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It was the fashion to set the Kalam over against the philosophers to the disadvantage of the former, as being deficient in logical knowledge and prejudiced by theological prepossessions. This is attested by the attitude towards the Mutakallimun of Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Averroes. And Ibn Zaddik forms no exception to the rule.
The "Good collector of qualities," Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen and Averroes were the medical members of the group. Dante, Inferno, canto iv. Dissection already practiced by Alcmaeon, Democritus, Diogenes and others was conducted on a large scale, but the human body was still taboo.
He was a great mathematician and astronomer; he wrote supercommentaries on the Aristotelian commentaries of Averroes, who in his day had become the source of philosophical knowledge for the Hebrew student; he was thoroughly versed in the Talmud as his commentary on the Pentateuch shows; and he is one of the recognized Biblical exegetes of the middle ages.
Opinions like these were no longer the passport to Papal favour or even toleration. The age of the humanist Popes was past, and the Puritan movement, stimulated into life by the active competition of the Reformers, was beginning to show its strength, so that a man who spoke in terms of respect or reverence concerning Averroes or Plato would put himself in no light peril.
As Ibn Sina was corrupted by the Latin writers into Avicenna, and Ibn Roshd into Averroes, so Ibn Gabirol became in turn, Avencebrol, Avicembron, Avicebron; and the Scholastics who fought about his philosophy had no idea he was a Jew and celebrated as a writer of religious hymns used in the synagogue. He was regarded now as a Mohammedan, now as a Christian.
But the treatment there is so fragmentary and vague that it gave rise to widely varying interpretations by the Greek commentators of Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius, as well as among the Arabs, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.
Some have fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroes, yes, 'tis Averroes, Averroes buried one under the first pillar on the left of the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of Cordova; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after the lapse of eight thousand years.
Duns Scotus accepted the "theory of a twofold truth," ascribed to Averroes, "that one and the same affirmation might be theologically true and philosophically false, and vice versa."
One is the "Colliget," so-called, containing seven books, on anatomy, physiology, pathology, diagnostics, materia medica, hygiene, and therapy. Then there is a commentary on the "Cantica of Avicenna," and a tractate on the "Theriac." Averroës' idea in writing about medicine was to apply his particular system of philosophy to medical science.
Aristotelianism, introduced by Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes among the Arabs, and Ibn Daud and Maimonides among the Jews, dominated all speculative thought, and the old Kalam was obsolete and forgotten. Gersonides no longer regards the Kalamistic point of view as a living issue. He ignores it entirely. His problems as we have seen are those raised by the Averroistic system.
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