Abstract

The man generally known as Averroes—Muhammad Ibn Ahmad (c.1126–98)—was a Muslim scholar from southern Spain who came to be regarded as one of the great authorities on Aristotle's philosophy. Medieval and even later philosophers in the Scholastic tradition referred to him simply as ‘the Commentator’ just as they referred to Aristotle himself as ‘the Philosopher’. Averroes' authority as an expositor was never wholly unchallenged and, in a purely historical context, the term ‘Averroist’ should strictly be reserved for those Aristotelians who followed the interpretations of Averroes rather than those of, say, Avicenna. Some of these interpretations, however, suggested beliefs that were inconsistent with acceptance of a Creator of the material world or with belief in a last judgment at which individual souls would be punished or rewarded for their life on earth. They suggested, rather, that the material world was eternal and that individual souls did not survive bodily death. This raised a general problem about what to say in the face of a conflict between faith and reason, between the teachings of the Church and the teachings of philosophy. Averroism became associated with a particular problem and with what was known as the ‘twofold truth’, according to which it is possible to admit the conflict and continue to profess a religious faith without abandoning or abridging one's commitment to philosophy.