Reinterpreting Averroes and an Innovation of Aristotle
Abstract
This essay examines Averroes’ contribution to Latin scholasticism, offering a clearer conceptual framework for understanding his position. It critically engages with his thought in relation to both Aquinas and Aristotle. By renewing Aristotle’s philosophy, I emphasize the continued relevance of Averroes’ intellectual legacy for contemporary philosophical discourse.
Averroes and Latin Scholasticism
Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the influential 12th-century Andalusian philosopher, is renowned for his efforts to reconcile the relationship between reason and faith, particularly within the framework of Aristotelian philosophy and Islamic theology. His approach to the concept of “truth” is underlined in his stance on the apparent non-contradiction between different forms of truth—philosophical and religious.
Averroes’ work had a great impact on the intellectual scene in Western Europe, particularly toward the end of the 13th century, and then in the 15th century during the Renaissance. It became one of the main schools of thought in Bologna in the fourteenth and Padua in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Junta editions of Aristotle with Ibn Rushd’s commentaries were made (1552 and 1562) and remain in use even today.
His commentaries have been translated into Latin, and his ideas grew in influence, helping with educating students for Aristotelian thought. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) seemed so impressed by Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle, that he simply called him “the commentator.” But Aquinas was careful to distinguish between the Aristotle (preserved by Averroes), and the innovations of the latter. Aquinas condemns his innovation to be heretical for Medieval Christian audience: the doctrine of no personal (bodily) survival after death, and eternity of the world.
However, the history of Latin Averroism displayed a history of an enormous misunderstanding and even distortion of Averroes’ philosophy of religion or philosophical theology. The Incoherence of the Incoherence was not put into Latin until 1328, while the Decisive Treatise was not translated in the Middle Ages. The relation between philosophy and religion a la Averroes is differentiated from Latin Averroism, which emphasized the superiority of philosophy and reason over against faith. It made selective, yet unqualified use of Latin translation of Averroes, without access to the Arabic writings.[1]
In the Averroes’s version of Aristotle, a monopsychism (the unity of the intellect), in which only one possible, thinking intellect or soul is common to all, is not explicitly stated in Aristotle’s On the Soul. There is a single, universal intellect that all humans share as explained in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul. The universal intellect interacts with the individual human imagination by which to generate universal concepts. How could individual thoughts and responsibility be accounted for?
If the material intellect is the potential for knowledge, it is one and the same for all human beings. Active intellect (divine and eternal) actualizes human understanding by interacting with the material intellect, making universal knowledge possible as shared among all humans. If the maternal world is eternal, and the will is a passive power, because it is merely activated by universal knowledge, it clashed with the idea of individual immortality and personal responsibility. [2] In fact, Aristotle never demonstrated the eternity of the world, rather premising on it through his empirical approach.
However, Averroes’ innovation of Aristotle has a distinctive character in conceptualizing sense-perception with a conception of Material Intellect (common to all human minds) to undertake an intellectual knowledge of the essence of individual things in the world. Aristotelian theory of potentiality and actuality in its hylomorphic framework is applied in his scheme of underlying the Material Intellect in its pursuit to Agent Intellect, the final cause.
In this innovation, Aristotle is not merely reiterated, but is relocated in Averroes’ new method and idea. In so doing, crucial in the current study of Averroes is to foster his philosophy in the principle of non-contradiction between truths for mutual witness.
Given this, a critical question can be raised: how do we attain the intellectual understanding of the essence of things? Shouldn’t it reformulate a realm of understanding in its interaction with diversity of particular things with focus on significant role of experience and sense-perception?
To put it differently, in a project of understanding, human sense-perception or experience is connected with the object of inner perception, which appears as a unity. Human consciousness is always intentionally directed toward an object of meaning. A correlation between consciousness and the meaning of the object reinforces an intellectual knowledge of the essence.
This intentionality of consciousness is already influenced, shaped, and conditioned by objective reality, or actuality (language, history, culture, and society). These elements must be included and analysed in dealing with the intellectual way of knowledge and intelligibility at a higher synthesis. In this scheme of explanation, essence of things is not in a short-cut way in the sense of disclosure of the truth (aletheia), but in long-route requiring a procedure of coming to know and appropriate for understanding and interpretation. It relocates a notion of one common Material Intellect with life-world (ontological source of language, history, tradition, and culture).
An in-depth description of a common material intellect is primed to incorporate diversity of experience and knowledge in its interaction into strenuous procedure in intellectual attainment of meaning of essence in a dynamic and open-ended manner. It highlights a teleological approach to essence of things or truth by unveiling sociologically the components (historical effect, social location, dominant system of discourse, and power relations); it necessitates a long-route in terms of problematic attitude, adumbration, responsible critique, semantic retrieval, and emancipation.
