Averroës
on Aristotle’s Criticism of his Predecessors:
An annotated translation of the long commentary on
Aristotle’s Metaphysics A
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Comments 1-24, 50-51
PREFACE/INTRODUCTION
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Previous translations of the works
of Averroës into modern Western languages have generally been informed by
the aim of elucidating either his role as Aristotle commentator or his place in
the history of philosophy. In
particular, the renderings of his long commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Book Ë by Charles Genequand (into English) and by Aubert Martin (French), both
from 1984, and of that on Book B by Laurence Bauloye (French), from 2002, are
useful reference works for scholars working on such questions who lack a grasp
of Arabic.[1] They can also serve as models for solutions
of some of the technical problems involved in translating such texts.
Yet the present work has a different
orientation. I have not been an Arabist,
but a classicist, and one with an interest in the reception of Presocratic
philosophy in particular. The reason one
would think of Averroës in this connection is that it was Aristotle’s wont
to present his opinions by way of contrasting them with those of his predecessors;
thus his citations constitute the principal sources of our actual knowledge of
most of these figures, on the one hand, and their philosophical views are
mentioned at least in passing in the medieval Arabic Aristotle commentaries, on
the other. Since as is well known these
works (principally by al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroës)
are conditioned by their authors’ own respective philosophies, so that they
deviate from, or at least develop Aristotle’s own opinions, we should find
quasi-independent views of the Presocratics in them as well.
That opens up more possibilities
than perhaps can be digested easily, but the philosophical opinions of the
Presocratics that have stimulated the most commentary at least in modern times
have been those dealing with physical and metaphysical questions, and
secondarily those concerned with the mind (with very little discussion related
to other Aristotelian subjects such as methods of reasoning). If one matches these preferred topics to the
Arabic corpus, what stands out are works by Avicenna, who wrote on virtually
everything at one place or another in his monumental aš-Šifā’,
“Healing,” as well as in some shorter works, and the commentaries on
Aristotle’s books on these topics by Averroës. Of those we have epitomes, so-called middle
commentaries, and especially the long commentaries that proceed line by line in
an exhaustive fashion.[2] Some of the latter are extant in medieval
Latin translations from the Arabic, but only one in the original tongue,
namely, the Tafsīr mā ba‘d ṭ-Ṭabī‘a ( الطبيعة), “Commentary on what is after physics,” or more
freely Long Commentary on (Aristotle’s) Metaphysics.
It
is fortunate that the latter work survives, for its second book corresponds to
one of the key topics, the number and type of “causes” of things in the
world. Thus the translation contained
herein is a rendering of the relevant portions of this book, namely,
Averroës’s commentary on Book A of the Metaphysics.[3] That is, his treatment is a detailed
interpretation of a piece in the Aristotelian corpus that is especially devoted
to pre-Aristotelian philosophies, namely treating their views on the
fundamentwal question of the causes.
Cross-references to other works by Averroës, Avicenna, and some
ancient Greek commentators will be made in the annotations to the translation,
but my primary motivation is to make the translated material available in a
modern Western language. (There is a Medieval Latin version of the
work, rendered from the Arabic by Michael Scot in the first quarter of the 13th
century; however, comparison with the critical Arabic edition shows that, aside
from an outright error on occasion, it omits numerous examples of, or glosses
on, points Averroës makes. Also,
the printed edition of 1562, reprinted in 1962, suffers from an orthography
that employs relatively obscure abbreviations.
And to be sure, the content should be of interest to many who read
neither Latin nor Arabic.)
