13 September 2020. Lecture 4 of 5, for Class on 17 September 2020
Philosophy and Religion in the Arabic Tradition and Its Importance for Aquinas
Philosophy and Religion in the Arabic Philosophical Tradition and its Importance for Aquinas
Students should study the four (4) videos on al-Farabi, Ibn Sina / Avicenna and Ibn Rushd / Averroes as well as these lecture notes.
Texts Link
Part One: The Arabic Tradition
Al-Kindi reasoned in his work, On First Philosophy, that the foreign science of falsafa / philosophy should be allowed a place alongside of the religious sciences since it can be an aid to the understanding of God as the One sought after in religious studies of Tawhīd or Unity. In this way philosophical metaphysics and religious theological studies were understood to coincide in the same object. His proposal was a reasonable one (though religious thinkers perhaps saw no place, value or need for a foreign science beyond the Qur’an — think about the later Latin notion of sola scriptura) — and in this work he establishes the unity of the One as the source and cause of all other unities in things constituting all reality, something also found in the final chapter of the Kalām fī maḥḍ al-khair (Discourse on the Pure Good, latin Liber de causis). In doing so he drew upon Aristotle as well as on the reasoning of the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus. In this way philosophy with its method of demonstration was presented as a congenial partner in the worship of God through the attainment of knowledge of God’s creation and of God Himself. Yet in this arrangement there were serious problems lurking that came to light in the development of philosophical thought from al-Farabi, through Ibn Sina / Avicenna to Ibn Rushd / Averroes . What problem? Chiefly, if philosophy and religion are co-equal ways of attaining knowledge of Divine Tawḥīd (Unity), philosophy with its method of demonstrative science yielding truth may well make a claim of priority over rational theology /kalām in the matter of scriptural interpretation! This indeed did prove to be the case for several major philosophers albeit in sometimes differing ways. This started with al-Farabi who was called the Second Teacher, the First Teacher being Aristotle, of course!
The three major figures of the Arabic Classical Rationalist Tradition, al-Farabi (d.950), Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna (d.1037) and Ibn Rushd /Averroes (d.1198), all held for the primacy of reason and philosophy in the discernment and attainment of truth. Religion was recognized as essential to the formation of character toward the end of right action by all three. Al-Farabi begins his Book of Religion with the statement that religion is about “opinions” for the sake of human community developed by the ruler. Drawing both on Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and other works as received through a tradition largely influenced by Neoplatonism, al-Farabi sketched similar accounts in various works based on the notion that the highest science of metaphysics is concerned with being-qua-being (the subject matter of the science of metaphysics is being-qua-being and not God as al-Kindi had taught) and religion was concerned with practical actions in the formation of a morally sound or perfect and completely good society. Religion provides the laws in accord with which the attainment of fulfillment and happiness could ideally be reached. In his development of the account of religion as a subdivision of political science al-Farabi’s concern is the formation of virtue in the community for the sake of the attainment of ultimate happiness. While elsewhere that ultimate happiness is explained to be only for the philosophers of highest intellectual achievement, in the Book of Religion his concern is for bringing about and maintaining a community of moral excellence. Only in such a community could a philosopher arise. The formation of the community in this practical science aimed at action is subject to or guided by the truths known through theoretical sciences which explain the natures and capacities of things. In his Attainment of Happiness he spells out the primacy of the theoretical sciences more fully. The way to happiness or fulfillment in its highest form is through the study of logic and the philosophical sciences both theoretical and practical as outlined by al-Farabi in The Attainment of Happiness. For al-Farabi religion conveys the truth to people but by way of images crafted for actions in this division of the practical sciences. As such the truths known in theoretical sciences are presented in religion as imitations tailored to the abilities of the people addressed. Elsewhere al-Farabi even sets out the notion that philosophy is prior to religion insofar as it provides the final and formal causes of it.
For a valuable recent overview of the thought of al-Farabi, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article by Th.-A. Druart: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-farabi/.
