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Averroes' Philosophical Conception of Separate Intellect and God Richard C

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Averroes' Philosophical Conception of Separate Intellect and God Richard C Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications Philosophy, Department of 1-1-2011 Averroes' Philosophical Conception of Separate Intellect and God Richard C. Taylor Marquette University, [email protected] Published version. "Averroes' Philosophical conception of Separate Intellect and God," in La Lumière de l'intellect. La Pensée Scientifique et Philosophique d'Averroès dans Son Temps. Eds. Ahmad Hasnawi. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2011: 391-404. Permalink. © 2011 Peeters Publishers. Used with permission. AVERROES' PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTION OF SEPARATE INTELLECT AND GOD' Richard C. TAYLOR The goal of this article is to make a modest contribution to our understanding of the thought of A verroes on the natures of God and separate intellects to the extent that the methodologies of the philosophical sciences were considered by him to be able to contribute to the human enterprise of grasping the Divine. Now, insofar as Averroes, like Aristotle before him, held that God is immaterial intellect and complete actuality, it will be necessary to explore the nature of intellect and how it is that Averroes, unlike Aristotle before him, held that God, the first of all intellects, is much more than just the first in a hierarchy of similar metaphysical actualities called intellects or intelligences. For A verroes God is no primum inter pares as one might argue is the position of Aristotle who asserts there 2 to be a plurality of deities or separate intellects . Rather, for Averroes, God transcends all other entities which themselves possess an otherness3 that enables A verroes to call God the unique First Agent, the First Form, the First Principle, indeed, the First Cause, One not like other entities. To express this otherness found in the immaterial separate intellects below God, Averroes claimed something never found in Aristotle, namely that separate immaterial intellects other than God contain an aspect of potency even while they are in their own natures completely actual intellects. This notion, as will be recounted below, allowed A verroes a way to distinguish all other intellects from God, but only at the cost of the introduction of metaphysical and epistemological principles not found in Aristotle. What is the source and foundation for his assertion of this new metaphysical doctrine that some sort of potency in fact exists in what is wholly immaterial and wholly actual? The 1 I am grateful to the Rev. Thaddeus Burch, Dean of the Graduate School and Chair of the Committee on Research, and also to the Department of Philosophy of Marquette University for funding asssistance which made my participation in this conference possible. I am also grateful to David Twetten, Josep Puig Montada, Michael Marmura and Deborah Black for reading this paper and sharing with me their suggestions for its ameliorization. 2 See Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.7, 1073 b 2-1074 a 17. 3 To phrase this in another more familiar way, other things of the world are really related to God but God bears no real relation to them. 392 Richard C. TAYLOR CONCEPTION OF SEPARATE INTELLECT AND GOD 393 answer to this question is to be found in his psychology from which he 6 ... Lon Commentary on the Metaphy- somehow possess soul ; (m) In his late h.g .t an be shown that celestial draws this central metaphysical conception. h. · w For Im I c · sics Averroes agam states t IS. vie . 'f t nly intellect and desire from There are two parts to my account of the thought of A verroes following r . fties which mam es 0 . the outline of ideas just presented. First, I will explain the foundations of this bodies are I vmg. en I . d that the ultimate cause of their motiOn ~n doctrine of potency in separate, immaterial intellects and its arguments among the powers of the ~oul anh. 1 im he writes is the establishment m place is intellect. The basis for t I.s c ~ n ~elestial b~dies is not something found in the Long Commentary on the De anima. Secondly, I will explain . 