Aristotelian innovation continues to find its significance, renewal, and a new breakthrough in terms of the principle of non-contradiction between truths; it is featured by epistemological rupture and politics of recognition and difference in a constructive manner involving a creative response to contemporary challenge.
Averroes: Political Philosophy and Ethics
Al-Farabi was a prominent public intellectual who advocated for a politics of recognition, embracing the diversity of religious pluralism and cultures through his political philosophy. By incorporating Plato’s Republic into his Aristotelian framework, he laid the foundation for Islamic political philosophy. This tradition reached its zenith with Averroes, despite the lack of an Arabic translation of Aristotle’s Politics.
In his Decisive Treatise, Averroes explores various social categories and ranks, bringing them into a process of recognition and assent. Drawing from the Quranic perspective, he employs demonstrative reasoning and interpretation to support his views. This philosophy of recognition and assent underpins his later work, the Commentary on Plato’s Republic, where he discusses political authority and the ideal city. In this context, religion plays a central role in political life, serving as the instrument that instills virtue in the human soul and ultimately fosters the moral education of the citizen. Averroes places significant emphasis on the influence of religious belief in shaping his political theory.[3]
Averroes in his Commentary on the Republic[4] adopts a dialectical approach instead of demonstrative-exegetical manner, which was undertaken in his commentaries on Aristotle. In the appropriation of Plato’s political philosophy, he modified it, while addressing his exposition to al-Mansur, a sovereign ruler (from 1184 to 1199). In a considerable part of his exposition, Averroes made his own personal comments without reference to the Platonic text.
From a philological standpoint, for instance, Averroes had a lack of the detailed knowledge about the history of ancient Greece as well as its politics and culture, which is now available to us. As Charles E. Butterworth contends, “these concerns are not at issue. Rather, taking Averroes’ text as the only viable starting point, the task in the first instance is to determine what he said about Aristotle’s Poetics.”[5]
In so doing, it is more significant to draw attention to historical and philosophical analysis of Averroes’ reading of the political ideas with reference to Plato’s Republic. I find it distinctive to appreciate the hermeneutical horizon and its significance in Averroes’s involvement of Greek political philosophy rather than testing how faithful and correct his interpretation should be in regards to Aristotle.
Averroes believed religion to be essential to the moral formation and to the attainment of their highest happiness and fulfillment. According to him, “the religions are…, obligatory, since they lead toward wisdom in a way universal to all human beings, for philosophy only leads a certain number of intelligent people to the knowledge of happiness, and they therefore have to learn wisdom, whereas religions seek the instruction of the masses generally.[6]
Averroes holds that the fullness of human excellence, both moral and intellectual, requires human involvement of community, such that moral excellence is the foundation for intellectual excellence and political achievement.
In his 1194 Middle Commentary on the “Republic” of Plato, we read that “this kind of perfection – i.e. the moral, is laid down [in relation to] theoretical perfection as a preparatory rank, without which the attainment of the end is impossible. Hence, this perfection is thought to be the ultimate end because of its proximity to the ultimate end. It appears from this, then, that the human perfections are . . . all for the sake of theoretical perfection.”[7]
The politician or lawgiver has the task in guiding all society toward excellence. In this guidance, what is true and right (by virtue of demonstrative, rhetorical or dialectical presentations) will be what is practically valuable in realizing moral virtue in society.
In the process of the excellence of a human being of learning, he/she should explain the religious doctrine and principle in such fairest way, that the aim of these doctrines entails their universal character. He/she may explain them in a way contradictory to the prophets; in turning away from their path, he/she merits more than anyone else, because the term unbeliever is applied to him/he.[8]
To this extent, philosophers should keep demonstrative arguments that might undermine even the political end of religion and its universal attainment of happiness for a society. Averroes’s deep admiration for Aristotle challenged himself to endeavor to explain and solve philosophical problems by virtue of Greek thought in dealing with his medieval Islamic philosophical context.
In Averroes’ reading of Plato’s Republic a transformation occurs in the Platonic conception of king-philosopher into the Aristotelian moral term of phrónimos. His political position is not merely commentary, but entailing an original piece,because he had no access to Aristotle’s Politics.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, practical wisdom (Greek: phronesis) facilitates intuiting how to apply general moral knowledge to particular situations, and can only be attained through experience. Since there are no general moral rules available to us, wemust gain phronesis. In other words, we cannot act in accordance with good by following a set of laws.
