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The dialectics of the Self and the Other as two images reciprocally reflected in a mirror is a fundamental characteristic of the dialectic relationship between Europe, or in a broader sense the western word, and Islam. One of the most important contemporary Islamic philosophers, the Egyptian Hasan Hanafi, has on this subject presented an interesting interpretation. «Dialectics between the Self and the Other express the battle between the new and the ancient as far as culture is concerned and within the framework of the historical future. This happens in all populations and is marked by great cultural cycles. When the West was the Self, the East, in relation to it, was the Other and vice versa, when the East was the I, the West was, in relation to it, the Other» . Obviously, the "I" and the "other" are metaphors for indicating the winning subject compared to the subordinated object, seeing that this did not consist simply in cultural or philosophical dialectics, but first of all historical dialectics. For many centuries the Muslim world ruled politically; then Europe (the West) gained the upper hand, submitting the Islamic world to colonial domination and above all invading the Islamic world with new cultural categories, such as nationalism, democracy, human rights. This historical (colonialism and contemporary neo-colonialism) and cultural (the new categories of thought) subordination caused a weariness and an alienation in the awareness Islam had of itself. The contemporary era, without lingering on events that go beyond the intentions of this paper, has seen a revival of Islam .
Now, the East’s re-appropriation of its own self-awareness is an educational and cultural process at the end of which the East and the West become interacting cultural subjects. Hanafî supports this belief presenting a cyclical concept of history, marked by an alternating of periods lasting about seven hundred years . The history of modern Europe and the West obviously started with the Christian revelation. The first seven hundred years saw a fecund theological process during which the foundations of Christianity were set by the fathers of the Greek and Latin Church. The second stage starts with Charlemagne and continues until the Renaissance. This, according to Hanafî, was a period of crisis and regression: these were the “dark centuries". The third stage began with the Renaissance and ended with the twentieth century. This was the phase of the highest maturity and the greatest power for European and western civilisation and culture, naturally coinciding with colonial expansion and Europe’s supremacy over the people of the Third and Fourth worlds. This phase reached its summit during the nineteenth century, the century of the industrial revolution and imperialism. The twentieth century, however, already showed signs of a crisis. The fourth phase - only possible to hypothesise – will begin with the twenty-first century and will continue for another six or seven hundred years; predictably a phase of depression. The first and third phases were those during which Europe and the West were the "I" keeping under control and dominating the oriental, and more specifically Arab and Islamic, "other". The second phase on the contrary, was one during which the oriental “I”, the “I” of Islam triumphed, while it was Europe who was the "Other" and suffered Islamic cultural hegemony. In fact, the first phase of Islamic history, that obviously started with Muhammad and the Hegira, continued until the fourteenth century: this was the era during which Islam was the centre of science and civilisation, while the West was dozing during the dark centuries. In this sense, Ibn Khaldûn (1332-1406) appears as the real critical conscience of an Islam that had embarked upon the slope of its decadence. Then, precisely during the West’s third phase, that of western expansion, came the second phase of Islamic history, a phase of regression and decadence. The very beginning of Islam’s fourteenth century (1980) coincided with the end of the twentieth century in the West and marked the beginning of the third phase of Islamic history, one of rebirth and recovery, the consequences of which can once again only be hypothesised (or perhaps dreamt).
It is now an indisputable fact that medieval Europe’s cultural and philosophical roots owe a great deal to the influence and presence of Islam. In this sense, one cannot help observing that, at least at the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, knowledge, especially scientific knowledge but to considerable extent also philosophical knowledge, travelled from the Orient, and in particular from the Islamic world, to the West. Then, after a number of centuries, it "travelled back", experiencing a reflux in modern and contemporary times, basically the era of colonial expansion, when the western outlook homogenised the whole world in a “global” economy and society, and knowledge, once “oriental” in its medieval origins, and now "western", occupied and enslaved the East itself to its own categories and theoretical and practical needs. This did not take place without traumas, because from an intellectual viewpoint, before being inflicted on the East, this alleged "western" culture due to a pure pedigree of Europeanism created a false and deformed image of its roots. In addition to the creation of stereotypes, contributed above all in passing down the idea of permanent conflict that, originally precisely, only very partially corresponded to reality . This is a real ideological invention that, after September 11th 2001, poured over the mass-media and has become a real political weapon nourished by Islamophobia.