Also watch this 36 min. video lecture on al-Farabi and his The Attainment of Happiness:
As Dimitri Gutas has indicated (see his article, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Project,” in Interpreting Avicenna. Critical Essays, P. Adamson, ed. 2013), Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna sought to give an account of reality that included the common characteristics of religious phenomena. Still, for Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna truth is foremost found in wisdom (ḥikma) or philosophy (falsafa) and provided to the masses through a prophet with extraordinary natural talents — particularly that of imagination — for portraying to the majority of non-philosophical human beings truths that guide them toward fulfillment in accord with their abilities. Prophecy for Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna is a natural phenomenon involving sometimes the assistance of angels but more regularly the natural talents of a human being both to apprehend and understand reality particularly well and to convey proper guidance by way of other strong natural talents of human imaginative communication. In this prophecy — which he regards as something necessary for human beings (see his treatise “On the Proof of Prophecies and the Interpretation of the Prophets’ Symbols and Metaphors,” tr. M. E. Marmura in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Lerner & Mahdi 1963; also see Marmura, “Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna’s Psychological Proof of Prophecy,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22 (1963)) — Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna provides a naturalistic account which locates the powers of prophecy in the human prophet and that person’s relationship to the separate agent intellect. That is, prophecy depends on the natural and developed abilities of the prophet rather than on a particular intentional action sent by God. True prophets are philosophers who have knowledge and science as well as special talents for conveying philosophical knowledge to people untrained in philosophy and unsuited for philosophical study. For Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna communications can be received from the angels and from the Agent Intellect but it is only the transformation of these by a naturally talented prophet having extraordinary imaginative skills that revelation is presented to the people in ways using proper and effective images for bringing about the fulfillment of people in lives of practical excellence or moral virtue. This life of practical excellence and moral virtue is a prerequisite for the development of the rational soul in knowledge and understanding. In this life the burden is on individuals to realize themselves as rational beings for the sake of the fulfillment found in the afterlife in the presence of the Agent Intellect and the knowing of God. Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna is deeply committed to his philosophical account even to the point of the reinterpretation of religious doctrine to fit with his rational philosophical teachings. Michael Marmura, my teacher at the University of Toronto, was the translator of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna’s Metaphysics and al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers into English and author of many articles. His last article which I had the privilege of editing and publishing in 2012 was entitled, Avicenna and Traditional Islamic Belief” and deals with the thought of al-Farabi, Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna and al-Ghazali. The issue at stake is the traditional Islamic doctrine of the resurrection of the body. For Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna, given his conception of the immaterial rational soul as the real self-developed through use of the body in earthly life and without need of body in the afterlife, the question is how he could reconcile his philosophical conception of soul with traditional Islamic belief in resurrection. His solution is, apparently, to draw on some texts of al-Farabi and to claim that someone once indicated that perhaps the soul in the afterlife imagined itself to have a body, though of course it could not really have a body. Now there are some interesting issues here concerning meaning and interpretation and consistency. Imagination for Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna is a bodily power, so how could imagination be involved in the immaterial separated human soul in the afterlife? Is there another imagination that belongs to the rational soul apart from the power of imagination in the brain of the body? Since the late 12th Century the thinkers of the Latin tradition had an account of the thought of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna regarding this in books 9 & 10 of his Metaphysics of the Shifā‘ in Latin translation.
Watch this video on Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna happiness, religion and prophecy:
The account of religion by Ibn Rushd /Ibn Rushd /Averroes largely follows and expands on that of al-Farabi and is in some respects in accord with the general sense of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna. For Ibn Rushd /Averroes there is a distinction of discourses, one external to be widely shared among human beings and another internal reserved for the wise not to be shared with those unable to understand the true complexities and nature of God and creation. The theoretical foundations for this methodology are found in his short work, Faṣl al-maqāl, “The Book of the Distinction of Discourse and the Establishment of the Connection between the Religious Law and Philosophy” (scil The Decisive Treatise), and reflected in his work, al-Kashf (“Explanation of the Sorts of Proofs in the Doctrines of Religion”), his Damima or “Treatise on Divine Knowledge” and his Tahaft al-tahafut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”). None of these works were available to Aquinas in Latin translation. In the Faṣl al-maqāl it is dialectically reasoned that the study of philosophy is religiously commanded for those capable. This is established through a dialectical account and an equivocation. The Qur’an teaches the analogical reasoning or qiyās should be used by human beings seeking to understand its teachings. The Qur’an also teaches that in seeking this understanding very best form of qiyas should be used. That very best form is burhān, philosophical demonstration. How can this be so? A second meaning of qiyās is syllogistic. Hence, by a simple equivocation he now concludes that the Qur’an itself teaches that the most perfect form of syllogistic, demonstration, is the tool to be used in the study of religious law for the guidance of the Islamic community. And this should be used only by those specifically trained in its use, the philosophers. Further, he also reasons that philosophy is dominant over religious interpretation where the two might conflict because “truth does not contradict truth,” a quotation from Aristotle’s Prior Analytics well hidden inside the Faṣl al-maqāl until 2000, as are other teachings from Aristotle’s logical writings. Further, in his highly technical Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Ibn Rushd /Averroes explains clearly that the most perfect form of religious worship is one specific to the philosophers (ash-sharī‘ah al-khāṣṣah bi-l-ḥukamā’) consisting in the study of the Creator and creatures in the science of metaphysics. (See Taylor 2012. This particular passage was not translated into Latin.) At the De Caelo conference in Pisa in 2018 Prof. Gerhard Endress spoke of philosophy as being a common religion for all the philosophers regardless of their confessional practice of Islam, Judaism or Christianity. Elsewhere Endress calls the common approach a propaganda de philosophia. In yet another work on argumentation used in religious discourses (al-Kashf ‘an al-manāhij), Ibn Rushd / Averroes speaks of prophecy and states that miracles or surprising tricks are no proof the veracity of one professing to acclaim prophetic messages. Rather, the proof lies in the outcome and is determined by whether the purported prophet has in fact rightly guided human beings in their social contexts to proper moral conduct and character. Hence, that marvelous outcome proves that this prophecy is miraculous. But, wait. Ibn Rushd /Averroes elsewhere in his Incoherence of the Incoherence argues against miracles as ad hoc divine interventions into the disruption of nature. How can we reconcile all these things Ibn Rushd /Averroes has said and how can we come to see the real meaning of his teachings when it comes to religion and philosophy?
This is the project of Ibn Rushd /Averroes mentioned by Prof. G. Endress at the marvelous 2018 Pisa conference on the Arabic De Caelo.
To do this we must follow the guidance Ibn Rushd /Averroes provides in his Fasl al-maqāl. A work which is not only a legal determination of the obligatory need for the use of philosophy in religious contexts, the Fasl al-maqāl is also a discourse on method. According to this, one should divide discourse into ẓāhir and mu‘awwal, evident and interpreted. The first is for those philosophically untrained and perhaps incapable of philosophy. Ibn Rushd /Averroes ’s works in this modality of discourse are religiously founded works: Fasl al-maqāl, al-Kashf, Tahafut at-Tahafut and the so-called Damima or Treatise on Divine Knowledge. These differ from one another in a number of ways but all are written inside the evident / ẓāhir discourse of Islam. All presume the truth of Islam and its fundamental doctrines, even the Tahafut at-Tahafut which provides detailed philosophical argumentation in many of its passages. These are works to be shared among the educated public and religious leaders of his day. However, the interpreted or mu‘awwal are writings that provide philosophical and scientific accounts at variance with the more figurative accounts suitable for the non-philosophical, these writings that must not be shared with those insufficiently educated in philosophy and the sciences. It is in these specialist works that issues such as the nature of the soul in relation to the afterlife, the natures of divine creation, of providence, of prophecy and of God Himself as understood in philosophy (commentaries and writings on Aristotle’s De Anima, Metaphysics, De caelo, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and more) are discussed in detail, that is, in Ibn Rushd /Averroes ’s Neoaristotelianism meant to recapture the truths set out by Aristotle. But under this plan of classification — one surely inspired by the writings of al-Farabi — Ibn Rushd /Averroes sets out a speculative worldview with a very idiosyncratic conception of Islam. In accordance with the method spelled out in the Faṣl al-maqāl, priority is to be given to philosophical knowledge in any conflict between philosophy or science and religious interpretation of scripture. Accounts of religion for those who are not philosophers must be reconciled in a way to be in accord with philosophy as much as possible without disclosing the fullest truth to those who are not philosopers, as we find in the al-Kashf. There he uses largely Aristotelian philosophical thought to attack religious reasoning and teachings not in accord with the truth (of philosophy). At the same time in this work, which he declared to be ẓāhir NOT mu‘awwal, he carefully supports key foundational religious teachings such as creation, prophecy and more in ways permissible and suitable to his religious audience, even if elsewhere he provides mu‘awwal accounts very different from the understandings of people reading his ẓāhir writings.
I will expand more on this at class, but I want to consider one more relevant matter in the philosophical writings of Ibn Rushd /Averroes .
In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle in his remarks on Book 2, alpha elaton (for Ibn Rushd / Averroes this was the first, opening book of the work), he makes some important remarks relevant to religion. There Aristotle says that knowing the highest causes of all things, indeed the highest cause, is for us like the owl trying to see the sun in the light of day. Ibn Rushd /Averroes interprets this such that this sight is extremely difficult but not impossible. He reasons that it is in the very teleology of humans that they attempt this and this teleological desire naturally built into human beings ought not go unfulfilled. This is in accord with the view of Aristotle expressed in Nicomachean Ethics 10.7 that some human beings can through intellect enjoy what God enjoys at all times. For Ibn Rushd /Averroes some humans who are philosophers of the highest rank can enjoy the fulfillment of knowledge in the understanding of the natures of highest causes, even God to some extent, during the short period of their lifetimes. This is the highest achievement and fulfillment for a human being. And it is an achievement not just of a human being but of human being as such. What makes this possible is right religion that orders the lives of humans in society providing the conditions of the development of the philosopher. I will take this matter up again in the second part of today’s lecture since Thomas Aquinas furiously attacks this account by Ibn Rushd /Averroes in a way that reveals much about Aquinas and his understanding of the end of human beings and the relationship of religion and philosophy. (This could be a very interesting course paper topic. It has been discussed in secondary literature but that literature needs critical analysis and rethinking.)
Watch these video lectures on Ibn Rushd /Averroes , Faṣl al-maqāl :
For an introduction to the thought of Ibn Rushd /Averroes , see
Readings:
A large array of texts is provided for students in the TEXTS folder for this class.
For a recent article on philosophy and religion, particularly on prophecy, see this article in the TEXTS folder: Taylor 2018 Ibn Rushd /Averroes and the Philosophical Account of Prophecy SGA 8 2018.pdf
The following should be considered required reading. Make your best reasonable effort.
Al-Farabi, “The Book of Religion,” extract from Alfarabi. The Political Writings v. II Political Regime and Summary of Plato’s Laws, tr. Butterworth (2015).
Al-Farabi, Attainment of Happiness. Extract from al-Farabi Philosophy of Plato & Aristotle. Tr. M. Mahdi rev ed 2001.
Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna, Metaphysics 9.7, 10.1-3, and 10.5. Tr. Marmura, 2005.
Ibn Rushd /Averroes , Faṣal al-maqāl (the so-called Decisive Treatise). Tr. G. F. Hourani
Secondary sources: In additional to those mentioned above, explore the materials provided in Texts Link to OneDrive.