A critical innovation of phronesis, seen in the light of non-contraction among truths, can be undertaken in the interpretive reasoning, which should be of a particular help for Averroes’ juxtaposition between demonstrative reasoning and metaphorical interpretation.
Aristotle takes issue with the Platonic idea of the good as an empty generality. Thus he seeks to conceptualize what is humanly good in terms of human moral action. Virtue (arete) and knowledge (logos) are not equated, as seen obviously in Plato’s theory of virtue. Rather, the basis of moral knowledge in human being is based on striving or practice and its development into a fixed demeanor. The term ethics indicates that arete is based on practice and ethos.[9]
A human being comes into encounter with the good in the particular form of practical situation, such that the task of moral knowledge lies in the way to determine how the concrete situation is relevant to human life. Aristotle in the final chapter of the Nichomachean Ethics requires transition to the Politics.
We know that Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is no longer extant in Arabic, but only in independent medieval Hebrew (1320/1) by Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles and Latin translations by Hermannus Alemannus (1240);[10] the latter is currently being edited and translated into French and English by Frédérique Woerther.
According to Steven Harvey and Frédérique Woerther, Averroes speaks of the greater good of the citizen, and distinguishes between the perfect good of the solitary individual and that of the citizen. Indeed, Aristotle distinguishes between the good of the individual and the greater good of the city. They raise a question whether Averroes would suggest here that the solitary one can achieve this good apart from the city. However, they are right in rejecting the assumption in which “the solitary one can achieve this good apart from the city.”[11]
In fact, Averroes follows the Aristotelian position of a human being as political animal by nature and arranges ethics into the practical part of the Politics. He uses resources from a work of al-Fārābī, Obtainance of Happiness.
At a deeper level, Averroes renews al-Fārābī by emphasizing the phronesis as the main virtue in Aristotle, which is required for the art of political and moral governing. He sees in the Aristotelian phronesis specifically the ruler’s virtue, while differentiating himself from Platonic wisdom (sophía) as directed to the world of Ideas.
In his commentary on Nichomachean Ethics, it is reported that Averroes contains Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s Form of the Good. For Aristotle “it is plain that there is not one common universal good because if there were one, it would not be spoken of in all the categories, but … in one of them only.”
As Averroes adds: “For one common nature is only found in one category, and since there is no common nature here for all things, then there is no single universal form here, that is, outside the soul, as Plato saw it.”[12]
However, Averroes’ commentary on Nichomachean Ethics is judged to remain fragmentary, not so much innovative or original. This can be complemented with reference to his creative combination of phronesis with political theory of governance. A practical wisdom (phronesis) in Aristotle’s ethics becomes central in Averroes’ transformation of Platonic philosophy of king-philosopher and wisdom into Aristotle’s moral-political philosophy.
“It is evident that he (i.e., the sovereign) cannot do this, except when he is wise in accordance with the practical sciences, thereby possessing the merit of the cogitative virtue by which the demonstrations of the moral science are discovered (…).”[13]
The political art or discipline of governing implies to Averroes having knowledge of political prudence to do the right thing, that is, justice. Political prudence comes to terms with reforming political governance. Ethics becomes the theoretical foundation for practical or political discipline of governance, in which right thing to do (or justice for common good) is combined with self-cultivation, education, finally human flourishing.
However, Averroes does not comment on the contemplative life, in contrast to Aristotle in the discussion in Book X.[14]
If Averroes addresses the intellectual dimensions of divine and human contemplative activity, he deepens our understanding of human intellect through both divine presence and human participation. Central to Aristotle’s concept of the individual human intellect is the notion of human participation in divine contemplation. An individual who exercises and cultivates their intellect aligns most closely with the divine, appearing both in the best state and as most akin to the divine intellect. According to Aristotle, the gods should reward those who love and honor the intellect, caring for what is dear to them and acting in ways that are both just and noble (Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Ch. 8).
Aristotle and Natural Law
Aristotle renews the tradition of natural law in a way that allows for the possibility of change. What is just by nature (whether understood as divine will or reason) is not always identical to what is just by law. In his empirical approach to human nature, Aristotle asserts that natural law exists independently of positive law, which is enacted by society or the state. However, natural justice—whether in the forms of distributive or corrective justice, or in the prohibition of certain evil acts—can still be rationally established as positive law within a well-ordered political community.
A natural law or justice, common to all human nature, is universally binding because it is not contingent on the varying opinions of individuals. Aristotle does not diminish the law by restricting it; rather, he seeks a better and more just law.[15]
Central to Aristotle’s analysis of prudent action is how to apply thoughtful prudence to the law. This is evident in his concept of equity (epieikeia), which he views as the correction or necessary supplement to the law. Legal hermeneutics, or the interpretation of laws, finds its place here. The law is not inherently imperfect but may become deficient when compared to human realities. Aristotle connects the idea of an absolutely unchangeable law to the divine realm, while asserting that natural law among humans is subject to change. This stands in contrast to legal positivism, which separates what is naturally right from what is legally right.
