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Averroes and Narboni on the Material Intellect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

Herbert A. Davidson
Herbert A. Davidson
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
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Extract

Questions regarding the human intellect haunted Averroes throughout his philosophic career; no less than seven of his preserved works treat the human intellect formally, while others, naturally enough, also do so incidentally. Here I shall point out that the seven aforementioned works fall into a sequence, that a recently published text of Averroes' has its place within the sequence, and that Moses Narboni misread Averroes for reasons to be explained.

Type
Articles
Information
AJS Review , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1984 , pp. 175 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1984

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References

1. , Aristotle, De anima III, 4,429a, 16.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 429a, 16.

3. Ibid., 5, 430a, 14–15.

4. Ibid., 430a, 10–11.

5. Ibid., I, 4, 408b, 18–25; III, 4, 429a, 15–429b, 5.

6. , Alexander, De anima (in Scripta Minora, II, pt. 1, ed. I. Bruns [Berlin, 1887]), p. 84Google Scholar

7. , Alexander, De anima III, 4, 430a, 1.Google Scholar

8. , Alexander, De anima, pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

9. , Themistius, De anima (in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, V, pt. 3, ed. R. Heinze [Berlin, 1899]), p. 105.Google Scholar

10. See below, n. 15, and , Averroes, Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima Libros, ed. Crawford, F. (Cambridge, 1953), p. 389.Google Scholar

11. Commentarium Magnum, p. 397.

12. The medieval Arabic text of Themistius has been published: An Arabic Translation of Themistius, Commentary on Aristoleles De Anima, ed. M. Lyons (Columbia, S. C, 1973). The medieval translation of Alexander's De anima has not been published, but the translation of a related text, his De iniellectu, has been published twice: Texte Arabe du Peri Nou dAlexandre dAphrodise, ed. J. Finnegan, Melanges de IUniversite St. Joseph 33 (1956): 159–202; and Badawi, A., Commemaires sur Aristote perdus en grec (Beirut, 1968), 31–42. The attribution of the De intellectu to Alexander has been questioned, but Averroes had no doubtsGoogle Scholar

13. Cf. Altmann, A., “Ibn Bajja on Man's Ultimate Felicity”, reprinted in his Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), p. 101.Google Scholar

14. In the Commentarium Magnum, p. 397, Averroes writes that he is reporting what Ibn Bajja “appears to mean, according to the obvious sense of his words”.

15. Averroes, Talkhiṣ K. al–Safs, ed. A. Ahwani (Cairo, 1950), pp. 83–86. The term talkhtṣ properly designates the Middle Commentary, but what Ahwani has published is the Epitome.

16. Ibid., (a) p. 86; (b) p. 87; (c) p. 90. Ahwani used a Madrid and a Cairo manuscript. The three passages appear in the Madrid manuscript, and Ahwani reports that (b) and (c) but not (a) are missing in the Cairo manuscript. Another text was published in Hyderabad, 1947 and there passages (a) and (c) are missing, whereas passage (b) is present; see pp. 84–85, and p. 87. All the Hebrew manuscripts that I examined have the three passages.

17. Talkhiṣ, pp. 86, 87.

18. Ibid., p. 90. The Hebrew translation was printed by Munk, S., Melanges de Philosophie juive el arabe (Paris, 1859), p. 443.Google Scholar

19. Averroes (Vater und Sohn), Drei Abhandlungen ueber die Conjunklion, ed. and trans. J. Hercz (Berlin, 1869), first opuscule, Hebrew text, p. 5; German trans., p. 20. Middle Commentary on De anima, Arabic text (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Hebrew MS 1009), pp. 144a, 145b–146a; Hebrew text (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Hebrew MS 947), pp. 219a, 220b–221a. The opuscule on conjunction was translated into Latin in the sixteenth century under the title Epislola de comexione intellectus abstracti cum homine. A different Latin translation of the opuscule was incorporated into chapters 1–3 of a work entitled Tractalus de Animae Beatiludine. The Tractalus carries the name of Averroes, but it is patently the handiwork of a Latin writer, presumably late, who fashions the present opuscule on the subject of conjunction, a related opuscule on the same subject (see below, n. 30), excerpts from Alfarabi, and transitional material of his own into a single treatise. The distinction between possibilitas and potentia in chapter 2 of the Tractatus betrays a Latin provenance; such a distinction would not be drawn in Arabic. See M. Steinschneider, Al-Farabi (St. Petersburg, 1869), pp. 96–104. The Epislola and the Tractatus were reprinted repeatedly in the sixteenth-century Latin editions of Averroe's commentaries.

20. Middle Commentary, Arabic text, p. 144b; Hebrew trans., p. 219b.

21. Commentarium Magnum, pp. 395–398.

22. Ibid., p. 433.

23. Ibid., pp. 391–393.

24. Ibid., pp. 385–386, 389, 402, 406, 413–414.

25. Ibid., pp. 430–431.

26. Commentary on the De Intellectu (Leyden, Warner MS 6), pp. 122a–b. The text will be published in the issue of Mehqare Yerushalayim be–Maljshebet Yisra'el dedicated to S. Pines.

27. The date 1159 has been assigned to the Epitome or to a copy of it, and 1181 has been assigned to the Middle Commentary. See Ahwani's introduction to Talkhis. al–Nafs, p. 6; M. Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Uebersetzungen (Berlin, 1893), p. 148

28. The additions noted above, n. 16, reflect the doctrine of the Long Commentary even in details.

29. Also see above, n. 27.

30. The second opuscule in Drei Abhandlungen (above, n. 19).

31. Averroes, Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intellect … with the Commentary of Moses Narboni, ed. and trans. K.. Bland (New York, 1982), Hebrew sec., p. 4; English trans, p. 23. Bland opted not to produce an eclectic text and instead printed the text of a single manuscript verbatim, placing all variants in the apparatus. The manuscript Bland chose for his edition is, mirabile diclu, one of the worst, a manuscript that, he admits, exhibits “blatant error[s]”,“errors of transcription”, and “lacunae” (introduction, pp. 10–11). 'Aluba hi ha-'issa she-nahtomah meid 'aleha.… My translations are based on Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale, Hebrew MS 918, corrected with the aid of Blands apparatus.

32. Aristotle, De anima III, 4, 429a, 18–22.

33. “Intellect in habitu” is the term coined by the Greek commentators for the stage of intellect described by Aristotle, De anima III, 4, 429b, 5–9. See Alexander, De anima, p. 85; De intellectu, p. 107; Themistius, De anima, p. 98.

34. Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction, Hebrew text, pp. 12–13; English trans., pp. 27–28.

35. Ibid., Hebrew text, p. 102.

36. Ibid., Hebrew text, p. 108; English trans., p. 85.

37. The Long Commentary was translated from Latin into Hebrew, probably in the fifteenth century. See Crawford's introduction to Commentarium Magnum, p. xi; Wolfson, H.,“Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem”, reprinted in his Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 445–453.Google Scholar

38. Above, n. 16.

39. , Narboni, Ma'amar be–Shelemut ha–Sefesh, ed. Ivry, A. (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 123–125. Cf. Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction, Hebrew text, p. 21; English trans., p. 33.Google Scholar

40. Above, nn. 31, 34, 35.

41. Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction, Hebrew text, pp. 5–6, and cf. p. 44; English trans., pp. 24–25, 47.