Part Two: Thomas Aquinas
The conception of the relationship of philosophy and religion for Aquinas is vastly different from what is found in the classical rationalist tradition of Arabic / Islamic philosophy. In Europe from the time of Augustine one can say that philosophy developed inside the context of religion both figuratively and literally since it grew inside monasteries and among churchmen. Its independence or claims to independence developed most evidently in the context of arts faculties such as that of Paris in the 13th century where Latin Averroism was growing. Let’s delve a bit more into this rationalist Latin Averroism, though we cannot treat its many aspects exhaustively.
My friend Luca Bianchi who is chair of the Philosophy Department at the State University of Milan set out an interesting thesis about Latin Averroism and the conception of Double Truth in 13th century thought in his 2017 article, “From Pope Urban VIII to Bishop Étienne Tempier: the Strange History of the ‘Doctrine of Double Truth.'” Let me rehearse it and explain what I found in it most stimulating (and perhaps most worthy of critique). In Spring of 2018 I visited Luca in Milan for two days and presented seminars on Ibn Rushd / Averroes and also on this article and its implications.
Luca provides a fascinating discussion of Double Truth, one for religion and another for reason, science or philosophy, in which he shows that, although Ibn Rushd / Averroes has often been charged with teaching Double Truth, in fact that issue had been in Christian theological discussions long before any works of Ibn Rushd / Averroes were translated into Latin. (As you know from your studies in preparation for this class, Ibn Rushd never taught the doctrine of Double Truth, though he did follow the method of the distinction of discourse with respect to different audiences.)
Luca also added in his study a discussion of 13th century Christian thinkers, such as the so-called Averroists Boethius of Dacia, Siger of Brabant and others. They raised controversial issues such as the eternity of the world, issues discussed by Aristotle, Ibn Sina /Avicenna, and Ibn Rushd / Averroes, and stated that according to the methods of philosophy the world is eternal, while according to the faith and religion, it is temporally originated. In the course of his account, Luca went on to write that, while these thinkers said such things and were condemned for it, they nevertheless did not doubt that the world was temporally originated in a divine de novo creation. The thinkers of Christian Europe (including in some cases Albert the Great, teacher of Thomas Aquinas) sometimes explained that philosophy can only give a limited conclusion confined to a certain science. In the science of Physics or Natural Philosophy, the principles of the science do not allow for an account of creation ex nihilo. While such creation is not part of the study of Natural Philosophy, it can be the study of the science of metaphysics. Even Thomas Aquinas held that, while the universe can be proven to be created, it cannot be demonstrated whether the world had a temporal beginning or it is eternal.
What struck me as interesting is Luca’s comment that no one in Christian Europe doubted that the world was created temporally (in time, some n years prior to the present) by a free divine creation. Perhaps he is correct (or perhaps not). Yet I have to point out that the Arabic tradition was quite different. In the Arabic tradition, the creation or eternality of the world was a real question much discussed. And the tradition of the philosophers was very different from that of the Christian West. In the Arabic tradition, philosophy and religious teachings and discussion (kalām) were separate and often at odds with one another, particularly in the cases of al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd / Averroes, Ibn Sina / Avicenna and others. (As I remark elsewhere in today’s lecture, Aquinas followed Maimonides in holding that the eternity or temporal origination of the world cannot be demonstrated. See López-Farjeat “Avicenna’s Influence on Aquinas’ Early Doctrine of Creation in In II Sent. D. 1, Q. 1, A. 2.” RTMP 2012.) Al-Farabi talks of creation in only one work and that may be early or by another author. He does hold for the eternal ontological dependence of the world on the First Being. Ibn Sina / Avicenna holds the same view but with quasi-Plotinian reasoning argues for eternal emanation that he denominates as creation (ibdā‘) ex nihilo. (Aquinas draws heavily on the three books of Avicenna’s Metaphysics — 6, 8, 9 — in which creation is defined.) Al-Ghazali, the brilliant author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers which is largely an attack on Avicenna, argued that this was trickery on the part of Ibn Sina / Avicenna and that true creation is de novo (new, not eternal) and by the will of God, taking place temporally, again, in the finite number of n years prior to the present. Ibn Rushd held in his philosophical works — particularly in his Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle which Aquinas had in Latin translation — that creation ex nihilo (ibdā‘) is impossible, just as Ash‘arite Occasionalism putting all power and action in God alone is impossible and unacceptable. Instead, for Ibn Rushd the world is eternal and God or the First Cause is the cause by ‘creation’ (ikhtirā‘ , another Arabic word for making or creation) which is the actualization of a potentiality by something already actual. (Aristotle) And God does so as the unique final cause and primary instance of being-qua-being imitated by all other things. The world with its forms and things is eternally in a steady state imitating and being draw into actuality and unity by a longing for perfection in imitation of the pure actuality of being that is God. (This is a teaching inspired by but not identical to Aristotle’s.) Drawing things into unity and actuality as final cause, is the activity of divine creation.
