WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.799 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We've got a stack 00:00:02.799 --> 00:00:06.059 of notes today that honestly feels a bit heavy, 00:00:06.139 --> 00:00:08.740 not just physically, but historically. It does. 00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:15.060 We are looking at a figure who is, well, titan 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:17.820 is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It really 00:00:17.820 --> 00:00:20.039 does. But in this case, it might actually be 00:00:20.039 --> 00:00:22.300 an understatement. I completely agree. We're 00:00:22.300 --> 00:00:24.980 talking about someone who exists in the background 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:27.780 of, I mean, almost all modern intellectual history. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:29.960 Right. Yet if you stop someone on the street, 00:00:30.039 --> 00:00:31.780 they probably couldn't tell you a single thing 00:00:31.780 --> 00:00:34.140 he actually believed. Right. They might know 00:00:34.140 --> 00:00:36.679 the name or, you know, maybe they've seen a statue 00:00:36.679 --> 00:00:39.679 of him in Spain, but they don't really know him. 00:00:39.859 --> 00:00:42.320 We're talking about Ibn Rushd. Ibn Rushd. Or 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:44.960 as he's much, much more famously known in the 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:48.009 Western world, Averroes. The man from Cordoba. 00:00:48.170 --> 00:00:50.310 Exactly. And looking at the research here, the 00:00:50.310 --> 00:00:53.509 biography, the philosophy, the medical treatises, 00:00:53.649 --> 00:00:56.170 it feels like we aren't just looking at a scholar. 00:00:56.250 --> 00:00:58.369 We're looking at an intellectual bridge. That's 00:00:58.369 --> 00:01:00.549 the perfect word for it. The specific human link 00:01:00.549 --> 00:01:03.049 between the Islamic Golden Age and what became 00:01:03.049 --> 00:01:05.760 the European Renaissance. That's the key takeaway 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:07.819 right at the top. I mean, if you want to understand 00:01:07.819 --> 00:01:10.359 how the works of Aristotle survived the, quote, 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:13.340 dark ages and eventually sparked the fire of 00:01:13.340 --> 00:01:16.099 the Renaissance, you can't just jump from ancient 00:01:16.099 --> 00:01:19.040 Greece to Renaissance Italy. It doesn't work 00:01:19.040 --> 00:01:21.140 that way. You have to go through Cordoba. You 00:01:21.140 --> 00:01:23.400 have to go through Ibn Rushd. You have to. So 00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:26.579 to give you a sense of the weight this guy carried, 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:31.000 just picture the Middle Ages. You're a student 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:34.829 in Paris reading, say, Thomas Aquinas or Dante, 00:01:35.030 --> 00:01:39.549 if they referred to the philosopher with a capital 00:01:39.549 --> 00:01:42.269 P, who are they talking about? They meant Aristotle. 00:01:42.969 --> 00:01:45.489 No name needed. It was just understood. He was 00:01:45.489 --> 00:01:47.689 simply the philosopher. But then if they said 00:01:47.689 --> 00:01:50.730 the commentator with a capital C. That was Averroes 00:01:50.730 --> 00:01:52.829 every time. He was the guy. He wasn't just someone 00:01:52.829 --> 00:01:55.590 who read Aristotle. He was the lens through which 00:01:55.590 --> 00:01:57.890 the entire Western world came to understand him. 00:01:57.969 --> 00:02:00.150 Which is a massive legacy on its own. I mean, 00:02:00.150 --> 00:02:02.349 that's enough for one lifetime. But what's wild 00:02:02.349 --> 00:02:04.150 about digging into this research is that his 00:02:04.150 --> 00:02:07.030 resume is it's frantic. It's all over the place. 