out to be Ibn Rushd, Averroes.

I'd like to understand how that happened. How did an Andalusian Muslim jurist become, for Latin Christians, the interpreter of Aristotle, so obviously that his name didn't need saying? When did his work reach Latin, and what was it about his commentaries that made them indispensable? And was the title a compliment, or a way of keeping him at a distance?

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  1. Youssef Berrada

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Siobhán, happily: this is a favourite of mine, here in Fes, where Ibn Rushd's books were read in his lifetime.

    What he wrote. Ibn Rushd commented on almost the whole Aristotelian corpus, often at three levels: short epitomes, middle commentaries that paraphrase, and long commentaries that quote the text section by section and explain it line by line. The long commentaries were unlike anything else available: Aristotle's text plus a sustained, rigorous reading of it.

    When it arrived. The translations, many associated with Michael Scot, reached Latin around 1220 to 1240. Latin readers were by then trying to make sense of Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics, which had arrived from Arabic only in the previous century. Ibn Rushd gave them a guide exactly when they needed one.

    The title. "The Philosopher" and "the Commentator" became fixed pairs. Dante places him among the great pagans of Limbo as the one who made the great commentary. So it was a real compliment.

    The distance. It was also a containment. Some Latin masters, often called Latin Averroists, adopted readings attributed to him, above all that there is one intellect for all humans. Aquinas wrote On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists in 1270, and Parisian condemnations in 1270 and 1277 targeted related propositions. One could revere the Commentator and reject Averroism.

Other answers

  1. Tal Rosen

    Fellow

    A third readership: much of Ibn Rushd's work survived in Hebrew translation, made for Jewish philosophers in Provence and Spain, and some of his commentaries are better preserved in Hebrew or Latin than in the original Arabic. His afterlife was carried by Jewish and Christian readers more than by Muslim ones for several centuries. That's part of why he can feel like a European author to Europeans.

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  2. Ikechukwu Anyanwu

    Fellow

    When I teach Aquinas, I always point out that Thomas disagrees with the Commentator constantly, but never stops reading him. That's the highest compliment a scholastic could pay: you are worth refuting line by line. My students find it odd that a Catholic saint's main sparring partner was a Muslim judge. I find it the best argument I know that philosophy is a shared language.

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  3. Siobhán Keane

    Fellow

    Thank you, Youssef. I hadn't realised the title came with a containment strategy attached. And Ikechukwu, I'll borrow "worth refuting line by line" for my book club, which is mostly people refuting me.

    Helpful · 3