Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect / Edition 1

by Herbert Alan Davidson

Overview

A study of problems revolving around the subject of intellect in the philosophies of Alfarabi (d. 950), Avicenna (980-1037), and Averroes (1126-1198), this book pays particular attention to the way in which these philosophers addressed the tangle of issues that grew up around the active intellect. Davidson starts by reviewing discussions in Greek and early Arabic philosophy that served as the background for the three Arabic thinkers. He examines the cosmologies and theories of human and active intellect of the three philosophers and covers such subjects as the emanation of the supernal realm from the First Cause, the emanation of the lower world from the transcendent active intellect, stages of human intellect, illumination of the human intellect by the transcendent active intellect, conjunction of the human intellect with the transcendent active intellect, prophecy, and human immortality. Davidson traces the impact of the three philosophers on medieval Jewish philosophy and Latin Scholasticism. He shows that the later medieval Jewish philosophers and the Scholastics had differing perceptions of Averroes because they happened to use works belonging to different periods of his philosophic career. This book will be of interest to the student and scholar in medieval philosophy, the history of philosophy, and medieval culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195074239
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	06/28/1992
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.56(h) x 1.34(d)

About the Author

University of California, Los Angeles

Table of Contents

1.	Introduction	3
2.	Greek and Arabic Antecedents	7
	Stages of Human Intellect	9
	The Kind of Entity That the Active Intellect Is	13
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Human Thought	18
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence	29
	Conjunction with the Active Intellect; Immortality	34
3.	Alfarabi on Emanation, the Active Intellect, and Human Intellect	44
	Al-Madina al-Fadila and al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya	44
	Alfarabi's Philosophy of Aristotle	63
	The Risala fi al-Aql	65
	Alfarabi's Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics	70
	Concluding Note	73
4.	Avicenna on Emanation, the Active Intellect, and Human Intellect	74
	The Emanation of the Universe; the Active Intellect as a Cause of the Existence of the Sublunar World	74
	Stages of Human Intellect; the Active Intellect as the Cause of Human Thought	83
	Imagination, Cogitation, Insight	95
	Conjunction and Immortality	103
	Prophecy	116
	Summary	124
5.	Reverberations of the Theories of Alfarabi and Avicenna	127
	Avicenna's Islamic Successors	127
	Reverberations in Medieval Jewish Philosophy	180
	Reverberations in Scholastic Philosophy	209
	Summary	218
6.	Averroes on Emanation and on the Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence	220
	General Considerations	220
	The Emanation of the Universe	223
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: Epitomes of the Parva naturalia and the Metaphysics	232
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: The Commentary on De generatione animalium	242
	The Active Intellect as a Cause of Existence: The Long Commentary on the Metaphysics and Tahafut al-Tahafut (Destructio destructionum)	245
	Summary	254
7.	Averroes on the Material Intellect	258
	Introduction	258
	The Epitome of the De anima and the Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction	265
	A Minor Composition on Conjunction and the Middle Commentary on the De anima	274
	Averroes' Long Commentary on the De anima and his Commentary on Alexander's De intellectu	282
	Summary	295
	Averroes' Theories of Material Intellect as Reflected in Subsequent Jewish and Christian Thought	298
8.	Averroes on the Active Intellect as the Cause of Human Thought	315
	The Passage of the Human Intellect to Actuality	315
	The Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect; Immortality	321
	Prophecy	340
	Averroes' Shifting Picture of the Universe and of Man's Place in It	351
	Index	357

Editorial Reviews

"This is one of the most impressive scholarly books that I have seen in a long time. It is informed, erudite, well-researched, and well-structured."—Arthur Hyman, Yeshiva University

"Davidson's book is an absolutely indispensable and unique tool for all scholars of medieval angelologies and theories of intellect—both Eastern and Western—who are unable to read the Arabic sources in the original. The feature which makes this work stand out favorably among other similar studies is that the amount of detail and precision of descriptions almost makes it into an anthology of original texts."—Ruminatio

"This book is a masterful exposition of medieval writings on the "most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy,"(p.3), those concerning the intellect which Aristotle wrote Book Three of De anima, chapters 4 and 5....Davidson has impressive linguistic and analytical skills, enabling him to interpret difficult texts with seeming ease and confidence."—International Studies in Philosophy

"Davidson organizes his book in an extemely lucid, even schematic, way.... a wonderfully lucid quide to the Aristotelian tradition on intellect in the Middle Ages."—The Jewish Quarterly Review

"Nothing of comparable breadth or depth and quality of analysis and argument exists on this topic today....Davidson's excellent contribution to the study of the understanding of intellect in the Middle Ages belongs not only in every research library but also in the personal libraries of all serious students of Medieval philosophical and religious thought."—Journal of Neoplatonic Studies

"The literary and philosophic topics addressed in this monograph are perhaps the most difficult to decipher in the history of Western thought. Thanks to Davidson's embattled "history of philosophic ideas" and his uncanny knack for sorting out textual and conceptual confusions, the original meaning and subsequent interpretations of Aristotelian cosmology and intellect are no longer so hazy and intimidatingly enigmatic."— The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies

From the Publisher