The changeability of natural law, for Aristotle, serves a critical function in addressing discrepancies between different laws. It remains essential in determining what is equitable, especially given the inevitable imperfections of all human laws.[16]
Averroes and Islamic Modernism
In the late 19th century, attempts to engage with Averroes marked the early stages of Islamic Modernism, which sought significant political and socio-economic reform. Reformist thinkers such as al-Afghānī (1836–1897) and Muhammed Abduh (1849–1905) in Egypt, and Muhammed Iqbal (1877–1938) in British India, called for reform by returning to Islam’s intellectual heritage. The modernist movement aimed to reinterpret the original teachings of Islam in alignment with the Mutazilite theologians and the falsafa (Islamic philosophy).
Al-Afghānī, in particular, was adamant about re-appropriating the work of Averroes, challenging the ideas of Asharite thinkers such as al-Ghazali. The Asharite doctrine, which posited God as the proximate cause of every event (theological occasionalism), was seen as being in tension with the reformist spirit of this movement.
In Muhammed Abduh’s remarks, we encounter the idea that Europe became civilized through the influence of Averroes. He is reported to have said: “I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims but no Islam.”[17]
In fact, for Europeans, Averroes remains one of the greatest inspirations for theologians and philosophers, particularly in understanding the relationship between scientific rationality and faith. His work paved the way for breakthroughs that contributed to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modernity. Europeans benefited from Averroes’ legacy, learning not only how to appropriate his insights but also how to keep his intellectual contributions alive to this day.
In the context of interfaith dialogue, Averroes, in his Incoherence of the Incoherence, made important distinctions between various religions while asserting that there is no fundamental difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He argued that rational reasoning does not inherently conflict with faith, which is inspired by the word of God. Faith, in this view, does not require the sacrifice of intellectual thinking. Rather, the duality of faith and reason work together in a hermeneutical circle, each serving as a mutual witness to the ultimate truth of God.
The interplay between faith and rational thinking can be furthered through an epistemological procedure: appreciating the life-world of sacred texts, maintaining a critical distance to problematize religious discourse—especially what is oppressive or hierarchical—and, finally, retrieving meaning for emancipation, enriching the world of faith while promoting its prophetic role.
This innovation in Averroes’ thought reinforces the extension and application of ijtihad (independent reasoning) in all human affairs, particularly in the democratic sense of shura (consultation). This process can be elaborated in the context of modern technological systems of communication and participatory decision-making.
The significance of Averroes is further reflected in the work of contemporary thinkers such as Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri (1935–2010), one of the most important Arab philosophers. Al-Jabri sought to revive the Islamic world by reinterpreting Averroes for his critique of Arabic reason and advocating for inter-philosophical dialogue in a post-Eurocentric context. He wrote:
“Undoubtedly we should build upon and take from the contributions resulting from the research of all who have preceded us (the Greeks, the Christians), as sources of assistance in our process of rational study …since the ancient philosophers already studied with great diligence the rules of reasoning (logic, method), it will be appropriate for us to dedicate our labours to the study of the works of these ancient philosophers, and if everything we find in them is reasonable, we can accept it, and if not, those things that are not reasonable can serve as a warning and a basis for precaution” (original emphasis).[18]
The post-Averroes position requires an innovation of both Aristotle and Averroes, through an epistemological break with the Neo-Platonic mysticism and anti-intellectual tendencies commonly associated with thinkers like Al-Ghazali and Avicenna. A principle of non-contradiction between truths can then reconcile with a philosophy of epistemological rupture, offering a critique of Arab reason.
Interrogation: Averroes and Aquinas’ Critique
In the discussion of the soul and resurrection of the body, Averroes may concur with al-Ghazali’s disavowal of Avicenna’s understanding of the soul. In his summary, we read: “…we do not know of anyone who holds this theory but Avicenna. And the proof which Ghazali relates rests on very weak premise, although it is persuasive and dialectical. For it is assumed that every particular effect proceeds from an animate being through the particular representation of this effect and of the particular movements through which this effect is realized.”[19]
For Averroes, the soul (qua) form requires matter to exist according to Aristotle’s hylomorphic scheme of explanation (matter-formism). The soul ceases to exist after the perishing of the body. Indeed, there is no resurrection of individual souls. Even if the soul might survive death qua substantial form—the incorruptible intellect (Material Intellect)—but it does not exist before it took its physical form.
