Averroes
Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد; full name in Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد بن أحمد بن رشد, romanized: Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd; 14 April 1126 – 11 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes (English: /əˈvɛroʊiːz/), was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote on many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of over 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the Western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism.
Averroes was a strong advocate of Aristotelianism; he sought to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against critiques by Ashari theologians like Al-Ghazali. Averroes contended that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even essential among certain elites. He also maintained that scriptural texts should be interpreted allegorically if they seemed to contradict conclusions reached through reason and philosophy. He wrote the Bidāyat al-Mujtahid in Islamic jurisprudence, addressing the differences between Islamic schools of law and the principles causing their differences. In medicine, he proposed a new theory of stroke, described the signs and symptoms of Parkinson's disease for the first time, and may have been the first to identify the retina as the part of the eye responsible for sensing light. His medical book Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, became a textbook in Europe for centuries.
His legacy in the Islamic world was modest due to geographical and intellectual reasons. In the West, Averroes was renowned for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his works reawakened Western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been largely abandoned after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. His ideas sparked controversies in Latin Christendom and initiated a philosophical movement known as Averroism, based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the most well-known and contentious Averroist doctrines in the West. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by these condemnations and sustained critique from Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers into the sixteenth century.
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