During the Middle Ages, Islam and the West certainly opposed one another also with the strength of weapons, starting with Muslim attempts to conquer Europe and Byzantium as well as Christian aggressions with the Crusades. Luckily, while weapons clashed, culture united and historiography emphasised how it was necessary to abandon all prejudice. Hence, Alain De Libera provided and continues to provide the image of plural Middle Ages, hence of Middle Ages during which the cultural and political realities of the Western, Byzantine and mainly Muslim “Oriental” world continued to reciprocally correspond to one another and interact. The translatio studiorum, and hence philosophical communication as the privileged expression of such a tradition of knowledge, was in fact one of "Mediterranean” interaction’s most characteristic aspects. De Libera even alludes to a “paradoxe géoculturel de l'Occident”:
What distinguishes Latin western philosophy is not the fact that is presents itself as the heir to the Greeks. On the contrary, in the Christian world the western difference arises from the Arab sources and rootedness of the Latin speakers. At the other extremity of the Christian world, Byzantium became isolated to continue alone the Hellenic roman spirit. [...] The 12th century presents a fascinating geo-cultural paradox: philosophically, the Latin speaking Christians received their status as westerners from their openness to the falsafa of western Islam [the Andalusian Spanish one] that, imitating eastern Islam, had already generally bowed, accommodated, adapted and assimilated Greek philosophy to the obligations of monotheism; Greek speaking Christians are and remain oriental since treating as Christians a philosophy that remained Hellenic, and therefore pagan .
Now, to analyse in all its multiple aspects the aforementioned process, there is perhaps no better mirror than "Averroism" and its tradition. Without wishing to continue to insist on the well known querelles concerning the real existence or not of “Averroism”, let us briefly concentrate on Averroes. Many of this philosopher’s doctrines were widely known in the West, and four in particular stand out: the world’s eternity, denying God’s creative work; so-called “mental happiness”, hence the possibility for the philosopher to be fulfilled in this life and in a totally secular manner; the uniqueness of the possible intellect, that compromised the soul’s immortality; and the alleged “dual truth”, that subordinated religious truth to philosophical truth. Although not all these doctrines really belong to Averroes (certainly not the fourth one, the second was not knowingly theorised by the Muslim, while the first and the third were, albeit with the author experiencing significant intellectual changes), all contributed to producing the image of an unbelieving and godless Averroes, a materialist and naturalist Averroes, distant from the revealed religion.
Now I believe that the nucleus of Averroes’ doctrine is the problem of the relation between being and language, a problem he expresses at numerous levels: epistemological, cosmological and ontological . Epistemologically, Averroes theorised the "uniqueness of the truth", hence the both semantic and ontological congruence between the truth revealed by religion and the truth expressed by philosophy and scientific research. According to Averroes, preaching is always coherent with what is preached; scientific certainty consists in the adaptation between the knowing intellect and the object known. This is a realism that requires a particular notion of language to be expressed. Language is like soft flexible paste, ready to adhere to any content. The problem is whether in doing this language modifies the object translated and adds to it cognitive elements differing from those deducible from the instant perception of the senses or the intellect’s intuitive perception.
But this is our own interpretive problem. The concordist premise of epistemology seemed instead useful to Averroes for explaining the problem of the creation at a cosmological level. The question is posed as follows: did God produce the world from nothingness setting off not only simultaneously the creation but also time, or is the world co-eternal with God who as the inexhaustible agent has forever created it and confirms its existence? Philosophically and also following in Aristotle’s footsteps, the answer should embrace the eternalistic hypothesis, but faith suggests or rather imposes a creational solution. Averroes attempted to address the two aspects of the dilemma, denying however that is was a dilemma, and stating that these are only logical and linguistic proposals that differ in formulation, but equivalent in their epistemological valence. The semantic and linguistic solution is however too refined to be appreciated by anyone; or, if one prefers, too astute to solve the problems of a truth rendered plural by words.