00:02:07.109 --> 00:02:09.650 He wasn't just a philosopher. Not at all. Not 00:02:09.650 --> 00:02:13.960 even close. He was a quaddie. A high -ranking 00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:18.360 judge. Okay. He was a physician who, and this 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:21.680 is incredible, basically revolutionized how we 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:23.520 understand the human eye. We're definitely getting 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:26.020 to that. And he was an astronomer who was tracking 00:02:26.020 --> 00:02:29.199 sunspots long before telescopes were a thing. 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:31.460 And, of course, the philosopher who made the 00:02:31.460 --> 00:02:36.870 incredibly brave orb. Or maybe dangerous argument 00:02:36.870 --> 00:02:39.889 that religion and reason aren't enemies. Which, 00:02:39.990 --> 00:02:41.930 spoiler alert, is an argument that got him into 00:02:41.930 --> 00:02:44.590 a whole lot of trouble. So that is our mission 00:02:44.590 --> 00:02:47.150 today. We are going to unpack the life of the 00:02:47.150 --> 00:02:49.949 man who saved Aristotle for Europe, who challenged 00:02:49.949 --> 00:02:52.129 the entire medical establishment of his time, 00:02:52.229 --> 00:02:54.569 and who proposed a theory about our minds that 00:02:54.569 --> 00:02:57.090 was so controversial it literally got his followers 00:02:57.090 --> 00:02:59.689 condemned by the Catholic Church. It's a story 00:02:59.689 --> 00:03:02.770 of genius, political intrigue, and really a legacy 00:03:02.770 --> 00:03:04.819 that split the world in two. Let's start at the 00:03:04.819 --> 00:03:06.280 beginning. Set the scene for us. Where does a 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:07.860 guy like this even come from? All right. So we're 00:03:07.860 --> 00:03:10.020 in Al -Andalus. That's modern day Spain. The 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:14.000 year is 1126. He's born in Cordoba on April 14th. 00:03:14.020 --> 00:03:16.599 And you have to understand, Cordoba at this time 00:03:16.599 --> 00:03:19.780 wasn't just the city. It was, for all intents 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:22.740 and purposes, the city. It was the intellectual 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:25.780 capital of the entire Western Islamic world. 00:03:26.060 --> 00:03:29.879 A center of learning, science, culture, everything. 00:03:30.460 --> 00:03:32.840 And he's not exactly born into obscurity, is 00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:35.300 he? I mean, his family background is significant. 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:38.199 Oh, far from it. Ibn Rushd comes from a dynasty 00:03:38.199 --> 00:03:41.729 of law. His grandfather, who confusingly was 00:03:41.729 --> 00:03:43.849 also named Ibn Rushd. Of course. So historians 00:03:43.849 --> 00:03:45.490 usually clear it up by calling him the grandfather. 00:03:45.930 --> 00:03:48.789 He was the imam of the great mosque of Cordoba. 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:52.129 He was a massive, massive legal authority. That 00:03:52.129 --> 00:03:54.250 is some serious pressure. That's like being born 00:03:54.250 --> 00:03:55.930 into a family where your grandfather was the 00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:57.710 chief justice of the Supreme Court. Yeah. And 00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:00.129 everyone is just looking at you and expecting 00:04:00.129 --> 00:04:01.990 you to keep up. And he was put on that track 00:04:01.990 --> 00:04:04.490 from day one. His education is described in all 00:04:04.490 --> 00:04:07.580 the sources as excellent. which in that context 00:04:07.580 --> 00:04:11.229 means exhaustive. He memorized the muwata. It's 00:04:11.229 --> 00:04:14.569 the magnum opus of Maliki jurisprudence. Maliki 00:04:14.569 --> 00:04:16.730 being one of the four major schools of Sunni 00:04:16.730 --> 00:04:19.149 Islamic law. Correct. So he's studying Hadith, 00:04:19.149 --> 00:04:21.230 the traditions of the prophet. He's studying 00:04:21.230 --> 00:04:24.050 theology, jurisprudence, the whole religious 00:04:24.050 --> 00:04:27.129 curriculum. But then he pivots. He starts studying 00:04:27.129 --> 00:04:29.290 