Córdoba, 1126–1198
Averroes
Andalusian polymath whose commentaries on Aristotle shaped both Islamic and later European philosophy, and who defended the harmony of philosophy with religion.
Where Averroes lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
The expert's advice contradicts what your own eyes tell you.
You are recognising that knowledge is mostly borrowed and usually well-borrowed. The risk is deference that survives the evidence against it.
Reading Averroes today
Averroes wrote in 1126–1198, from Córdoba — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, Averroes is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The app draws on the wider tradition Averroes belongs to.
Working at roughly the same time
- Thomas Aquinas — Italy, 1225–1274
Argues the same cases
David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Socrates, Hypatia take positions on the same dilemmas as Averroes, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.