Clearly these philosophers were at odds with religious teachings that dealt with philosophical issues about the nature of the world and its creator or originator or First Cause. The result of this was what we have seen earlier about the relation of religion and philosophy in the lands of Islam. The philosophers held largely that the truth of things is to be found in the theoretical sciences of philosophy, while religion played an important cultural and moral role in the lives of believes as a subdivision of the practical science of politics, a science aimed at right and effective action, not theoretical truth. (Look at the interesting comment of Aristotle in the final paragraph of Metaphysics book 2, chapter 3. And, if you can read Latin or Arabic, see what Ibn Rushd / Averroes had to say about the issue of philosophy, religion and culture in his Commentary on that chapter. The Latins took notice of this and other key passages where that relationship of philosophy and religion is mentioned.) I think the Latins generally understood Averroes along these lines that I expound Ibn Rushd, but not always. This needs more, and more thorough, investigation.
In sum, the Arabic tradition of philosophy often conflicted with religious accounts and found a manner to deal with them in a way that gave priority to philosophy in matters of truth to some very considerable extent relegating religion to the realm of good moral behavior. (See my article, “Averroes on the Shari‘ah of the Philosophers” 2012.) In contrast, the Latin tradition where philosophy lived in monasteries and through the efforts of Churchmen (Augustine found philosophy and religion difficult to distinguish at times), the cultural and intellectual context was dominated by faith in religious teachings while philosophy was allowed only a secondary role, at least until the influx of new learning from Arabic and Greek sources in the late 12th and all of the 13th centuries through translations. Enough of this aside. Let’s get to Aquinas.
For Aquinas there are two sources of truth for human beings, both of which are dependent on what is the source of all truth and at the same time Truth itself, namely, God. The two sources are religious revelation together with the development of theological doctrine and natural human reason in the form of science and philosophy. The thinkers of the Arabic / Islamic tradition studied here find science and philosophy as the primary access points to the truth while at the same time placing religion largely in the realm of the practical and political. For Aquinas not all truth is open to human reasoning since the truth of God — which is the source of all truth — transcends natural human reason. His approach can be seen in the initial sections of his Summa contra gentiles and Summa theologiae. Nevertheless, there is in Aquinas an insistence that God and created things caused by Him are through and through rational. That is clear in the discussion of ultimate human happiness (optional Lectures 5a & 5b) for which Aquinas drew on the reasoning of the pagan Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Muslim Ibn Rushd /Averroes for a model to explain in a very ‘Aristotelian’ rational way just how the Christian promise of human fulfillment in seeing God face-to-face or in God’s very essence can be explained. For Aquinas God is through and through perfect rationality and truth as well as loving, merciful and much more, of course. (God’s being, esse, is an infinite plenitude of perfections in perfect unity.) Religion and scripture may be of a nature to provide knowledge and understanding of God through faith for those unable to reach the levels of the theologian or philosopher but much more than that is provided about the nature of God far beyond what is available through natural reason, e.g. Trinity. Reason for Aquinas is limited in its reach. Though human beings have a natural end and long for being in the presence of God and to have knowledge of God as ultimate human fulfillment, this is unattainable through natural human powers according to the accounts of Aquinas. (This is an interesting philosophical issue for a course paper.)