medicine and philosophy. And he's not just sitting 00:04:29.290 --> 00:04:31.629 in a library reading dusty scrolls. He's out 00:04:31.629 --> 00:04:33.829 there. He's networking. He is. This is key. I 00:04:33.829 --> 00:04:36.649 found this note about him joining a regular meeting 00:04:36.649 --> 00:04:39.959 of philosophers and physicians in Seville. to 00:04:39.959 --> 00:04:42.639 picture it like the ultimate intellectual salon 00:04:42.639 --> 00:04:45.180 of the 12th century. The place to be. It really 00:04:45.180 --> 00:04:47.800 was. This is where the magic happened. He's rubbing 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:50.819 shoulders with people like Ibn Tufayl. Now, Ibn 00:04:50.819 --> 00:04:52.740 Tufayl is a big deal in his own right. He's a 00:04:52.740 --> 00:04:54.959 famous philosopher and, more importantly, the 00:04:54.959 --> 00:04:57.259 court physician to the caliph. So this networking 00:04:57.259 --> 00:04:59.600 wasn't just social. It was his gateway to power. 00:04:59.779 --> 00:05:02.800 It was everything. And that leads us to the... 00:05:03.500 --> 00:05:05.899 The cinematic moment, the real turning point 00:05:05.899 --> 00:05:09.959 of his life. It's 1169. Averroes is introduced 00:05:09.959 --> 00:05:13.540 to the Almohad Caliph, Abu Yaqub Yusuf. OK, so 00:05:13.540 --> 00:05:15.180 paint the picture. This is a high stakes room 00:05:15.180 --> 00:05:18.839 to be in. Extremely high stakes. The Almohads 00:05:18.839 --> 00:05:21.660 were a religious dynasty and they were generally 00:05:21.660 --> 00:05:24.379 considered quite strict, even fundamentalist 00:05:24.379 --> 00:05:27.000 in some ways. They came to power on a platform 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.449 of religious reform. So. Not exactly the kind 00:05:30.449 --> 00:05:32.610 of guys you'd expect to be chatting about philosophy. 00:05:32.810 --> 00:05:35.970 Not at all. But this particular caliph, Abu Yaqub, 00:05:36.110 --> 00:05:38.870 had a secret. He was an intellectual. He loved 00:05:38.870 --> 00:05:41.769 philosophy. He was a closet nerd. So Avros walks 00:05:41.769 --> 00:05:44.750 in, introduced by his powerful friend, Ibn Tufayl. 00:05:45.009 --> 00:05:47.269 And the caliph doesn't ask him about the weather. 00:05:47.389 --> 00:05:49.850 He hits him with a trap question. It's the ultimate 00:05:49.850 --> 00:05:52.529 trap. The caliph looks at him and asks, are the 00:05:52.529 --> 00:05:54.629 heavens eternal or did they have a beginning? 00:05:54.930 --> 00:05:57.029 Okay, let's just pause and unpack why this is 00:05:57.029 --> 00:05:59.569 terrifying. To a modern ear, that sounds like 00:05:59.569 --> 00:06:02.209 an astrophysics question, a fun debate. Why is 00:06:02.209 --> 00:06:05.029 he sweating bullets? Because in 1169, that's 00:06:05.029 --> 00:06:07.350 not a question about astrophysics. It's a question 00:06:07.350 --> 00:06:10.269 of heresy versus loyalty. Explain that. Okay, 00:06:10.329 --> 00:06:12.889 so if you say the heavens are eternal, meaning 00:06:12.889 --> 00:06:15.589 the universe has always existed with no beginning, 00:06:15.870 --> 00:06:19.319 you are agreeing with Aristotle. That's the philosopher's 00:06:19.319 --> 00:06:22.480 answer. But you are directly contradicting the 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:25.660 orthodox religious view that God created the 00:06:25.660 --> 00:06:28.720 universe at a specific moment in time. Ex nihilo. 00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:32.100 Out of nothing. Okay, so if he says eternal, 00:06:32.399 --> 00:06:34.939 he's a heretic in the eyes of the religious establishment. 00:06:34.939 --> 00:06:37.139 A potential heretic. At the very least, he's 00:06:37.139 --> 00:06:39.879 on thin ice. But if he says, no, they had a beginning. 00:06:40.519 --> 00:06:42.500 He's contradicting the very philosophy he spent 00:06:42.500 --> 00:06:44.639 his life studying. He's committing intellectual 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:46.959 suicide in front of a caliph who he knows is 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:49.079 interested in philosophy. That's so lose -lose. 00:06:49.220 --> 00:06:51.860 Yeah. There's no right answer. None. And Averroes 00:06:51.860 --> 00:06:54.699 knows it. The sources say he just stayed silent. 