At this point, Averroes would be closer to Aquinas’s position of the immortality of the soul qua the intellective principle and the resurrection of the body. In fact, Aquinas defends immortality of the soul in his interpretation of the ‘divine’ intellect in Aristotle. It is manifested by the intellect’s knowing universals, in which the intellect knows things in and through universal scopes. Such existing is not subject to corruption.[20]
What distinguishes Averroes from Aquinas is that for the former the intellect is in the soul, and it is indivisible. For instance, “the soul in Amr and in Zaid should be one single entity, likewise, “in the intellect there is no individuality whatever.”[21]
Averroes’ conception of the unicity of the human intellectual is not equated with superhuman Agent (active) Intellect giving form to the matter (Avicenna), in which each human individual has its own intellect.
Averroes, however, hypostatizes the Material Intellect as the ultimate intellect, separate from the celestial principle in terms of potentiality. This intellect is singular, incorporeal, and eternal, shared by all human minds. It is considered more divine than the soul, as the soul’s other parts are corruptible. The Material Intellect, then, serves as the intellectual reason that a priori organizes perception and human experience, structuring our understanding of the phenomenon of world through categories.
However, Aquinas provokes Averroes: “…intellect, can be separated, not indeed from body, as the Commentator perversely interprets, but from other parts of the soul, lest they characterize the same substance, soul.”[22]
Aquinas asks “if there were one intellect for all,” “there is but one intellectual operation of all men understanding the same thing at the same time.”[23] In so doing, human beings have nothing differing from one another, because they would share in the same intellectual operation.
Aquinas classifies the four interior powers of sense in the rational soul: “common sense, the imagination, the estimative, and the memorative powers”[24]
In a similar vein, Averroes begins all knowledge with sense perception via the five external senses. The object causally affects the sense organ in potentiality and has its sensible form (or intention) in actuality in the world. The four internal sense powers—common sense, imagination, the cogitative power, and memory—are taken as the imaginative power or the rational power.
The cogitative power focuses upon the individual intentions and particular things in the world. They are not capable of attaining intelligibles qua intelligibles. Intelligibles in act is only in the Material Intellect as one single substance, which is common to all. The Material Intellect understands nothing without the cogitative power resident in individual human beings. With the aid of the cogitative power, it grasps and conceptualizes intelligibles in potency in the world for attaining the essence of things in a universal sense.
Averroes conceptualizes intelligibles in act only in the realm of Material Intellect, which is one single substance as common to all minds, though at different degrees according to the history of their sense perceptions. Unlike Averroes, Aquinas holds that the intelligible in act exists in a plurality of intellects, because each person has his/her own agent and material intellects which exist in the rational soul.
In Aristotle’s scheme of matter-formism, Aristotle steers a middle course between a materialist pole and a dualist pole through his conception of ensouled body. How does Aristotle view various capacities of a human soul as integrating into unified forms or the unity of the whole soul? Aristotle refers to non-aggregative form of unity (De Anima, ii 3 414 b 28-32). He has less to do with a plurality of diverse capacities of the rational soul, rather implicating a notion of unified substance of intellect common to all.
This implication receives a lion’s share of attention in regard to Averroes’ invocation of Material Intellect. Indeed, Averroes does not deny that each individual has one common substance of Material Intellect, but not in the sense of its plurality. We perceive a particular tree as it is, but grasps its form at a higher level of generality through human rational soul for the universal knowledge.
Nonetheless, in contrast to Averroes, Aristotle does not deny the existence of an individual intellect (passive), which is actualized by the Active, eternal intellect. Furthermore, the individual intellect is connected to divine presence and human participation in mutual contemplative activity. This process encompasses a spiritual dimension, where the human intellect reinvigorates moral life. This perspective aligns with the views of Aquinas.
According to Averroes, however, if the intelligibles in act exist in a plurality of individuals like Aquinas, how do we secure its generality and unity required for science and a general episteme of rational discourse? Therefore, “the intelligible in act can exist in only one intellect and, if it were to exist in a plurality of intellects, it would be particularized and no longer an intelligible in act.”[25]
In Averroes’ Long Commentary on the De Anima, he distinguishes between the Agent (Active) Intellect, which is a single, separate, and eternal substance, and the eternal Material Intellect, which is shared as potential by all human souls. The Material Intellect represents the potential for human intellect to acquire universal knowledge, while the Agent Intellect functions as the form intrinsic to our process of knowing. Through the interaction of the active intellect with the material intellect within the framework of form and matter, human beings derive sense experience and imagination from the material intellect, allowing them to acquire universal knowledge and understanding.
