On Thursday 1 May 2025 at 3:30 pm (US Central Time) Prof. Fouad Ben Ahmed of the Dar El Hadith El-Hassaniyya in Rabat, affiliated with Al-Qarawiyyin University, currently visiting professor at Harvard in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, will lead an advanced seminar on Ibn Rushd / Averroes at the Philosophy Department of Marquette University.
The seminar will take place in Raynor Library Room 320a on the Marquette Campus and is open to students and faculty. Room seating capacity is ca. 15 so those who wish to attend in person must email their request to aaiwgevents@gmail.com. To arrange for attendance via TEAMS, send your name and academic affiliation to aaiwgevents@gmail.com at least two days in advance of the event.
Seeing as Knowing, Seeing as Believing: Ibn Rushd’s Theory of Vision from Philosophy to Theology
Fouad Ben Ahmed, Harvard University-Cambridge/Qarawiyyin University-Rabat
Abstract: Ibn Rushd’s theory of vision, developed in his philosophical, psychological, and scientific writings, refines the Aristotelian model of potentiality and actuality by integrating Galenic anatomy and Ibn al-Haytham’s optical insights. In works ranging from his commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima to al-Kulliyyāt fī al-Ṭibb and the Compendium on De Sensu et Sensibili, Ibn Rushd conceptualizes vision as the immaterial reception of forms, requiring light, a transparent medium, a colored object, and a specific spatial relationship between observer and observed. Contrary to purely materialist or Platonic accounts, he argues that the organ of sight undergoes no physical alteration; rather, it becomes formally identical to what it perceives.
This theory operates in two main contexts. First, it illuminates Ibn Rushd’s broader epistemology, addressing how perception informs the intellect through the interplay of the active intellect, the material (hylic) intellect, and the imagination. Second, it undergirds his theological inquiries into the possibility of seeing God in the afterlife—a question largely overlooked in modern scholarship on his optical theory. By extending Aristotelian principles to debates about eschatological vision, Ibn Rushd reveals a nuanced synthesis of metaphysics, physiology, and philosophy, highlighting both his fidelity to multiple intellectual legacies and his originality in applying them to theological concerns. This study thus investigates not only the nature of human visual perception but also its implications for encountering the divine on the Day of Judgment.