Journey · 9 stops
The Journey of Aristotle
How Aristotle was read, rethought and argued over in Baghdad, Córdoba and Paris.
Stops
Stop 1 of 9: Aristotle
How did a Greek philosopher become the authority of the medieval university? Aristotle left a vast body of writing on logic, nature, metaphysics and ethics. But after antiquity the Latin West keeps little more than a few of his logical works. His thought survives elsewhere – in Greek manuscripts copied in Byzantium and in the Syriac and Arabic translations that will carry it further.
Stop 2 of 9: al-Kindi
In 9th-century Baghdad, the caliphs sponsor translations of Greek science and philosophy into Arabic. Al-Kindi, the “Philosopher of the Arabs”, works with the translators and argues that truth is welcome from whatever source – reason and revelation need not conflict. He reads Aristotle through a Neoplatonic lens, a blend that shapes everyone after him.
Stop 3 of 9: al-Farabi
Al-Farabi builds on al-Kindi’s opening but works far more systematically. He comments on Aristotle’s logic so thoroughly that he is called the “Second Teacher”, and with Plato’s Republic as his model he sketches the virtuous city ruled by a philosopher. His harmony of Plato and Aristotle and his theory of the intellect become the toolkit of the next great mind.
Stop 4 of 9: Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
Avicenna recalls that he only understood Aristotle’s Metaphysics after reading a short treatise by al-Farabi. On that foundation he builds a metaphysics of his own: in every created thing, what it is (essence) differs from that it is (existence); only God exists necessarily. This distinction will travel into Latin scholasticism – but at home it provokes theological resistance.
Stop 5 of 9: The Incoherence of the Philosophers
That resistance takes shape in al-Ghazali. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers he attacks twenty of their theses, aiming at Avicenna and al-Farabi: the eternity of the world, God’s knowing particulars only in a universal way, necessary causation – fire does not burn cotton by its own nature, God creates the burning. Philosophy now has to justify itself before faith.
Stop 6 of 9: The Incoherence of the Incoherence
Almost a century later, Averroes of Córdoba replies with The Incoherence of the Incoherence, answering al-Ghazali point by point. He defends demonstrative reason and the order of causes – and even faults Avicenna for straying from the pure Aristotle. The exchange is still read as a model of the dispute between reason and revelation; in the Latin West, Averroes will simply be called “the Commentator”.
Stop 7 of 9: Maimonides
Maimonides, also born in Córdoba and a reader of al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, takes up the same question in Jewish philosophy, which had been written in Arabic since Saadia Gaon. His Guide for the Perplexed speaks to believers torn between scripture and philosophy: the Torah, rightly read, does not contradict Aristotelian reason – and of God we can say only what he is not. Christian scholars will soon face the same dilemma.
Stop 8 of 9: Albertus Magnus
From the 12th century on, translators turn Aristotle into Latin – James of Venice and later William of Moerbeke directly from the Greek, Gerard of Cremona and Michael Scot in Toledo from the Arabic, together with the Arabic commentaries. In Paris and Cologne, Albertus Magnus takes on the entire corpus, explaining it piece by piece, from logic to plants and animals. He makes the new learning teachable at the universities – and passes it on to his most gifted pupil.
Stop 9 of 9: Summa theologiae
Thomas Aquinas, Albertus’ pupil, forges the great synthesis in the Summa theologiae: faith and reason as two paths to one truth, with Aristotle as “the Philosopher” and Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides cited along the way. The journey shows scholasticism as a joint work – Greek ideas preserved, sharpened and argued over in three languages and three faiths before they reached Paris.
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