This conception stands in contrast to Avicenna’s view of the Agent Intellect within the emanative framework. This shift represents an epistemological rupture, framing the common Material Intellect (a priori) as the potential of an individually shared intellect. The individual intellect strives to realize this potential through experience and understanding, operating at varying degrees of differentiation. In this way, it facilitates a mutual witnessing between faith and reason, both converging on the truth of divine reality.
Coda: The Renewal of Aristotle in the Christian-Muslim Context
“Indeed God commands justice (‘adl) and the actualization of goodness, realization of beauty (ihsan) (Qur’an 16:90).
This passage serves as the foundation for an immanent critique addressing issues such as racism, pluralism, and gender within the world of Islam, with the goal of fostering ‘multiple critique,’ [26] which should also include economic justice.
For Aristotle’s innovation, I draw attention to his conceptual framework of politics and economic justice by distinguishing between oikonomia (household management) and chrematistike (the art of money-making). If one seeks to accumulate as much wealth as possible, such behavior is not aligned with the true nature of economics. It is not a means to an end (according to right reason), but an end in itself, in which chrematistics has no limits to its aims.[27]
In Aristotle’s view, the rules of sheer money-making (chrematistike) is critiqued as ‘‘tiresome to dwell upon (…) at greater length’[28] for a philosophical mind. What is central in chremastics is circulation as the source of riches, because “money is the beginning and the end of this kind of exchange.”[29]
What is central in his interest refers to economics (oikonomia), which means the concern for morally adequate individual and public household management.[30]
Aristotle’s theory of economic management challenges the modern separation of economic activity from ethical concerns. His distinction between chrematistike and oikonomia remains critical in addressing the current discourse on laissez-faire global capitalism within the neoliberal framework. An ethical-economic position, rooted in Aristotle’s thought, emphasizes social responsibility and justice in the common interest within civil society.
For the relationship between political community and the justice of the common good, Aristotle writes: ‘‘Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act to obtain that which they think good.’’[31] He reiterates this ethical concern in the Nicomachean Ethics, stating: ‘‘Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.’’[32]
Aristotle’s position restricts the limitless pursuit of acquisition in chrematistics, while focusing on procuring the goods necessary for existence and useful to the household or the state. He favors retail trade, where use-value predominates, in contrast to chrematistics, where exchange is driven solely by what is necessary for the buyer and seller. His stance counters the view that the preservation and unlimited augmentation of money is the ultimate goal of economics. In chrematistics, the rich pursue the accumulation of wealth and profit through rampant competition and struggle for existence.
An ethical-economic perspective would support the political community in establishing policies of distributive justice, safeguarding the economic rights of the marginalized against the encroachment of profit-driven monopolies. Chrematistics, as part of commerce, arises for the exchange of commodities but should not dominate the economic and social landscape.
It is based on circulation, or mutual cheating in which “interest makes out of money, more money,”… “so that of all modes of making a living, this is the most contrary to Nature.”[33]
This stance addresses the problem of Aristotle’s aristocratic position, which historically favored the affluent and those of high status, bringing his philosophy closer to the idea of public benefit and justice for the least advantaged.
In light of this, I find it valuable to synthesize Aristotle’s views with the Islamic position on economic justice. At the heart of the Quran is a profound concern for the least advantaged, emphasizing the moral obligation to care for the marginalized. “And give his due to the near of kin, as well as to the needy and the wayfarer, but do not squander [thy substance] senselessly” (Q 17:27).
God and justice are inseparably linked (Quran 5:8). A sharp critique of interest is directed at the chrematistic form of wealth accumulation, where money is made from money through charging and devouring interest; those who engage in this are said to be smitten by Satan with insanity (Quran 2:275).
The Quran may align with Aristotle’s ideas of economics, emphasizing ethical prudence against interest and greed in the accumulation of wealth beyond life’s necessities (Quran 102:1-5; 104:1).
An encounter between Aristotle’s philosophy and Islamic thought requires a new conceptual framework, where merit or desert in the account of justice must be examined in reference to the common good and social consent. This framework emphasizes the importance of natural and universal justice, which guides positive law and is adaptable to particular situations and diverse cultures.
Aristotle’s virtue ethics centers on the life of the city-state, where the individual is understood as a political animal. To the extent that human excellences and virtues contribute to the creation of a community aimed at achieving the common good, citizens are encouraged to cultivate actions that will earn them merit and honor. This public-oriented perspective contrasts with the utilitarian notion of desert or the Neo-Aristotelian argument for state intervention driven by patriotism.[34]
Instead, I bring the virtues of desert, merit, or entitlement to bear on political and democratic claims about distributive justice and the common good, with particular reference to the rights of the most disadvantaged.