Therefore Averroes decided to move to the ontological level: if God did not eternally create he would be powerless, because powerlessness means not doing what one is capable of doing; the world is made necessary by God’s demiurgic acts and holds no possibility at all; God however makes the universe relevant, in fact he optimises, transforming the potential into necessary, both from a logical and from a substantial point of view.
This is the nucleus of Averroes’ authentic doctrine. The Muslim philosopher however spread a particular image of Aristotle in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially through his Commentarî: a very rationalistic image, although it is legitimate to doubt to what extent Averroes was a rationalist person . However, the Aristotle par lui même that this Muslim philosopher wished to return to light and re-present to the consideration of scholars was a wise man who structured a wonderful speculative order and an equally wonderful consecutio causarum. It is therefore to the “peripatetic” Averroes that the Muslim Averroes who inspired the Latin philosophers corresponds only very vaguely. Philosophers who, radicalising his distinctions, wished perhaps also to see the world’s eternity as the rigorous conclusion of the demonstrative apodix, but basically to defend the dignity of philosophical research rendered autonomous from theological research at least at a methodological level (not from faith, however since Latins basically remained good believers). Such is the profound meaning of the so-called "dual truth", the deforming historical and historiographic category in which Averroes’ concordism is camouflaged. This resulted in the birth of a form of apparently “heterodox” Aristotlism of which the "Averroists" were the main defenders, and the intersecting of the destinies of natural philosophy of Arab inspiration and university creation was emphasised by the crises that devastated Paris and its studium between 1270 and 1277.
Pierre Duhem believed that the condemnation of "Averroists" pronounced by the Bishop Etienne Tempier in 1277 was the moment in which modern science began, since, by challenging Aristotle’s image of the world, he opened the path to new ways of investigation. It is the determinism inherent in Aristotle’s and Averroes’ cosmos that Tempier’s condemnation definitely banned, once again providing space for God’s potentia absoluta. «The Christian faith», commented Massimo Parodi, «hence the theological definition resulting from this condemnation’s inspiration, and the increasing importance attributed to the experimental attitude, allow the avoidance of "Aristotelian dogmatism" that leaves God no freedom at an ontological level, and therefore also none for hypothetical creations and alternative explanations envisaged by humankind» . The Arab roots of western philosophy are effectively overturned here. Duhem believes that the West developed denying Averroes and not assimilating his beliefs.
The interpretation stating the opposite of Duhem’s thought insists instead on the fact that the condemnation dated 1277 was an act of theological and ecclesiastic intolerance against science and philosophy: «if a common denominator links the uncoordinated and incoherent action [of the] censors, it appears to be a drastic refusal of all forms of emancipation of the universe of theology. [...] In other words, this was not addressed at refuting human reason in the name of blind fideism, but rather at confirming the theological protection of Christian knowledge» . I am personally convinced that, even if a “dual truth” does not exist in the strictest sense of the words, the Parisian “averroists” must have in some way provided an opening for Tempier and his persecutory intentions. As far as what is of interest to us here is concerned, what is important is that if there was an attempt to subordinate science to theology, this too should be considered as the consequence of a changed attitude with regard to the Arab (or Greek-Arab) tradition. Effectively, it is not so much rationalism that is addressed by the condemnation; in this sense one could state that by then Averroist "rationalism” and that of other Arab teachers, had become an inalienable legacy, and hence not acknowledged (just as no one acknowledges the influence of illuminist positivism in modelling the mentality of contemporary humankind), by the Western scientific mentality. What was questioned (perhaps still rather prematurely) was the western mentality’s tendency to discriminate between theological and scientific issues. On the other hand, what actually happened was not only the removal of Arab sources, but also their absolute denial, their anathematisation, almost as if the western mentality wished to free itself of an inconvenient and embarrassing legacy, perceived more as a burden than a positive heritage.
