Visiting Scholars
2023
Dr. Abdelouahab Rgoud
Postdoc, École normale supérieure de Lyon
Stay: August 2023
Project: French Translation of Averroes’ Kitāb al-kašf
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I would like to use this grant to propose a bilingual Arabic-French edition, annotated, commented and introduced, of Averroes’ work : The Unveiling of the Methods of Demonstration of the Dogmas of the religion.
This work by Averroes is part of a three-part response by the Andalusian philosopher to the attacks of the theologians of his time. The three works, written around the year 1179, respectively serve distinct purposes : to lift the Ghazalian mortgage on the accusation of internal incoherence in the practice of philosophy for The Incoherence of Incoherence, and to highlight the religiously obligatory character of philosophical practice for those who are endowed with reason and trained in the subtleties of demonstrative discourse, with the Fasl al-Maqal, the Decisive Discourse.
Once this epistemological reversal is established, the Andalusian philosopher goes on the offensive, in a third and last stage, the one that will interest us in the framework of the present project, that of the Kashf, which consists in the highlighting of the collapse of the multiple theological approaches, in the sense that they go, each one for different reasons, not only reveal themselves to be in contradiction with the philosophical approach, but, even more, reveal themselves to be in contradiction with the religious discourse itself, which would make them all absurd ways, in the sense that they go against their first intended effect.
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Dr. Francesco Binotto
Research Assistant, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies / University of Urbino
Stay: June–September 2023
Project: Averroes’ Account of the Contingency of a Cause and its Reception in the Early Fourteenth Century-Masters at the Faculty of Arts of Bologna (Thaddeus of Parma, Cambiolus of Bologna and Matthew of Gubbio)
In his Long Commentary on the Physics (II, c. 48), Averroes rejects the Avicennian extrinsic account for explaining the contingency of causes: contingency expresses the possibility of being impeded that characterizes the intrinsic nature of a cause, and it does not depend on the external impediments with which the cause collides. Some of the masters at the Faculty of Arts of Bologna, such as Thaddeus of Parma, Cambiolus of Bologna and Matthew of Gubbio, while discussing the issue of fatalism, propose different explanations of the contingency of causes and effects in nature. During my stay at the Thomas-Institute, my purpose is to examine the following research question: if and to what extent Averroes’s account influenced Thaddeus’s, Cambiolus’s, and Matthew’s explanations of the contingency of causes in nature. The novelty of my project consists in extending the scholarly research by focusing on the influence of Averroes’s Long Commentary on the Physics on the Faculty of Arts of Bologna. Specifically, I aim to reconstruct the arguments elaborated by Thaddeus, Cambiolus, and Matthew, for justifying the contingency of causes.
2022
Dr. Kyuhee Park
PhD Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Stay: November–December 2022
Project: The influence of Averroes on Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmology
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My research aims to clarify the influence of Averroes on Thomas Aquinas’ cosmic theory. The theory of celestial soul and Intelligence is found, for Averroes, in De substantia orbis, and for Thomas, in the Commentary on the Book of Causes, and confirmed in their respective commentaries on Book Lambda of the Metaphysics. Although he considers the Book of Causes as a supplement to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it seems somewhat insufficient for Thomas, since there the celestial soul and an Intelligence are just posited, but not proved. However, on account of his own metaphysical method (resolutio) he needs an argument for their existence. It is assumed that he must have accepted Averroes’ argument from De substantia orbis, if neither the Book of Causes nor Aristotle offers it. There is some evidence to support this suggestion: First, Thomas’ reinterpretation of Averroes’ view on the efficient causality of the celestial sphere; Second, his replacement of the premise of Averroes’ argument for the unmoved mover on account of the singularity of celestial soul; Third, this approach has a great similarity with the method used by Albert the Great in his Commentary on the Book of Causes (Dcpu), who cites there Averroes by name.
2017
Prof. Dr. Steven Harvey
Professor of Jewish Thought, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Personal Website
Stay: January–March 2017
Project: The manuscript tradition of Averroes’s Middle and Long Commentaries on the Physics.