The classic principle of suum cuique — “to be just is to give each person what they deserve”[35] — articulates a crucial link between virtue and law, suggesting that law and morality are inseparable. Rational criteria of desert and merit can be framed within a socially established agreement or a rule-governed social contract, because we must act according to right action (kata ton orthon logon, Nicomachean Ethics 1138b25), which is aligned with the right rule.
Aristotle’s concept of economic justice, in correlation with Islamic justice, offers an innovative approach by rethinking the place of desert and merit within public justice and the common good (oikonomia). This reconfiguration is particularly relevant when considering thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who writes: “Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs… either luxury is the result of wealth, or it makes wealth necessary. It corrupts both rich and poor, the one by possessing, the other by coveting. It sells out the homeland to indolence and vanity; it deprives the State of all of its citizens by enslaving some of them to others and all of them to opinion.”[36]
On the other hand, in terms of the innovation of Islamic hermeneutics, Aristotle can be revisited and renewed through a synthesis of a critique of Arab reason and the critical theory of interpretation. Moral knowledge (phronesis) pertains to right living in general, unlike theoretical knowledge (episteme). Theoretical reasoning (intelligibility) aligns with moral knowledge and action within the Quranic context.
A moral being requires self-deliberation, as he or she is not standing outside of a social or cultural tradition but is directly involved in and shaped by it. In this way, Aristotle offers valuable hermeneutical insights, as sympathetic understanding goes hand in hand with phronesis, the virtue of thoughtful reflection. Sympathetic understanding complements moral knowledge, guiding human action in accordance with the concrete circumstances at hand.[37]
A living relationship to tradition transcends its limitations, which have been transmitted and solidified through social hierarchies, obscurity, and authoritative power, often at the expense of human rationality and critical thinking. The historically affected consciousness of the interpreter is shaped by the world of the text and becomes active within the universality of experience, forming through the fusion of horizons. This conception of experience aligns with Aristotle’s analysis of induction in the appendix to his Posterior Analytics. Various perceptions converge to form a unified experience, which itself embodies a unity of the universal.[38]
Aristotle’s description of phronesis offers a model of ethical hermeneutics, in which the moral consciousness of the interpreter is shaped through the reading of sacred texts. The life-world of the text lies in understanding both what it says and the significance and meaning it carries. [39] At the same time, the reader brings their own experience, critical reasoning, and social context into the interpretation, engaging in intersubjective communication and analyzing power relations.
More than that, at the beginning of De Interpretatione, Aristotle introduces a semantic dimension in exploring the relationship between the spoken and the written word. He posits that the spoken word is a symbol of the affections in the soul, while the written word serves as a symbol of the spoken word. Language, then, is defined as a sign of the affections of the soul, which are likenesses of actual things.[40]
If the soul is not separate from the body (an ensouled body), then the soul’s understanding or interpretation can be influenced by factors that affect and condition the body. As human beings are political animals, the body is exposed to social conditions and power relations within the political context.
However, Aristotle does not fully explore this body-politics relationship, particularly the way in which regimes shape and affect language as a form of social discourse, embedded with human understanding. Moreover, Aristotle lacks conceptual clarity when it comes to the role of history in understanding human nature and the polis, particularly in its dynamic course of change and transience. A political animal, by nature, cannot be adequately understood without considering it as a historical animal in constant transformation.
Aristotle’s ahistorical stance limits his political philosophy, preventing it from exploring how language, or social discourse, is invested with power relations and historically transformed through technological rationality. In his framework, intersubjective dialogue within the social context is not accounted for in the process of sympathetic understanding or phronesis.
This theory of causal interaction can be rearticulated within a sociological interpretative framework, focusing on the elective affinities between religious ideas and material interests in the lives of religious communities throughout history. Such a sociological hermeneutic allows for a more relevant and intelligible communication of the Quranic message, contextualizing it for contemporary challenges. In this way, a new meaning of the Quran, and its semantic retrieval, serves as the source of immanent critique, addressing the limitations and setbacks within Arab-Islamic reason, religious experience, and cultural practice.
A cause-effect relationship is inherently multiple and indeterminate in shaping the purposeful actuality within society and history. Therefore, I relocate this dynamic within a sociological inquiry of elective affinities, considering material interests, agency, and power relations in their governance. This perspective reinvigorates the phenomenological approach to understanding how one engages with a text, which occurs through an ongoing process of mutual recognition between the traditional text and the reader. This process involves appreciation, critical distance (the problematic regime), and the fusion of meaning horizons, ultimately achieving interpretive rupture. This is realized through the analysis of language, social discourse, historical change, and power mechanisms.