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:57.399 He was terrified. He probably thought his career 00:06:57.399 --> 00:07:00.459 was over before it began. Or worse. The silence 00:07:00.459 --> 00:07:02.180 in that room must have been agonizing. You can 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:05.040 just imagine it. But then the caliph does something 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:07.589 completely unexpected. He sees that Averroes 00:07:07.589 --> 00:07:10.529 is panicked, so he turns to Ibn Tufayl and starts 00:07:10.529 --> 00:07:12.990 answering the question himself. The caliph starts 00:07:12.990 --> 00:07:15.470 quoting Plato and Aristotle. He starts discussing 00:07:15.470 --> 00:07:17.870 the nuance of the argument. So he was testing 00:07:17.870 --> 00:07:21.149 him. He wanted a thinking partner. I think it's 00:07:21.149 --> 00:07:24.529 a bit of both. He was signaling, it's okay, I'm 00:07:24.529 --> 00:07:27.149 one of you. You can speak freely here. He was 00:07:27.149 --> 00:07:30.629 showing his hand. And it works. It works. Once 00:07:30.629 --> 00:07:33.009 Averroes realizes the caliph is one of them, 00:07:33.149 --> 00:07:36.790 intellectually speaking, he relaxes. He joins 00:07:36.790 --> 00:07:39.389 the conversation and he impresses the caliph 00:07:39.389 --> 00:07:41.870 so much that the caliph admits something to him. 00:07:42.029 --> 00:07:44.949 He says that Aristotle's original works are just 00:07:44.949 --> 00:07:48.649 difficult to understand, too obscure. And that 00:07:48.649 --> 00:07:50.490 is the moment. That's when the commentator is 00:07:50.490 --> 00:07:53.209 born. That is the exact moment. The caliph gives 00:07:53.209 --> 00:07:57.110 him the commission of a lifetime. Explain, Aristotle. 00:07:57.509 --> 00:07:59.689 Write commentaries. Make his work accessible. 00:07:59.949 --> 00:08:02.730 That single conversation launched a career that 00:08:02.730 --> 00:08:04.970 would literally shape Western thought for the 00:08:04.970 --> 00:08:07.449 next. 400 years. But here's the thing I want 00:08:07.449 --> 00:08:09.910 to drill down on. Yeah. He wasn't just summarizing 00:08:09.910 --> 00:08:12.089 Aristotle for a book club. This wasn't a casual 00:08:12.089 --> 00:08:14.589 project. He was stepping into an absolute war 00:08:14.589 --> 00:08:16.889 zone. Oh, yeah. The intellectual climate at the 00:08:16.889 --> 00:08:19.170 time wasn't exactly friendly to philosophy, was 00:08:19.170 --> 00:08:22.550 it? Not at all. This brings us to the core conflict 00:08:22.550 --> 00:08:25.490 of his life, what he called the harmony of religion 00:08:25.490 --> 00:08:28.470 and philosophy. You have to understand, just 00:08:28.470 --> 00:08:31.589 before Averroes, there was this massive sustained 00:08:31.589 --> 00:08:35.309 attack on philosophy led by the brilliant theologian 00:08:35.309 --> 00:08:38.070 Al -Ghazali. Al -Ghazali, the guy who wrote Ta 00:08:38.070 --> 00:08:41.570 Fut Al -Fal Asifa. Which translates to the incoherence 00:08:41.570 --> 00:08:44.309 of the philosophers. Which, frankly, is just 00:08:44.309 --> 00:08:46.649 a brutal title for a book. It's a diss track. 00:08:46.870 --> 00:08:49.070 It's a philosophical diss track, and it was incredibly 00:08:49.070 --> 00:08:51.549 effective. What was his argument? Al -Ghazali 00:08:51.549 --> 00:08:53.909 argued that philosophers, especially those who 00:08:53.909 --> 00:08:56.549 followed Aristotle, were essentially non -believers. 00:08:56.789 --> 00:08:59.669 He picked apart their logic on about 20 different 00:08:59.669 --> 00:09:02.129 points, specifically things like the creation 00:09:02.129 --> 00:09:04.389 of the world and God's knowledge of particulars, 00:09:04.409 --> 00:09:07.090 and said it was incompatible with Islam. And 00:09:07.090 --> 00:09:09.250 this was the prevailing mood. Philosophy was 00:09:09.250 --> 00:09:12.190 seen as suspect, foreign, maybe even dangerous. 