Razón y Revelación en la Edad Media: la primacía de la Razón
Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages: the Primacy of Reason

Summary/Abstract: The Primacy of Reason analyzes the emergence of a medieval rationalism of a strictly philosophical nature, independent of both modern science and Christian theology, whose decisive representative is Averroes. In contrast to earlier attempts to reconcile philosophy and faith in the Islamic world, the Andalusian thinker upholds the primacy of Aristotelian demonstration as the only full access to truth, relegating religion and theology to a pedagogical and normative function directed toward the non-philosophical majority. On the basis of a classification of human beings according to their intellectual capacities–rhetorical, dialectical, and demonstrative– Averroes justifies the coexistence of reason and religion without granting them epistemic equality. According to Gilson, this conception leads to a form of philosophical esotericism and accounts both for Averroes’ biographical difficulties in the Islamic world and for the conflictive reception of his thought in the Christian West. The text then examines thirteenth-century Latin Averroism, distinguishing between a believing variant, grounded in the separation of reason and faith, and another of an directly irreligious orientation. Finally, it shows how the Parisian condemnations of 1277 underscore the historical significance of this rationalism and its decisive role in shaping later scholastic thought, particularly in relation to the Thomistic response.

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