During the second half of the 13th century, "Averroism" in fact even became a synonym for moral licence, even for neo-paganism . During the next century, Francesco Petrarca stood out for his ruthless, ungenerous and obsessive condemnation of "averroesists". The De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia, which exalts Plato rather than Aristotle, in those mentioned in the Stagirita among whom, although not a Christian, Averroes plays an important role, identified those who “philosophi potius quam Christiani videantur”; and in fact emphasised the fact that naturalist philosophers of Aristotelian and Arab beliefs, “oppugnant veritatem et pietatem, clanculum in angulis irridentes Christum et Aristotelem, quam non intelligunt, adorantes” . But "Averroism" seemed at last to be characterised by an authentic heterodoxy among thinkers such as John of Jandun, once again the theoriser of philosophical life as the supreme objective of a life within society, “crowned by wisdom, by a supreme happiness that is fulfilled in an acquired attitude-intellect seen as the capability to be aware of separate substances” . He then emphasised the Averroist thesis of science’s collective, human and social fulfilment already mentioned by Dante, according to whom the averroist only intellect possible is fulfilled in the whole of humankind and not in single individuals . But above all, together with Marsilio of Padua, John of Jandun was an advocate of the removal of papal power within civil spheres and those of the State. De Libera thought he saw in Marsilio’s Defensor Pacis – a book probably written with John - “the symbol of the imperial transposition of Averroist mono-psychisms” .
Between the 15th and the 16th centuries, "Averroism" experienced a renewal, also encouraged by university lessons and books by Aristotle commented by Averroes, preserved and published until the end of the 15th century thanks to professors such as Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo. Renaissance "Averroism" reproduced the same conflicts and the same obscurities as that of the Middle Ages. There was, as usual, an exploited deformation of Averroes’ ideas and his most peculiar destiny turned out to be the fact that he managed to become the inspirer of entire heterodox and irreligious school of thought. To tell the truth, the Arabs were blamed for many perverse doctrines, among them the horoscope of religions . The undisputed “oriental” maestro of this doctrine was Abû Ma‘shar (Albumasar), but there were large numbers of western philosophers who practiced and defended it, from Pietro d'Abano to Pietro Pomponazzi. The horoscope of religions alludes to the fact that the birth and the fall of historical confessions appears linked to the position of the stars; hence Hebraism, Christianity and Islâm are not revelations, but the unavoidable result of the planets’ reciprocal positions. Of course not all the theorisers of this doctrine, with its obvious potential to even become evil, were godless people: Pietro d'Abano, for example, has nowadays been rediscovered in his orthodoxy. But someone like Pietro Pomponazzi, a famous professor active in studies carried out in Bologna and Padua, is to say the least suspected of having atheist inclinations.
The most characteristic of "Averroist" theories within this cultural environment is however the one reducing religions to leges, created to rule humankind according to principles of morality. Averroes had instead spoken of religion as “the necessary structuring of civilisation”, believing however that faith is necessary for correct civilised life. Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance however, this basically ‘orthodox’ approach became a sacrilege addressed at the negation of the supernatural value of religions. So Pomponazzi suggests that religions are necessary lies (in the Platonic sense of the Republic) and pious fairytales addressed at forming good citizens, thereby radicalising probably in an anti-Christian sense the Averroist principle according to which the masses must learn the truth of Islam through rhetorical images suited to their limited capabilities . In Giordano Bruno too one reads that «the objective of laws [hence of religions] is not so much searching for the truth in things and speculations, but rather the goodness of customs, to the advantage of civilisations, rules for populations and practices for the convenience of human conversation, maintaining the peace and increasing republics» , a very “Averroist” idea and attributed instead to al-Ghazâlî very probably to conceal its heterodox nature.
It is within this humus that the theory of the “three impostors” matured, still falsely attributed to Averroes and in circulation already at the end of the 13th century, according to which «[Averrois] impie blasfemat Christum dicens quod tres fuerunt baratatores mundi, scilicet Christus, Moyses et Macomettus, quorum Christus, quia iuvenis et ignarus, crucifixus fuit» . And consequently Averroes, as one of the main if not the main source of inspiration, was attributed the origins of the school of atheist libertinism, of those esprits forts who between the16th and the 17th centuries were culture’s most anti-conventional voices, often it is true at the limits of atheism. In the underground river 17th century godlessness “Averroist” fecundity vanished permanently and with it the masking of “oriental” culture was completed.
