Abstract
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) exerted a profound impact on Renaissance philosophy, primarily, although not exclusively, through his commentaries on Aristotle. Renaissance scholars translated and conducted significant editorial work on his writings, which were frequently printed in the sixteenth century. The commentaries formed the basis for countless philosophical interpretations and disputes, but the most historically prominent were those related to his psychology. Averroes proposed that the material intellect is one in number, a thesis referred to as the unicity of the intellect or monopsychism. In the years around 1500, many, in particularly northern Italian, philosophers found Averroes’ interpretation of the soul philosophically convincing, even if they recognized its lack of conformity to Christianity. In the same years, ecclesiastical censures were promulgated that forbade the promotion of the unicity of the intellect. Nevertheless, philosophers continued to rely on his commentaries until the last decades of the sixteenth century. Thus, Averroes had a mixed reputation. While many university professors commended his subtlety as a commentator, humanists criticized his work for its supposed impiety and poor Latin, and many Thomist theologians considered his works a threat to religious orthodoxy.
References
Bianchi, L. 2008. Pour une histoire de la “double vérité”. Paris: J. Vrin.
Brenet, J.-B. 2003. Transferts du sujet: la noétique d’Averroès selon Jean de Jandun. Paris: J. Vrin.
Burnett, C. 1999. The second revelation of Arabic philosophy and science: 1492–1562. In Islam and the Italian renaissance, ed. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini, 370–404. London: The Warburg Institute.
Burnett, C. 2013. Revisiting the 1552–1550 and 1562 Aristotle-Averroes edition. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 55–64. Dordrecht: Springer.
Charbonnel, J. 1919. La pensée italienne au XVIe siècle et le courant libertin. Paris: Champion.
Conti, A. 2017. Paul of Venice. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (Summer 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/paul-venice/
Cranz, F.E. 1976. Editions of the Latin Aristotle accompanied by the commentaries of Averroes. In Philosophy and humanism: Renaissance essays in honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney, 116–128. Leiden: Brill.
Di Donato, S. 2004. Il Kašf ‘an manāhiǧ di Averroè: confronto fra la versione latina di Abraham De Balmes e le citazioni di Cala Calonimo nel De mundi creatione. Materia Giudaica 9: 241–248.
Di Donato, S. 2013. Traduttori di Averroè e traduzioni ebraico-latine nel dibattito filosofico del XV e XVI secolo. In L’averroismo in etá moderna (1400–1700), ed. Giovanni Licata, 25–49. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Engel, M. 2016. Elijah del Medigo and Paduan Aristotelianism: Investigating the human intellect. London: Bloomsbury.
Fraenkel, C. 2013. Reconsidering the case of Elijah Delmedigo’s Averroism and its impact on Spinoza. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 213–236. Dordrecht: Springer.
Hasse, D. 2004. The attraction of Averroism in the Renaissance: Vernia, Achillini, Prassicio. In Philosophy, science and exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin commentaries, ed. Peter Adamson et al., 131–147. London: Institute of Classical Studies.
Hasse, D. 2016. Success and suppression: Arabic sciences and philosophy in the Renaisssance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holland, N. 2013. The transmutations of a young Averroist: Agostino Nifo’s commentary on the Destruction destructionum of Averroes and the nature of celestial influences. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 99–123. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kessler, E. 1988. The intellective soul. In The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt et al., 485–534. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristeller, P.O. 1965. Paduan Averroism and Alexandrism in the light of recent studies. In Renaissance thought II, 111–118. New York: Harper & Row.
MacClintock, S. 1954–55. Heresy and epithet: An approach to the problem of Latin Averroism. I. Review of Metaphysics 8: 176–199.
Mahoney, E. 1970. Agostino Nifo’s early views on immortality. Journal of the History of Philosophy 8: 451–460.
Mahoney, E. 1976. Nicoletto Vernia on the soul and immortality. In Philosophy and humanism: Renaissance essays in honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney, 144–163. Leiden: Brill.
Mahoney, E. 1986. Marsilio Ficino’s influence on Nicoletto Vernia, Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara. In Marsilio Ficino e il ritornodi Platone: studi e documenti, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, vol. 2, 509–531. Florence: Olschki.
Mahoney, E. 1993. Agostino Nifo and Neoplatonism. In Il neoplatonismo nel rinascimento, ed. Pietro Prini, 205–231. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Marebon, J. 2013. Ernest Renan and Averroism: The story of a misinterpretation. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 273–283. Dordrecht: Springer.
Martin, C. 2007. Rethinking Renaissance Averroism. Intellectual history review 17: 3–28.
Martin, C. 2013. Humanism and the assessment of Averroes in the Renaissance. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 65–79. Dordrecht: Springer.
Martin, C. 2014. Subverting Aristotle: Religion, history, and philosophy in early modern science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Martin, C. 2015. Providence and seventeenth-century attacks on Averroes. In Averroes’ natural philosophy and its reception in the Latin west, ed. Paul J.J.M. Bakker. Leuven: University of Leuven Press.
Monfasani, J. 1993. The Averroism of John Argyropoulos and his “Quaestio utrum intellectus humanus sit perpetuus”. I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 5: 157–208.
Nardi, B. 1958. Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI. Florence: Sansoni.
Perfetti, S. 2000. Aristotle’s zoology and its Renaissance commentators. Leuven: University of Leuven Press.
Piaia, G. 2002. Gli aristotelici padovani al vaglio del Dictionnaire historique et critique. In La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia, 419–443. Padua: Antenore.
Polzer, J. 1993. The “Triumph of Thomas” panel in Santa Caterina, Pisa: Meaning and date. Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institute in Florenz 37: 29–70.
Randall, J.H., Jr. 1961. The school of Padua and the emergence of modern science. Padua: Antenore.
Renan, E. 1852. Averroës et l’Averroïsme. Paris: A. Durand.
Schmitt, C. 1979. Renaissance Averroism studied through the Venetian editions of Aristotle-Averroes (with particular reference to the Giunta edition of 1550–1552). In L’Averroismo in Italia, 121–142. Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei.
Steiris, G. 2018. Pletho, Scholarios and Arabic philosophy. In Never the twain shall meet: Latins and Greeks learning from each other in Byzantium, ed. Denis Searby, 309–334. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Sturlese, L. 1994. “Averroè quantumque arabo et ignorante di lingua greca …” Note sull’averroismo di Giordano Bruno. In Averroismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Friedrich Niewöhner and Loris Sturlese, 319–348. Zurich: Spur.
Thijssen, J.M.M.H. 1998. Censure and heresy at the university of Paris, 1200–1400. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Troilo, E. 1939. Averroismo e aristotelismo padovano. Florence: Olschki.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Martin, C. (2018). Averroism, Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_822-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_822-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities