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Ibn Rushd, often Latinized as Averroes, was a Muslim Andalusian philosopher and judge who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. His philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the West as The Commentator. He also served as a judge and a court physician for the Almohad Caliphate.
Al-Farabi was a renowned philosopher and jurist who wrote in the fields of political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic. He was also a scientist, cosmologist, mathematician and music scholar.
Averroism refers to a school of medieval philosophy based on the application of the works of 12th-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, in 13th-century Latin Christian scholasticism.
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. This school of thought, in the modern sense of philosophy, covers existence, ethics, mind and related subjects. In Aristotle's time, philosophy included natural philosophy, which preceded the advent of modern science during the Scientific Revolution. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school and later on by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings. In the Islamic Golden Age, Avicenna and Averroes translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic and under them, along with philosophers such as Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi, Aristotelianism became a major part of early Islamic philosophy.
William of Moerbeke, O.P., was a prolific medieval translator of philosophical, medical, and scientific texts from Greek language into Latin, enabled by the period of Latin rule of the Byzantine Empire. His translations were influential in his day, when few competing translations were available, and are still respected by modern scholars.
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In it, Aristotle offers an account of what he calls "poetry". They are similar in the fact that they are all imitations but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes:
- Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter and melody.
- Difference of goodness in the characters.
- Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.
The Organon is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logic. The name Organon was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics. They are as follows:
Michael Scott was a mathematician and scholar in the Middle Ages. He translated Averroes and was the greatest public intellectual of his days. He served as science adviser and court astrologer to the Emperor Frederick II.
Dominicus Gundissalinus, also known as Domingo Gundisalvi or Gundisalvo, was a philosopher and translator of Arabic to Medieval Latin active in Toledo. Among his translations, Gundissalinus worked on Avicenna's Liber de philosophia prima and De anima, Ibn Gabirol's Fons vitae, and al-Ghazali's Summa theoricae philosophiae, in collaboration with the Jewish philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud and Johannes Hispanus. As a philosopher, Gundissalinus crucially contributed to the Latin assimilation of Arabic philosophy, being the first Latin thinker in receiving and developing doctrines, such as Avicenna's modal ontology or Ibn Gabirol's universal hylomorphism, that would soon be integrated into the thirteenth-century philosophical debate.
Latin translations of the 12th century were spurred by a major search by European scholars for new learning unavailable in western Europe at the time; their search led them to areas of southern Europe, particularly in central Spain and Sicily, which recently had come under Christian rule following their reconquest in the late 11th century. These areas had been under a Muslim rule for considerable time, and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations to support their search. The combination of Muslim accumulated knowledge, substantial numbers of Arabic-speaking scholars, and the new Christian rulers made these areas intellectually attractive, as well as culturally and politically accessible to Latin scholars. A typical story is that of Gerard of Cremona, who is said to have made his way to Toledo, well after its reconquest by Christians in 1085, because he
arrived at a knowledge of each part of [philosophy] according to the study of the Latins, nevertheless, because of his love for the Almagest, which he did not find at all amongst the Latins, he made his way to Toledo, where seeing an abundance of books in Arabic on every subject, and pitying the poverty he had experienced among the Latins concerning these subjects, out of his desire to translate he thoroughly learnt the Arabic language....
The Toledo School of Translators is the group of scholars who worked together in the city of Toledo during the 12th and 13th centuries, to translate many of the philosophical and scientific works from Classical Arabic.
The active intellect is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (morphe) aspect of the intellect (nous), in accordance with the theory of hylomorphism.
Miles of Marseilles was a Provençal-Jewish physician and philosopher of the Middle Ages. He was born at Marseille around 1294. In some manuscripts he is designated by the name "Bongodos," the Provençal language equivalent of "ben Judah."
The Thomas-Institut is a research Institute whose function it is to serve the study of medieval philosophy by preparing critical editions and historical and systematic studies of medieval authors.
The transmission of the Greek Classics to Latin Western Europe during the Middle Ages was a key factor in the development of intellectual life in Western Europe. Interest in Greek texts and their availability was scarce in the Latin West during the earlier Middle Ages, but as traffic to the East increased so did Western scholarship.
Commentaries on Plato refers to the great mass of literature produced, especially in the ancient and medieval world, to explain and clarify the works of Plato. Many Platonist philosophers in the centuries following Plato sought to clarify and summarise his thoughts, but it was during the Roman era, that the Neoplatonists, in particular, wrote many commentaries on individual dialogues of Plato, many of which survive to the present day.
Nicoletto Vernia was an Italian Averroist philosopher, at the University of Padua.
The "Recovery of Aristotle" refers to the copying or re-translating of most of Aristotle's books, from Greek or Arabic text into Latin, during the Middle Ages, of the Latin West. The Recovery of Aristotle spanned about 100 years, from the middle 12th century into the 13th century, and copied or translated over 42 books, including Arabic texts from Arabic authors, where the previous Latin versions had only two books in general circulation: Categories and On Interpretation. Translations had been due to several factors, including limited techniques for copying books, lack of access to the Greek texts, and few people who could read ancient Greek, while the Arabic versions were more accessible. The recovery of Aristotle's texts is considered a major period in mediaeval philosophy, leading to Aristotelianism. Because some of Aristotle's newly translated views discounted the notions of a personal God, immortal soul, or creation, various leaders of the Catholic Church were inclined to censor those views for decades, such as lists of forbidden books in the Condemnations of 1210–1277 at the University of Paris. Meanwhile, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274), at the end of that time period, was able to reconcile the viewpoints of Aristotelianism and Christianity, primarily in his work, Summa Theologica (1265–1274).
Bartholomaeus of Bruges was a Flemish physician and natural philosopher.
