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An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd

Cilt: 30 Sayı: 1 15 Haziran 2026
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An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd

Öz

During the High Scholastic period, the majority of discussions concerning the intellect were conducted with the aim of avoiding conflict with Christian thought. Alongside this, some thinkers were also interested in how this issue could be treated from a purely philosophical perspective. In this sense, Averroes’ Long Commentary on the De anima of Aristotle (LCDA) is one of the influential and controversial philosophical texts that triggered intense debates on the nature of the intellect in the thirteenth-century Latin world. This study concerns a short treatise known in Latin as De intellectu and attributed to the son of Averroes, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh. Although an Arabic copy of the treatise has survived to the present day, its Latin and Hebrew translations circulates widely in Europe. Indeed, in some collections, more than one copy is preserved. This situation shows that the treatise was regarded important in certain respects by Christian and Jewish scholarly circles. Similarly, the fact that this treatise was translated into Latin in the first half of the thirteenth century also indicates the intense interest of Christian thinkers in the question of the intellect. The treatise deals briefly and concisely with the analogy between intellect and sense perception, the activity of the active intellect, and the relation between potentiality and actuality. Arguments on these matters are strengthened by quotations from Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius, early commentators on Aristotle. This study examines whether the treatise reflects an Averroist conception of the intellect. In this context, the treatise is compared with the third book of the LCDA, which was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century. In this comparison, semantic similarity analysis, one of the methods of the digital humanities, was applied to test the relationship between Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh’s treatise De intellectu and the third book of Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. At the center of this methodological approach lies the aim of identifying conceptual and contextual overlaps between the two Latin texts by focusing on semantic similarity rather than on direct word matching. The similarity scores obtained through this method were evaluated as guiding indicators and were subjected to manual review to increase accuracy. Through this mixed approach, the claim in the literature that the treatise displays an Averroist approach was evaluated by means of both traditional close reading and digital methods. The findings show that the treatise is conceptually and contextually similar to the LCDA and is a summary of Averroes’ theory of the intellect. However, it is also clear that Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh did not merely provide a summary, but also presented a text that brings together, within a certain unity, arguments found in different parts of the Long Commentary. As a result, this study demonstrates, through close reading supported by the quantitative data provided by digital methods, that the treatise functioned as an introductory text on the Averroes’ doctrine of the intellect for Latin thinkers.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Kaynakça

  1. Abū Muḥammad ‘Abdallāh Ibn Rušd. De intellectu. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, lat. 16602, 111v-113v. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52506094x/f585.item
  2. Abū Muḥammad ‘Abdallāh Ibn Rušd. De intellectu. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, lat. 6510, 291r-292r. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52506094x/f585.item
  3. Abū Muḥammad ‘Abdallāh Ibn Rušd. “On Whether the Active Intellect Unites with the Material Intellect Whilst It Is Clothed with the Body: A Critical Edition of the Three Extant Medieval Versions, Together with an English Translation.” trans. Charles Burnett - Mauro Zonta. Archives d’histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire Du Moyen Age 67 (2000), 295–335.
  4. Anzulewicz, Henryk. “Einleitung.” De Unitate Intellectus. Über Die Einzigkeit Des Intellekts. 1–37. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 2022.
  5. Aristoteles. Ruh Üzerine. trans. Ömer Aygün - Y. Gurur Sev. İstanbul: Pinhan Yayıncılık, 2021.
  6. Averroes. Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima Libros. critical ed. F. Stuart Crawford. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953.
  7. Averroes. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle. trans. Richard C. Taylor. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2009.
  8. Az, Mehmet Ata. İbn Rüşd ve Thomas Aquinas’ta Akılların Birliği. İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2021.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil

İngilizce

Konular

İslam Felsefesi, Felsefe Tarihi (Diğer)

Bölüm

Araştırma Makalesi

Yayımlanma Tarihi

15 Haziran 2026

Gönderilme Tarihi

15 Ocak 2026

Kabul Tarihi

7 Nisan 2026

Yayımlandığı Sayı

Yıl 2026 Cilt: 30 Sayı: 1

Kaynak Göster

APA
Dugan, M. (2026). An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd. Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi, 30(1), 63-79. https://doi.org/10.18505/cuid.1863843
AMA
1.Dugan M. An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd. CUID. 2026;30(1):63-79. doi:10.18505/cuid.1863843
Chicago
Dugan, Mehmet. 2026. “An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd”. Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi 30 (1): 63-79. https://doi.org/10.18505/cuid.1863843.
EndNote
Dugan M (01 Haziran 2026) An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd. Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi 30 1 63–79.
IEEE
[1]M. Dugan, “An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd”, CUID, c. 30, sy 1, ss. 63–79, Haz. 2026, doi: 10.18505/cuid.1863843.
ISNAD
Dugan, Mehmet. “An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd”. Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi 30/1 (01 Haziran 2026): 63-79. https://doi.org/10.18505/cuid.1863843.
JAMA
1.Dugan M. An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd. CUID. 2026;30:63–79.
MLA
Dugan, Mehmet. “An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd”. Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi, c. 30, sy 1, Haziran 2026, ss. 63-79, doi:10.18505/cuid.1863843.
Vancouver
1.Mehmet Dugan. An Averroistic Text on Intellect: The Treatise Entitled De Intellectu by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh Ibn Rushd. CUID. 01 Haziran 2026;30(1):63-79. doi:10.18505/cuid.1863843

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