Averroes against Avicenna on Human Spontaneous Generation: The Starting-Point of a Lasting Debate
The first criticism of Avicenna in Averroes’s Long Commentary on Metaphysica (II, 993a30-995a20) regards Avicenna’s doctrine of the asexual (so-called ‘spontaneous’) generation of human beings. This criticism is interesting in two main regards. When consi
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Averroes against Avicenna on Human Spontaneous Generation: The Starting-Point of a Lasting Debate Amos Bertolacci
Introduction Among the legends on Averroes’s life reported in Ernest Renan’s Averroès et l’averroïsme (1852), allegedly ‘the most absurd’ is the one that he draws from De philosophia et philosophorum sectis by Gerardus Joannes Vossius (1577–1649) (published posthumously in 1658) and from the Historia critica philosophiae (1767) by Johann Jakob Brucker (1696–1770). The story goes that Avicenna went to Cordoba during Averroes’s lifetime, and Averroes, out of hate, tortured and killed him.1 The tale of Avicenna’s presence in Cordoba and his killing by Averroes has a long history that goes back to the thirteenth century.2 On a historical level, the legend in question is obviously wrong, since Avicenna lived more than a century before Averroes and never moved to Andalusia. The persistence of the account of
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Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme (Paris: Durand, 1852; repr. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1997), pp. 47–48. 2 See Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, ‘Survivance et renaissance d’Avicenne à Venise et à Padoue’, in Venezia e l’Oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966; repr. in Ead., Avicenne en Occident, Paris: Vrin, 1993, article XV), pp. 75–102 (80–83). At p. 83 of this study, d’Alverny reports a version of the legend, contained in a decree of Pietro Barozzi, bishop of Padua, of May 1489, according to which Avicenna would have succeeded in killing Averroes before being brought to death himself by the latter’s poison. Dag Nikolaus Hasse, ‘Averroes in the Renaissance’, in Averroes Latinus: A New Edition (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. xv-xviii (xvii), identifies the immediate source of Barozzi’s report in the world chronicle by Giacomo Filippo Foresta (or Foresti) da Bergamo (1434–1520). See also Akasoy in this volume. A. Bertolacci (*) Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Piazza dei Cavalieri, 7, Palazzo della Carovana Stanza 112, 56126 Pisa, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Akasoy and G. Giglioni (eds.), Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 211, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5240-5_2, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Averroes’s enmity against Avicenna, however, even after the chronological and geographical details of the latter’s life had become clear to Western scholars, is significant at a philosophical level, since it represents the reflex – in which doctrinal confrontation is amplified to physical aggression – of an indisputable fact, namely, Averroes’s actual ‘affectation à contredire Avicenne,’ as Renan says. The immense impact of Avicenna’s philosophy on subsequent authors includes, besides countless instances of positive reception, also some noteworthy examples of critical attitude. Among the opponents of Avicenna, Averroes was certainly one of the most strenuous and radical. Critic
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