Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Cordoba. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle.

• Author: Harvey, Steven
• Position: Book review

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) of Cordoba. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle. Translated, with introduction and notes, by RICHARD C. TAYLOR, with Therese-Anne Druart. Yale Library of Medieval Philosophy. New Haven: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009. Pp. cix + 498. $85.

Richard C. Taylor's English translation of Averroes's Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle is undoubtedly the most eagerly awaited translation of a work of Islamic philosophy of the past decades. This lengthy commentary--over four hundred pages of annotated text in the present edition--is arguably the most difficult to understand of all of Averroes's commentaries. The translation was made from E Stuart Crawford's classic edition of the Latin translation (Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). Taylor explains that the translation is the result of a collaborative effort with Therese-Anne Druart, and thanks her for "providing invaluable detailed critique, comment, and advice on every part of the project in the role of subeditor." The translation is introduced with a learned wide-ranging monograph of over one hundred pages, distilled from the leading studies of the past decades, including many by Taylor himself. Most of the introduction is dedicated to providing an eminently readable and coherent account of Averroes's theory of the human intellect and the development of that theory through various stages.

The introduction begins with brief remarks on Averroes's career as commentator and the dating of the long commentaries. The account is concise and to the point, although it may be noted that Sarah Stroumsa has recently questioned the veracity of al-Marr[a.bar]kush[i.bar]'s oft-cited report of Averroes's encounters with Ab[u.bar] Ya'q[u.bar]b, the Almohad ruler. It may also be misleading to describe all of Averroes's middle commentaries as "paraphrastic summaries" (p. xvi), although this description certainly fits some of them (there is also a lack of consistency in the form and structure of Averroes's short commentaries; see Druart's 1994 study, cited in the bibliography, where she muses whether Averroes had read the De anima carefully before writing the short commentary on it). Taylor is right to emphasize the distinction between Averroes's philosophical commentaries as "for the most part demonstrative works" and works such as his Incoherence of the Incoherence as dialectical (pp. xviii-xix n. 7). In addition to the clear statement cited in n. 7 in defense of this claim, one might mention Averroes's statement at the outset of the Incoherence where he states the book's aim.

As is well known, Avenues wrote three kinds of commentaries on the De anima: an epitome or short commentary, a middle commentary, and the long commentary. In recent decades scholars have disagreed on the order in which these three commentaries were written, the relation among the three commentaries, and--given the fact that Averroes revised at least one and perhaps all of them--which commentary contains...