AVERROES, AKVINSKI I PONOVNO OTKRIĆE ARISTOTELA U ZAPADNOJ EVROPI
AVERROES, AQUINAS AND THE REDISCOVERY OF ARISTOTLE IN WESTERN EUROPE

Summary/Abstract: Despite the enthusiasm with which Aristotle, as interpreted by Averroes, was received in learned circles in Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century, serious questions began to be asked concerning the degree to which Aristotle’s teachings on metaphysics and cosmology could be reconciled with Christian doctrine. The pivotal point was the tendency of the new Aristotelian-Averroist current to consecrate the primacy of reason at the expense of the primacy of faith. Averroes himself never really subscribed to such a theory (according to which a proposition may be true in philosophy but not true in theology and vice versa), and it is doubtful, according to Gilson and other mediaevalists, whether Siger of Braban and Boethius of Dacia, headed by some other Latin Averroist, themselves did so; but what is certain that St Thomas Aquinas was referring to some Latin Averroist in Paris whose name he did not wish to disclose. In fact, Averroes maintains a position which may be called the “parity” of truth, philosophical and religious. In this view, as Dr Majid Fakhry tries to explain in this very important essay, philosophical truth, although superior to religious truth, is not really incompatible with, or even different from it. In Dr Majid Fakhry’s view, it is noteworthy that in grappling with God’s knowledge of particulars St Thomas arrives at a similar conclusion: in knowing Himself as the Cause of First Principle of created entities, God knows all things. Therein lay the response of both Averroes and Aquinas to Aristotle’s claim in Metaphysics XII.1074b 26, that it does not become the Unmoved Mover to think of anything inferior to itself. Dr Majid Fakhry wrote this paper as visiting professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in Washington in the academic year 1996-1997. Prior to this he was a lecturer at the prestige SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) of the University of London, and chair and professor of philosophy at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, associate professor at Georgetown University, Washington, visiting professor at universities such as the Lebanese National University, University of California in Los Angeles, Princeton University, University of Kuwait, and Fellow of St Anthony’s College, Oxford, UK. His works include A History of Islamic Philosophy; Studies in Arabic Thought; Kitab al-Burhan; Ethical Theories in Islam; Greek Philosophy from Tales to Proclus; Philosophy, Dogma and the Impact of Greek Thought in Islam; Introduction to Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism; The Qur’an, a Modern English Version. Majid Fakhry, Averroes, Aquinas and the Rediscovery of Aristotle in Western Europe, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding: History and International Affairs – Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Occasional Papers Series, Washington, D.C. 1997, pp.43.

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