Averroës on Aristotle’s Criticism of his Predecessors:

An annotated translation of the long commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics A

 

Comments 1-24, 50-51

PREFACE/INTRODUCTION

 

            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 Λ 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 fundamental 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 13^th 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)