8 that the cause of motiOn 1 the role played in the metaphysics of separate substances by this doctrine of Phystcs. matter but rather a separa t e form7 . And that separate1 Hforms , areh potency in separate intellects and God. In this second section, I will also existmg ~~ . tablished in the Science of the Sou . ence, e intellects IS somethmg es f the heavens are intellects and move as consider the philosophical consequences of these doctrines with respect to 1 d the separate movers o f. h. L cone u es, . s. (. ) A d in the initial pages o Is ong A verroes' philosophical understanding of the nature of God. agents and ends of motwn , IV n . C d bensis commentariis, in In Aristotelis PSYCHOLOGY AND THE METAPHYSICS OF INTELLEC-r4 6 Aristotelis De caelo cum Av~rrozs .~r ul56l) vol V II c.61, fol. 140 B-D. · . mentarus (Vemce, • · ' opera cum AverrOls com A . mmentariis Venetiis apud Junctas . A · t t z·s opera cum verrozs co ' f In a number of philosophical works Averroes states clearly and directly Reprinted m ns o e z . am rateful to my colleague, David Twetten, or that essential principles of Metaphysics are established in Psychology, that is, 1562-1574 (Fran~furt am ~31~, 1962). I m t~e E itome of the Metaphysics and the Long the Science of the Soul. calling my attentiOn to these pass~ges fro ·/d. my article on this topic. See note 4 Commentary on the De caelo which were not CI e. m the De Caelo see G. Endress, · · h' mmentanes on ' (i) In his early Epitome of the Metaphysics, Averroes sets forth the above. On Averroes' doctnne m IS co . h. ommentaries on Aristotle's On the understanding that the method which establishes the nature of the existence . "Averroes' De caelo, .Ibn Rushd's c~s~ology5ml91;5c): 9-49. of the separate, immaterial intellectual principles - the separate intellects - Heavens", Arabic Sczences and Phtlo.wphy ( B T etten "Averroes on the pnme affecting the movement of the heavens is determined in the Science of the 7 F detailed discussion of this Issue, see D .. w . , S d' 26 (1995): mover provedor m. t h e Ph yszcs... " ' Viator. Medieval and Renazssance tu zes Soul. There he goes on to say that most of the principles employed in the Science of Metaphysics are taken from the Science of the Soul and that the 107-34. lestial bodies are alive and that among the 8 "From this it is fully clear that these ce f desi·re i e [intellect] which knowledge garnered in the Science of the Soul is essential for there to be 1 · t ll t and the power o , · · powers of sou~ they have .on y m e ~cevident from what I say, for it has been explained any knowledge of the sort of existence which the separate intellects have5; causes motion m place. This IS perhaps t'on belonging to the celestial Ph · that what causes mo I (ii) In his Long Commentary on the De caelo, he writes that demonstrations in the eighth book of the . yszcs f A d it was explained in the De anima that concerning the celestial bodies and their movers in the Science of the bodies is not in matter and IS a separate orrn. I nth. mover is an intellect and is a mover Heavens or Cosmology are based on principles taken from Natural Science the separate forms are intellect. So, conse~uent y, I~ .. th end of motion" (Averroes. t 0 f otion and msofar as It IS e B k and Metaphysics. Natural Science, he says, shows that the movers of the insofar as_ it i~ an age~. m Bou ~s, S.J., 2nd ed., vol. 11 [Beirut,. 1967], oo Tafsir Ma ba d af-!abz at, ed. M. yg ( ... ) M translation. Cf. Latm, Anstotelzs celestial bodies do not exist in matter, while the Science of the Soul provides 593 4) S Appendix 1tem m · Y ' · · Lam c.36, pp. 1 - . ee , . C d b ··e z'n eosdem commentarus et an understanding of both intellect and desire. For intelligible forms do not . Xliii Averrot\' or u ensz., I Metaphysicorum lzbn cum ' . mentariis (Venice, 1574), vo · . [" era cum Averror,\ com · h cause motion in human beings without desire which arises as a consequence epitome, in In Anstote zs op hd' Metaphvsics. A Translation Wit of intellectual understanding. Hence, just as human beings are moved to VIII XII c.36, fol. 318rv F-G. Cf. Ibn Rus As . t tie's. lvletaphvsics, Book L[un ' . ·hd' . c mentary on ns 0 · ' · . action only insofar as imagination presents the intelligible as an object of IntroductiOn of Ibn Rus s om 49· "From that, it appears in all clanty that (Leiden 1984) by Ch. Genequand, p. I . f h . 1 they have only the mtellect imagination and thereby as an object of desire, analogously the eternally ' . d h t f the powers o t e sou ' . moving celestial bodies must possess desire and they must then also celestial bodtes have souls an t a o f . It ) that imparts to them local motiOn. This and the faculty of deme, I mean (the acu y . h . hth book of the Phvsics that the I . 1't h . been explamed m t e etg . h d' appears from what say. as . d a separate form, and m t e £ 4 1 . I b 0 dies is without matter an , . II d ·. This topic is explored in detail in R.C.
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