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Thinker profile

Averroes

Defends a rigorous Aristotle and a controversial account of the intellect that medieval Latins had to confront.

Dates

1126-1198

Tradition

Islamic Aristotelian

Core profile

Defends a rigorous Aristotle and a controversial account of the intellect that medieval Latins had to confront.

Concepts to watch

IntellectAristotelian commentaryhuman person

How to study this thinker

  1. 1Start with the basic problem this thinker is trying to solve.
  2. 2Name the concepts Aquinas receives, corrects, or resists.
  3. 3Return to Aquinas and ask how the borrowed insight is reordered.

Aquinas connection

Influence on Aquinas

Averroes pushes Aquinas to refine how Aristotle should be read and where Aristotle must be corrected.

Aquinas responds

Aquinas rejects the single separate intellect and defends the unity of each human person as an embodied rational substance.

Adjacent profiles

Previous thinkerAvicennaDistinguishes essence and existence and argues for a necessary existent as the cause of contingent beings.Next thinkerThomas AquinasSynthesizes classical philosophy and Christian theology through act and potency, participation, analogy, natural law, and sacred doctrine.