Earlier I mentioned the interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics book 2 by Ibn Rushd /Averroes. In his own Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle Aquinas attacks the interpretation of Ibn Rushd /Averroes in detail and at length. This was important for the sake of religion. Ibn Rushd /Averroes reasoned that the possibilities of human knowing extending to all things of the universe were fully open even if extremely difficult. At the 2018 Pisa conference on the De caelo of Aristotle and its influence, Prof. G. Endress spoke of the rationalist project of Ibn Rushd /Averroes and the Cordoban’s final failure to achieve it. A complete understanding of the nature of the cosmos and the natural necessities and regularities it provides for human knowledge is the ground of the entire worldview of Ibn Rushd /Averroes. Yet even if Ibn Rushd /Averroes himself could not complete this unified theory of the All, in principle understanding it and understanding the nature and function, the essence, of the First Cause is possible though extremely difficult for humanity through philosophy, the theoretical sciences, especially through natural philosophy and its consequences and entailments. Aquinas, however, was furious at the interpretation of Ibn Rushd /Averroes in his Commentary on the Metaphysics, and for good reason. Ibn Rushd /Averroes had proposed that natural human reason is in principle unlimited and that ultimate fulfillment is attainable by natural reason and its development. This was a serious threat to religion, a threat tantamount to a claim that humans do not need divine grace and help to attain ultimate happiness. For Aquinas the owl cannot look upon the sun in daytime and is unable to know it because of transcendent brightness. Human beings cannot come to a full knowledge of God because God, as well as angels and much more, transcend the limits of human rational comprehension. Humans cannot attain their most desired end of seeing God face-to-face (scil., knowing the very essence of God) through their own powers. Rather, they need divine grace and help even in heaven to achieve knowledge of the essence of God. God must first enhance the natural powers of receptive knowing of the human being and only then can God enter the soul and be apprehended face-to-face or per essentiam. In this way God is the quo est and the quod est of ultimate human fulfillment in heaven. Without the assistance of God in this way He cannot be seen and humans cannot be fulfilled in their natural desire to attain complete fulfillment in the presence of God immediately to the human being. See my 2012 article, “Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’: Arabic / Islamic Philosophy in Thomas Aquinas’s Conception of the Beatific Vision in his Commentary on the Sentences IV, 49, 2, 1″, The Thomist 76 (2012) 509-550 (which needs one correction) and the forthcoming 2021 book from MU Press, Thomas Aquinas on Seeing God. The Beatific Vision in his Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences IV.49.2. Translation and Introduction by Katja Krause,Berlin,Max Planck Institute for the History of Science & Technical University, which contains a translation and valuable studies.
As you can see in (optional) Lectures 5a and 5b ultimate happiness, Aquinas thought that ultimate happiness for the philosophers (Greek and Arabic) was generally agreed upon as seeing or knowing separated substances, that is, pure intellects, as an attainment of fulfilling transcendence for human beings. In his Commentary on the Sentences he attacked accounts by al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna and Ibn Rushd /Averroes as being inadequate since they did not lead to the full vision or knowledge of the ultimate cause of all things, God. In that Commentary and also in his De Veritate and Summa contra gentiles Aquinas asserted that for Ibn Rushd /Averroes ultimate happiness is in knowing separate substances, the pure intellects that move the heavens and perhaps even God who is the most perfect of the pure intellects. To this extent Aquinas attributed to Ibn Rushd /Averroes the teaching that human fulfillment in seeing separate substances through the transcendent Agent Intellect was a way by natural reason to reach the divine and ultimate happiness without reference to religion or divine grace. Aquinas’s own view made it clear that ultimate happiness in seeing God face-to-face or per essentiam desired by human beings is not attainable by natural human powers but only through divine grace that, he explained, in heaven could supernaturally enhance the receptivity of human possible intellect (quo) to see the very essence of God (quod). That is, he saw Averroes seeming to conceive philosophy as proposing a secular way to ultimate human happiness. This conception of ultimate happiness by Ibn Rushd /Averroes and the Arabic tradition constituted a secularist threat to the very nature of Christianity. Curiously enough, by explaining this view Aquinas contributed to the development of what is sometimes called Latin Averroism. (If the date of his De aeternitate mundi can be given as ca. 1260, his contentions in that work that it is rationally possible for God to have eternally created the world become all the more interesting and be significant.) It was this rationalism that was nascently being developed by certain thinkers later in the 1260s and 1270s in Paris whose work came later to be signaled as unacceptable in the Condemnations of 1277, some three years after the death of Aquinas. Aquinas himself encountered this rationalism in his De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, On the unity of the intellect against the Averroists. There he argued apparently against the Master of Arts teacher at Paris Siger of Brabant that the human possible intellect cannot be one for all human beings as Ibn Rushd /Averroes and his Latin followers argued in various ways since it would undermine key religious teachings on will and human moral responsibility. Hence, Aquinas encountered the rationalist approach found in the Arabic tradition in a new form in Latin at Paris in the years just before his death. The rationalist approach to the issue of the eternity of the world common in the Arabic tradition (and discussed by Rabbi Moses Maimonides) prompted Aquinas to craft a new conception of creation as ontological dependency without necessarily involving a beginning of time, much to the consternation of St Bonaventure and others in his Christian tradition, even if Aquinas himself held that the temporal origination of the world is also possible and in fact the case as indicated in Christian theological doctrine.
If there is time available toward the end of class, I will try to explain my summer 2020 discovery that separates Ibn Rushd from the teachings attributed to Averroes by the Latins. This involves (i) an ambiguous Latin translation from an unambiguous Arabic text, (ii) that Latin translation subsequently significantly misread, (iii) a major misunderstanding of a good translation from Arabic into Latin, and (iv) the novel creation of a teaching on the afterlife and ultimate happiness attributed to Averroes, a teaching never proposed in the works of Ibn Rushd. If we do not have time for this, later in the semester I will share the article I am drafting on this perhaps in one of our MU Midwest Seminars in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy organized by Profs. Goldin, Twetten and myself.
Readings:
Summa contra gentiles Book 1, chapters 1-8: https://isidore.co/aquinas/ContraGentiles1.htm
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5k092nNV0s&feature=youtu.be
Summa theologiae, prima pars, question 1, articles 1-8: https://isidore.co/aquinas/summa/FP/FP001.html#FPQ1OUTP1
Another very valuable translation by Fred Freddosa is available at
https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques01.pdf
One can add to these the discussions of ultimate happiness studied in optional Lectures 5a & 5b with the texts of Summa contra gentiles Book 3 and Summa theologiae, prima secondae, questiones 1-5. In those writings and these Aquinas firmly sets out his view of the limits of human reason and the necessity for divine aid and grace for the attainment of ultimate happiness.
For a more philosophical critique of the threat to Christian principles by a philosophical approach from the Arabic tradition, see Aquinas’s De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists).
See https://isidore.co/aquinas/DeUnitateIntellectus.htm.
Also see Dag Hasse in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-influence/#AveUniThe
It should be added that Aquinas was somewhat enticed by Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna’s account of prophecy but ultimately had to reject it because of its naturalistic basis. For Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna, it is the powers of the particular natural human prophet that enable prophetic pronouncements, while for Aquinas that is left in the hands of God.