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In Europe, separate states acquired legitimacy; in Islam the universal caliphate and 'umma retained the fullest respect. Muslim philosophers, not unlike Augustine and Hobbes, derived the need for the Shari'a and caliph from the strife-prone nature of humans. Some Western thinkers adopted the view of Cicero (and later of Locke) that human society and the state develop by consensus. Marsilius of Padua's theory of the state in some ways resembled the Muslim theory of the caliphate; he was probably influenced by Ibn Rushd, but Marsilius was without influence. Muslims, drawing on Iranian monarchical theory, saw the ruler's responsibilities as extending to the social and economic infrastructure. Europeans saw the state, Muslims the caliphate, as impersonal offices.

The commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) commentary was translated into Latin in 1256 by Hermannus Alemannus, and that commentary saw a fairly wide circulation in western Europe during the late Middle Ages. Earlier Arabic translations of the Poetics used the word hikaya to translate Aristotle’s technical term for the plot of Greek drama, mythos. Ibn Rushd chose a different Arabic word to analyze plot – khurafa, fable – in part because hikaya had taken on a new meaning in the century between the first Arabic translation of the Poetics and his own commentary. This chapter follows the fates of the translation of the word “plot” through Ibn Rushd’s commentary into Hermannus’s Latin translation – where the word becomes fabula – and into the poetry of Petrarch. It argues that Petrarch’s use of the Italian word favola is informed in part by Hermannus’s Latin translation of Ibn Rushd’s commentary, and that Petrarch meant his favola to absorb some of the connotations conveyed by the Hermannus’s use of the Latin fabula.

This chapter considers the content of teaching at the Islamic University of Medina, from the time of its founding and over the decades that followed. While IUM syllabuses were from the start strongly influenced by Wahhabi norms, the bodies of knowledge that were to be transmitted to its students underwent certain subtle shifts over time. These shifts in many ways map onto, and no doubt in part reflect, the broader evolution of the Wahhabi tradition in the second half of the twentieth century. However, the chapter highlights evidence that they also related to the university’s status as a node within a transnational religious economy and its engagement in far-reaching struggles to steer the course of the Islamic tradition.

Since Chapter 2 claims that the Determinate Particular Argument is insufficient to establish the complete unicity thesis, this chapter explains Averroes’ other major proof, the Unity Argument (UA), and defends it as his strongest argument. Unlike the DPA, the UA directly attacks the opposing view (that there are many individual human material intellects), arguing that this alternative position cannot explain shared, unified knowledge. It leads to an infinite regress of intelligibles and intellects. Averroes, however, can explain unified knowledge because there is only one thing known in only one intellect. The chapter further evaluates the UA in comparison to other ancient and medieval strategies for unifying the intelligibles, including by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Avicenna, and Aquinas. It is suggested that the doctrine of common essences (in Avicenna and Aquinas) stands the greatest chance of defeating the UA, while still positing reasons Averroes might resist such a solution.

This introductory chapter acquaints readers with Averroes’ famous unicity thesis—the view that there is only one separate and eternal intellect for all human beings—and considers its historical and philosophical import. According to the author, the unicity thesis shockingly implies that human beings do not have their own individual intellects. The chapter briefly situates Averroes’ view in relation to other prominent interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of intellect (in De Anima III.4–5) in the Greek, Latin, and Arabic traditions. It also acknowledges past scholarship, showcasing the book’s distinct approach to Averroes’ primary arguments. An overview of the book’s chapters is also provided.

In order to understand Averroes on intellect, it is necessary to understand his primary source text, Aristotle’s De Anima, especially DA III.4–5. This chapter explains and defends Averroes’ reading of these chapters of the DA. Contemporary commentators often overlook an important core and structural interpretation advanced by Averroes and later, following him, Thomas Aquinas. However much Averroes and Aquinas disagree on the separate substantiality of the intellects, the key to both their interpretations is an all-or-nothing reading of the shared immaterial ontological status of both the material/possible intellect (MPI) and the agent/active intellect (AI). It is argued that this is a legitimate interpretation of Aristotle’s Greek text. The chapter proceeds with some comparison to Aquinas’s views and also an evaluation of the other major rival strand of interpretation, originally proposed by Alexander of Aphrodisias, according to which the active intellect is God.

Having set out Averroes’ textual arguments from Aristotle’s DA in Chapter 1, this chapter begins investigating Averroes’ independent philosophical arguments for the unicity thesis, focusing on the Determinate Particular Argument (DPA). The DPA argues that the material/possible intellect (MPI) is not a determinate particular. The chapter reveals several new aspects of the DPA, explaining its key premises and clarifying its primary conclusion––namely that the MPI is not a material determinate particular––in light of Averroes’ broader metaphysics. Against a consensus of scholars and despite some complex reasons to think Averroes himself regarded the DPA as a sufficient argument for the unicity thesis, the chapter contends that, in fact, the DPA is inadequate for Averroes’ full doctrine of intellect. Rather, the DPA establishes only a critical part of the unicity thesis, namely the intellect’s Nature (separate, immaterial), but not its Number (one for all).

This chapter considers the strongest philosophical arguments against Averroes’ unicity thesis, in particular, arguments by Thomas Aquinas based on a seemingly obvious fact: “This human being understands” (hic homo intelligit), the HHI Argument. The HHI Argument works on both a phenomenological and metaphysical level. The chapter explores how Averroes anticipates and might defend against such arguments with his dual subject theory (according to which humans play an integral role in acts of understanding through imagination) and his notion of conjunction (ittiṣāl) with the separate intellects. In dialogue with the work of Black, Brenet, and Taylor, the chapter argues that Averroes can defeat the HHI Argument on the phenomenological level but must admit on the metaphysical level that human beings do not strictly understand. Averroes adopts an error theory of human understanding, though he provides some positive reasons why humans can be said to understand in some looser way.

In light of the main arguments directly for and against the unicity thesis, this chapter considers a final line of objection from Averroes against Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s wider alternative metaphysical theories of intellect and soul. If all three thinkers are broadly hylomorphist, how can any form (like the human soul) be separable from its matter? Furthermore, if matter is the principle of individuation for human souls (as all three thinkers accept), how can multiple intellective souls exist individuated after death? The chapter explains how both Avicenna and Aquinas respond to these objections. In fact, Aquinas appeals explicitly to Avicenna, while attempting to resist the latter’s dualism. Nevertheless, this debate highlights a further potential strength of Averroes’ simpler hylomorphic account of human beings as regular generable and corruptible material substances.

This final chapter offers a brief conclusion to the preceding chapters on Averroes’ arguments—textual and philosophical, including both the DPA and UA—, in comparison with those of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Aquinas. A short summary of the main points elaborated in each chapter is presented. The chapter begins by taking stock of where Averroes’ case is weakest (the real philosophical cost implied by the HHI Argument, i.e., an error theory of intellect, as set out in Chapter 4) and moves to where it is most formidable, especially the Unity Argument and Averroes’ simpler hylomorphic account of human beings. Through a wider lense, it is suggested that Averroes’ view urges us toward deeper reflection on hylomorphism and philosophical accounts of intellect.