1001Philosophers

Averroes vs Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas read Averroes carefully and used him extensively in his commentaries on Aristotle, but rejected several of Averroes' central doctrines and labeled certain Averroist positions as among the most dangerous opinions in philosophy.

At a glance

AverroesThomas Aquinas
Dates1126 – 11981225 – 1274
NationalityAndalusianItalian
EraMedievalMedieval
Movements Medieval Philosophy, Islamic Philosophy Medieval Philosophy, Scholasticism, Christian Philosophy
Profile Averroes → Thomas Aquinas →

Where they agree

Both held that Aristotelian philosophy can be reconciled with monotheistic revelation, both treated metaphysics as the science of being qua being, and both worked through Aristotle's texts with the same close-reading discipline. Aquinas often calls Averroes the Commentator in recognition of the latter's work on Aristotle.

Where they disagree

The decisive disagreement is over the unity of the agent intellect. Averroes held that there is one agent intellect shared by all human beings, with consequences that seem to deny personal immortality. Aquinas devoted a major treatise (De Unitate Intellectus) to refuting this. They also disagreed sharply over the relation between philosophy and revelation: Aquinas held they reach a unified truth from different starting points, while Averroes was sometimes read as endorsing a double truth doctrine, though scholars debate whether he held this strictly.

Representative quotes

Averroes

  • “Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”

    Attributed to Averroes, in: John Bartlett (1968) Familiar Quotations . p. 155

  • “There is no city that is truly one other than this city that we [anahnti] are involved in bringing forth.”

    Averroes, Ralph Lerner (1974) Averroes On Plato's Republic . p. xxiv

  • “Averroes, Ralph Lerner (1974) Averroes On Plato's Republic . p. xxiv”

    There is no city that is truly one other than this city that we [anahnti] are involved in bringing forth.

Thomas Aquinas

  • “The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions.”

    Vita enim in hoc maxime manifestatur quod aliquid movet se ipsum; quod autem non potest moveri nisi ab alio, quasi mortuum esse videtur.

  • “Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.”

    Tria sunt homini necessaria ad salutem: scilicit scientia credendorum, scientia desiderandorum, et scientia operandorum.

  • “Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium Sanguinisque pretiosi, Quem in mundi pretium Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium.”

    Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory, Of His Flesh the mystery sing; Of the Blood, all price exceeding, Shed by our immortal King. | Pange, Lingua (hymn for Vespers on the Feast of Corpus Christi), stanza 1

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