Averroës: Politics and Opinion

Averroës is primarily known for his numerous commentaries on Aristotle, yet his most explicitly political writing was presented in the form of a commentary on Plato's Republic. Consequently, the major dispute in scholarly literature has been whether he was more of a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a dispute of concern only because it reflects the important political question of what Averroës thought about the relation between theory and practice. This essay seeks to answer that question by studying the numerous editions and translations of his writings made available by contemporary scholarship. His commentaries on the logical arts concerned with public speech and common opinion are first examined, and the teaching set forth there is then contrasted with the kind of ideas Averroës expounded in his explicitly public works.In the commentaries on the logical arts, Averroës stretched Aristotle's arguments in order to suggest that unexamined opinion was an insufficient guide for the practical arts dependent on such opinion. Although Averroës did not claim that such arts could be guided only by theoretical knowledge, he did insist that they could be best used only by those aware of the limits of opinion. This opening for the guidance of philosophy was carried further in the public writings where the need for philosophy to direct sound practice was defended against religiously motivated attacks on philosophy. Thus, the correct understanding of Averroës's views about the relation between theory and practice is closely related to an appreciation of his views about the role peculiar to philosophy and philosophers in his own religious community.