Averroes On Emanation And On The Active Intellect As A Cause Of Existence

Abstract The present chapter will examine Averroes’ attempts to determine, first, the causal connections obtaining within the realm of incorporeal intelligences, and, secondly, the active intellect’s role as a cause of existence in the sublunar realm. Averroes treats those two related subjects a number of times in his commentaries on Aristotle and in other compositions. As he returns to the two subjects on successive occasions, he endeavors to pare away post-Aristotelian accretions that, he had become convinced, colored his previous efforts, and to recover the genuine Aristotelian doctrine embodying—so he assumes—philosophic truth. We shall find that the enterprise of recovering the genuine Aristotle leads him to revise and rerevise his thinking.