It is therefore a nemesis of history that the Arab and Muslim intellectual renewal of these last two centuries refers greatly to Averroes as the maestro of rationalism. Ranging from the debate that developed in the Arab world due to the theses expressed by Ernest Renan to historians of contemporary philosophy, Averroes has returned to the stage of Arab thought. As known, Renan accused Islam of being a religion that was the enemy of science and civilisation (a significant anticipation of contemporary Islamophobia) and Averroes, in his perspective, stood out perhaps as the only Muslim philosopher with a “scientific” attitude. At the end of the 19th century, the Arab philosophers of the nahda (rebirth) and the salafiyya faced each other on this ground. Hence the Lebanese Christian Farah Antun, a typical representative of the renewal, fully embraced Renan criticisms and pointed his finger straight at Islam’s epistemological and doctrinal backwardness. On the other hand the Salaphite Muhammad ‘Abduh, the great reformer of Islamic culture, fully claimed Averroes’ belonging to the Muslim tradition and Averroist rationalism as an eminently Islamic rationalism.
Nowadays most historians of Arab philosophy tend to exalt, at times also exaggerating, the rationalism of the great Cordovan. A typical example is the Egyptian philosopher ‘Atef al-‘Iraqi, with his classic book Al-Naz‘a al-‘Aqliyya fi falsafat Ibn Rushd . The most famous author at an international level is perhaps the Moroccan Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jâbrî, a professor at Rabat University. In general, al-Jâbrî exalted in medieval Andalusian philosophy the break between “western” rationalism and “oriental” gnosticism: the first, with Ibn Hazm and Averroes as its most dazzling representatives, seems to have refused to confuse the level of human science and knowledge (the “known”) with the transcendentalism of revealed religions (the “unknown”), it is said that he therefore refused to interpret religion using philosophical means (and philosophy using religious ones) and thereby opened the way for the independence and autonomy of science; and the second instead conceded the greatest compromise to a dangerous syncretism .
Is the hypothesis expressed by al-Jâbrî a convincing one? Comparing Averroes to Ibn Hazm is certainly intriguing if not a provocation. A few problems remain however open that must be briefly mentioned. In the Tahâfut al-tahâfut there are umerous passages that appear to confirm al-Jâbirîs general thesis, of these the most significant is perhaps the following one:
The distance between the eternal and the contingent is far greater than that between different species although they participate in the same reality of contingency. And if the distance between the eternal and the non –eternal is far greater that the one existing between the various species, hw is it possible to move judgement fro the known to the unknown, which are totally opposite? Once one has understood the authentic meaning of the features of the visible and the invisible worlds, it will e clear that the words with which these are described ar so ambiguous and equivocal as to not allow a transferral from the known to the unknown .
But is this sufficient for forgetting as many equally ambiguous conclusions drawn by Tahâfut? For example, there where Averroes states that there is neither truth not untruth in the philosophical doctrines concerning the procession of beings from God, «since it has be proved that the act [of God] – may He be praised! – may occur in a manner that is neither natural nor voluntary» . Or when he states that in reality God neither addresses nor non-addresses what is external to his essence , and that therefore «as far as universals and details are concerned, it is logical that the Supreme God simultaneously knows them and does not know them» . Naturally, Averroes is convinced that these contradiction can be explained due to the fact that divine knowledge cannot be measured with human knowledge : but Aristotle, since one must be loyal to him to deny the passage from the known to the unknown, would never have supported such a thesis, which objectively refuses to explain God using pure rationality.
However, whether or not this reconstruction is plausible, it shows a will to modernise Averroes and in the end this modernisation is totally political. It consists, in fact, according to al-Jâbrî, in recreating a progressive and socialist Arab and Islamic society: for this objective the Averroist spirit, similar to the Carthusian one for the French, can be adapted to modern times. The great conquests of Arab and Islamic philosophy must be contextualized within the contemporary world through a correct historical analysis, because the only chance the Arabs and Muslims have to create the future, starting from the specificity of their history, is precisely that of acquiring a historical conscience .

Beyond Orientalism and Occidentalism
March 4th/6th 2006 - Cairo, Egypt

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