Averroism

Guido Giglioni

Historiographically speaking, the notion of Averroism is notoriously elusive. By Averroism one can mean at least three different things: a current of radical Aristotelianism that exercised a considerable influence over the scholastic philosophy of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, especially in Paris and at some universities in northern Italy (Padua, Pavia, and Bologna); a hermeneutical approach meant to reconcile theological views and religious beliefs with the kind of rational investigation carried on by philosophers (an approach that, not without some straining, came to be known in the Latin West as the “doctrine of double truth”); and, finally, in the period spanning from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, a general skeptical attitude toward revelation and established religion that could range from a dissembled expression of unorthodox beliefs to plain atheism. Abu al-Walïd Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd, latinized into Averroes, was born in Córdoba in 1126 CE ...

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