00:09:12.529 --> 00:09:15.730 Exactly. So Avaros decides to write a point -by 00:09:15.730 --> 00:09:18.190 -point rebuttal, and he titles it, wait for it, 00:09:18.370 --> 00:09:22.080 Tawfud al -Tawfud. The incoherence of the incoherence. 00:09:22.139 --> 00:09:23.559 He's throwing it right back. He's saying, no, 00:09:23.600 --> 00:09:25.440 your attack on philosophy is what's actually 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:28.159 incoherent. But beyond the snappy titles, what 00:09:28.159 --> 00:09:30.639 was his actual defense? This is the crucial part. 00:09:31.419 --> 00:09:34.600 How do you reconcile reason and revelation when 00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:36.559 they seem to say completely opposite things? 00:09:36.919 --> 00:09:39.580 His core thesis is found in a shorter book, a 00:09:39.580 --> 00:09:42.059 little gem called The Decisive Treatise. And 00:09:42.059 --> 00:09:44.220 the argument is beautiful in its simplicity. 00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:47.179 He just says truth cannot contradict truth. OK, 00:09:47.279 --> 00:09:49.000 expand on that. What does that mean in practice? 00:09:49.629 --> 00:09:52.149 Well, he argues that the revelation in the Quran 00:09:52.149 --> 00:09:54.850 is true. That's his baseline. He's a devout believer. 00:09:55.149 --> 00:09:57.789 Right. But he also argues that philosophy, which 00:09:57.789 --> 00:10:00.710 is just the rigorous use of human reason, also 00:10:00.710 --> 00:10:03.590 leads to truth. Since there is only one ultimate 00:10:03.590 --> 00:10:06.649 truth. These two paths, revelation and reason, 00:10:06.750 --> 00:10:09.230 cannot possibly conflict in the end. They have 00:10:09.230 --> 00:10:11.529 to lead to the same place. Okay, but they often 00:10:11.529 --> 00:10:13.549 seem to conflict. I mean, scripture says one 00:10:13.549 --> 00:10:16.049 thing, science or logic says another. That's 00:10:16.049 --> 00:10:17.870 the whole problem. And this is his brilliant 00:10:17.870 --> 00:10:20.889 move. Averroes says that if they appear to conflict, 00:10:21.110 --> 00:10:23.769 it's not because reason is wrong. It's because 00:10:23.769 --> 00:10:26.210 we are interpreting the scripture too literally. 00:10:26.529 --> 00:10:30.399 So if science proves... say that the earth revolves 00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:32.759 around the sun and reversing the Quran seems 00:10:32.759 --> 00:10:35.740 to say the sun moves, he's saying you shouldn't 00:10:35.740 --> 00:10:38.500 throw out the science. Correct. He argues that 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:41.100 in those specific cases, the scripture must be 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:44.200 interpreted allegorically, metaphorically. He's 00:10:44.200 --> 00:10:46.500 saying the sacred text is using an image to convey 00:10:46.500 --> 00:10:49.159 a deeper truth to the common people. But the 00:10:49.159 --> 00:10:51.740 philosopher, the person of demonstration, can 00:10:51.740 --> 00:10:54.419 understand the literal scientific reality behind 00:10:54.419 --> 00:10:58.299 that metaphor. That feels incredibly modern. 00:10:58.679 --> 00:11:00.259 That's basically how many religious scientists 00:11:00.259 --> 00:11:02.919 operate today. It was revolutionary. But he went 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:05.039 even further. He didn't just say philosophy was 00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:07.919 allowed. He argued that the Quran actually obligates 00:11:07.919 --> 00:11:10.399 the intellectual elite to study it. How did he 00:11:10.399 --> 00:11:12.830 justify that? He pointed to verses that tell 00:11:12.830 --> 00:11:15.450 believers to reflect on God's creation, on the 00:11:15.450 --> 00:11:18.429 heavens and the earth. He said, look, God gave 00:11:18.429 --> 00:11:20.710 us minds. He gave us this incredible creation. 