Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe

This book traces the reception of Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, covering the Renaissance to the rise of Oriental studies. It examines how Western authors contextualized Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage.

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd,the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?

Preface.- Introduction, A. Akasoy and G. Giglioni.- Middle Ages and Renaissance.- Averroes’ Criticisms of Avicenna’s Philosophy in Latin Philosophy and Historiograph, A.Bertolacci.- The Giuntine Aristotle-Averroes Edition (1550-1552) Revisited, C. Burnett.- Super-Commentaries: The Renaissance Resurgence of Commentaries on Averroes, C. Martin.- Marsilio Ficino, the Platonic Mind and the Monster of Averroes, M. J.B. Allen.- The ‘Transmutations’ of a Young Averroist: The Account of Celestial Influences in Agostino Nifo’s Commentary on Averroes’ Destructio destructionum, N. Holland.- Intellectual Beatitude in the Averroist Tradition: The Case of Agostino Nifo, L. Spruit.- Averroistic Themes in Girolamo Cardano’s De immortalitate animorum, J.M.G. Valverde.- Phantasms of Reason and Shadows of Matter: Averroes’s Notion of the Imagination and Its Renaissance Interpreters, G. Giglioni.- The early modern period.- Cambridge Platonists and Averroism, S. Hutton.- Reconsidering the Case of Elijah Delmedigo’s Averroism and its Impact on Spinoza, C. Fraenkel.- Averroes and Arabic Philosophy in the Modern Historia philosophica (17th-18th Centuries), G. Piaia.- Immanuel Kant, Universal Understanding, and the Meaning of Averroism in the German Enlightenment, M. Sgarbi.- Averroism and modernity.- Latin Averroism: From Myth to History to Fiction, J. Marenbon.- Leo Strauss and the Alethiometer, J. Montgomery.- Was Ibn Rushd an Averroist? The Problem, the Debate and its Philosophical Implications, A. Akasoy. ​