Averroes: by Pierluigi Casalino
THOMAS AQUINAS AND IBN RUSHD (AVERROES)
Even though it is a paradox, the main "receptor" of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was a Domenican, Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was also a student of Albert the Great, a Master in Theological Faculty in Paris and without doubt the most outstanding theologian in the Western Medieval Christian World. Despite an apparent hostility between him and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) that can be seen in religious iconography in the following literature, both thinkers share a common philosophical source, Aristotelism. As the Spanish Arabist Asìn Palacios (who studied the relations between Dante and Islam) pointed out, they are also close on many theological issues (cfr. "Saint Thomas", Averroès et l'Averroism" in Aquinas and problems of his time, Lovain, 1976). An abundant presence by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in Thomas Aquinas's writings is evident with more than 500 contrasted quotations. This influence turned openly only in his later years, and coincided with attack on Latin Averroism with regard to some of its psychological, cosmological and ethical theses. The crux of this confrontation lies in Ibn Rushd's supposed Monopsychism. There is therefore a moderate Averroism in Thomas Aquinas though whom Rushdian theories were spread throughout Europe. Nobody before him among the Christian theologians dared to think from the Aristotelian-Averroist conceptual world traditionally labelled as heretical. Also al-Gha^za^li^ condemned Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as a Islam's heretical one.
Casalino Pierluigi