Nonetheless, the critical tradition of philosophical enlightenment in the Western context offers a fertile ground for an Islamic source of political philosophy, grounded in an ethical-logical framework. This framework seeks to further the concept of the virtuous city-state, emphasizing civil society, popular sovereignty, a common value of justice, and the politics of recognition and consultative democracy.
This approach could bridge the legacy of Averroes to the political traditions of thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Hegel, whose ideas on civil society and politics are actively engaged in late-modern debates between Habermas, John Rawls, and postcolonial cosmopolitan thinkers. This engagement challenges the political conservatism inherent in the Neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics.
Alongside a new innovation of Aristotle’s ideas, a reinterpretation of Averroes’ insights into the philosophy of religion, moral theory, and politics could provide valuable contributions to contemporary philosophy of religion, theology, and political justice.
[1] Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (New York and London: Springer, 2010), 1-2.
[2] Mary T. Clark, An Aquinas Reader, rev. ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 9.
[3] Omar, “Ibn Rushd’s The Decisive Treatise,” 144.
[4] Ralph Lerner made the English translation from the Hebrew version. Averroes on Plato’s “Republic”(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.1974).
[5] Charles E. Butterworth, “Translation and Philosophy: The Case of Averroes’ Commentaries.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994),20 [ Pp. 19-35]
[6] Averroes (E-text): 582.
[7] “Middle Commentary on the Republic,” in Averroes on Plato’s “Republic,” 92.
[8] Averroes (E-text): 583.
[9] Hans G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. Trans. and Rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York and London: The Continuum, 2004), 312.
[10] Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the Hebrew Version of Samuel ben Judah, Hebrew trans., ed. Lawrence V. Berman (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999).
[11] Steven Harvey and Frédérique Woerther, “Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics,” Orients 42 (2014), 264 [Pp. 254–287]
[12] Cited in Harvey and Woerther, “Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics,” 272.
[13] “Middle Commentary on the Republic,” 61:1-4.
[14] Harvey and Woerther, “Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics,” 271.
[15] Hans G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. Trans. and Rev. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York and London: The Continuum, 2004), 318.
[16] Ibid., 319-320.
[17] Apparently in 1888 on having returned from France, as reported here: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/07/02/democracy-religion-and-moral-values-a-road-map-toward-political-transformation-in-egypt/
[18] M.A. Al-Jabri, A Critique of Arab Reason (Barcelona: Acaria-Antrazyt, 2001), 157-8.
[19] Averroes (E-text): 396.
[20] “On Immortality of the Soul,” in Clark, An Aquinas Reader, 257.
[21] Averroes (E-text): 464.
[22] Aquinas, On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists (De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas ) (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1968), Ch.1. 8.
[23] Ibid., Ch.4. 91.
[24] Aquinas, ST 1.Q. 78. ar. 4.
[25] Richard C. Taylor, “Averroes’ Epistemology and its Critique by Aquinas,” in Medieval Masters: Essays
in Memory of Msgr. E. A. Synan. (Houston, TX: University of St. Thomas, 1999), 168 [Pp 147-177].
[26] Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism, ed., Omid Safi (Oxford: Oneworld. 2008), 2.
[27] Aristotle, Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett (eBooks@Adelaide, Adelaide, 2007), I, 11, 1258b, 33–34.
[28] Ibid., I, 11, 1258b, 34.
[29] Cited in Karl Marx, Capital I: A Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Penguin, 1990), 253. Ft. 6.
[30] Aristotle, Politics, IX, 1, 1256b, 40–41.
[31] Ibid., I, 1, 1252a, 1–2.
[32] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin (Hackett, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1985), I, 1, 1094a, 1–2.
[33] Marx, Capital I: 267.
[34] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 254. In the Neo-Aristotelian framework, unfortunately, a virtue of economic justice which is replaced by the virtue of merit, disappears in the discussion of individual right of acquisition and entitlement (Robert Nozick) and public benefit of the marginalized (John Rawls).
[35] MacIntyre, After Virtue, 152. Nichomachean Ethics, 5.3.1131a10-b16.
[36] J. J. Rousseau, On the Social Contract with Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy, trans. Judith R. Masters and ed. Roger D. Masters (New York, N.Y: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), Book III. Ch. iv.
[37] Gadamer, Truth and Method, 323.
[38] Ibid, 330. 341.
[39] Ibid., 324.
[40] “De Interpretatione,”1.16a 3-8, in A New Aristotle Reader, 12.