Theories of the Soul vs. Medical Knowledge: Averroës as an Authority in Thirteenth-Century France
The intellectual florescence of thirteenth-century France, and Paris in particular, was vibrant, yet it confronted scholastic thinkers with a range of both new and continuing problems.
Aquinas, Averroes, and the Human Will
Scholars have largely read Aquinas’ critique of Averroes on the issue of will and moral responsibility in a positive light.
The Morality of Misogyny: The Case of Rustico Filippi, Vituperator of Women
At the outset of his influential study on Rabelais, Mikhail Bakhtin makes an interesting observation. The scholar dedicates several pages to detail how the French author’s critical reception changed over time. Bakhtin illustrates how the attempt to comprehend an author can frequently be stymied by the cultural changes that occur across the centuries.
The Islamic Scholar Who Gave Us Modern Philosophy
Abū al-Walīd Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Rushd—or Averroës, as he was known to Latin readers—was born in 1126 at the far western edge of the Islamic world, in Córdoba, Spain.
Religious and Scientific Duality of Thought: How Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazili Set the Agenda for Medieval Scholastic Debates
Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazili ’s rather specious use of logic introduces the differentiation of religious and “scientific” or philosophical truths: an important, necessary, and previously unarticulated distinction which reverberated in the cathedrals and universities of Europe and which remains relevant for contemporary thinkers faced with similar dilemmas.
Memory, Individuals, and the Past in Averroes’s Psychology
Despite the resurgence of interest in the medieval conception of memory among scholars working in a wide variety of disciplines within medieval studies, little attention has been paid in recent times to the conception of memory found in the psychological writings of medieval philosophers, especially those from the Arabic tradition.