It is necessary to acknowledge a
particular problem associated with Averroës’s access to Book A. The principal translations of the Metaphysics
into Arabic lacked that particular book,[4]
but he was able to procure a translation of it by one Naẓīf (نظيف) b. Yumn (or Ayman).[5] Comparison with our text shows that this
person did not understand Aristotle’s Greek well, especially the syntactical
relations between clauses.[6] Thus among other problems accruing to him, in
transporting the Greek to the different syntactical rules that pertain in
Arabic as often as not his result makes mistakes, such as treating an auxiliary
clause as a main clause or vice versa and thereby obscuring the causal relation
between Aristotle’s thoughts. Down
through the years there has been much discussion of whether or not
Averroës’s lack of knowledge of Greek and consequent need to rely on
translations vitiated his grasp of Aristotle.[7] Yet much of this debate has been rather
abstract, whereas is a concrete question: as will be seen here, Averroës’s
general knowledge frequently allowed him to overcome a mistranslation to the
extent of enunciating a cogent interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy,
albeit as often as not one not directly related to Aristotle’s specific point
in the given place.[8]
This situation poses an immediate
problem for the present study. Namely, while Averroës’s relation
to Aristotle as relayed to him is reasonably transparent once the translator’s
text and his own are rendered in English, his relation to Aristotle as relayed
to us is not. Yet both relations are of
interest, if in different ways. I have therefore thought it prudent
to deviate from the precedent of Genequand, Martin and Bauloye by providing our
modern reading of Aristotle’s text as well as the Arabic version. Thus in the translation each segment of the
Aristotle text and Averroës’s commentary from the Tafsīr is
preceded by my translation of the parallel segment from Werner Jaeger’s Greek
text, in italics.
Another point is that
Averroës’s commentary and the Aristotle text he relays only begin toward
the end of Chapter of 5 of Book A, thus missing the philosopher’s basic
statement of the views of his predecessors prior to the time of Plato,
contained in Chapters 3 through 5, as well as his consideration of the stages
in acquiring knowledge in Chapter 1 and his analysis of “wisdom” (sophia)
in Chapter 2. Nonetheless, the
commentator does get to Aristotle’s summaries of the Presocratic opinions on
causes at the end of Chapter 5, the basic statement for Plato himself in
Chapter 6, the actual criticism of the earlier opinions in Chapters 8 and 9,
and the overall summary in Chapter 10.
This provides a fair amount of material to develop positions on the
pre-Aristotelian thinkers. Indeed,
knowledge of some of the material of the earlier chapters is evident in
al-Fārābī and Avicenna, and as Cecilia Martini has noted, at
least a paraphrase of the complete Book A was known to one writer of the
approximate era of Averroës.[9] There will be
indications here and there in the material presented herein that Averroës
was indeed aware of the views Aristotle expressed in the earlier chapters. It seems possible that Averroës’s
translation did include the earlier chapters, but that (rather like Avicenna)
he was not interested in the specifics of just who among, say, the early material
monists chose water for the principle and who air, and thus ignored Aristotle’s
discussion of these details (granted that this hypothesis will not explain the
neglect of the generalities of Chapters 1 and 2).
Specifically, at the present time I
include herein those of Averroës’s comments on Book A concerned with
(mostly) the pre-Platonic thinkers (Comments 1-24), plus those on the summary
in Chapter 10 (50-51), omitting the discussion of Chapter 9 on Plato
(25-49). As to the specific characteristics of the translation, I
have for the most part sacrificed readability for accuracy, thus presenting a
rather literal rendering, with some exceptions as noted in the endnotes to the
translation. Except for including a
translation of the Greek text as noted above, my organization of the material
follows that of Averroës’s editor Bouyges, with “T” standing for the text
and “C” followed by a number and a letter standing for the comment itself.[10]
The endnotes are essentially
confined to questions of language, and are offered in the interests of accuracy
and clarity of the translation itself.
In the “annotations” section of this work, organized so as to parallel
the segments of the translation,[11]
I speak to a broader range of issues: from noting where Averroës makes a
point that goes beyond Aristotle, to citing some other places in the Arabic
corpus and in that of the ancient Greek Aristotle commentators where the given
issue is treated.
EFB
March, 2007
(go to comments 1-8)