00:11:20.929 --> 00:11:23.429 He clearly wants us to use our brains to understand 00:11:23.429 --> 00:11:26.789 his work. The creation reveals the creator. The 00:11:26.789 --> 00:11:29.490 artisan, as he called him. The artisan. So for 00:11:29.490 --> 00:11:31.730 him, philosophy wasn't just allowed. It was the 00:11:31.730 --> 00:11:34.330 highest form of worship. It was mandatory for 00:11:34.330 --> 00:11:36.669 those capable of it. But he didn't think everyone 00:11:36.669 --> 00:11:39.220 should be doing this, right? This is a key distinction. 00:11:39.500 --> 00:11:42.740 He wasn't a Democrat about knowledge. No, absolutely 00:11:42.740 --> 00:11:44.179 not. And this is where we have to be careful 00:11:44.179 --> 00:11:47.120 not to paint him as a modern liberal. He was 00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:50.320 an elitist through and through. He believed in 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:52.779 a very strict hierarchy of intellect. Right. 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:55.519 He broke society down into three classes based 00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:58.240 on how they digest truth. Yes. And this is fascinating. 00:11:58.419 --> 00:12:00.440 Let's go through them. OK. First, you have the 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:02.879 rhetorical class. This is the vast majority of 00:12:02.879 --> 00:12:06.740 people. the masses they are moved by persuasion 00:12:06.740 --> 00:12:10.320 by sermons by poetry emotion and simple stories 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:13.059 so that's the sunday sermon or a politician giving 00:12:13.059 --> 00:12:15.899 a stump speech they respond to the literal surface 00:12:15.899 --> 00:12:18.820 level text of scripture exactly and that's what 00:12:18.820 --> 00:12:21.299 keeps them virtuous it's what they need then 00:12:21.299 --> 00:12:24.000 you move up a level to the dialectical class 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:26.559 and these these are the theologians The debaters, 00:12:26.639 --> 00:12:29.159 they use logic, but they use it to defend premises 00:12:29.159 --> 00:12:31.720 they already believe in. They aren't really searching 00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:34.580 for new truth. They're defending the fort. The 00:12:34.580 --> 00:12:37.019 apologists. The apologists. And finally, at the 00:12:37.019 --> 00:12:40.019 very top of the pyramid, you have the demonstrative 00:12:40.019 --> 00:12:43.059 class. The philosophers. The philosophers, the 00:12:43.059 --> 00:12:46.379 guys who do the math. They use pure, cold, logical 00:12:46.379 --> 00:12:49.940 deduction to arrive at absolute proof. For Averroes, 00:12:49.960 --> 00:12:52.379 this demonstrative truth was the highest form. 00:12:52.799 --> 00:12:55.779 But, and here's the catch. He believed it was 00:12:55.779 --> 00:12:58.820 incredibly dangerous to mix the levels. Dangerous 00:12:58.820 --> 00:13:01.159 how? What did he think would happen? He thought 00:13:01.159 --> 00:13:03.799 if you took these high -level philosophical proofs, 00:13:03.799 --> 00:13:05.620 which might sound like they contradict the literal 00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:08.179 scripture, and you tried to explain them to the 00:13:08.179 --> 00:13:10.820 rhetorical masses, you wouldn't enlighten them. 00:13:10.879 --> 00:13:12.820 You would just confuse them, shake their faith, 00:13:12.919 --> 00:13:15.299 and cause social chaos. So he was basically saying 00:13:15.299 --> 00:13:18.000 the masses need the story. The philosophers need 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.639 the proof. It's all the same truth, but it has 00:13:20.639 --> 00:13:22.460 to be packaged differently for different audiences. 00:13:23.220 --> 00:13:25.679 Precisely. He effectively said to his fellow 00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:27.899 philosophers, don't talk about this stuff in 00:13:27.899 --> 00:13:30.539 public. It was a survival strategy for philosophy. 00:13:30.879 --> 00:13:33.200 He wanted to protect the right to think freely, 00:13:33.320 --> 00:13:35.100 but he thought the only way to do that was to 00:13:35.100 --> 00:13:37.679 keep it within an elite closed circle. Which, 00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:39.620 ironically, is probably one of the things that 00:13:39.620 --> 00:13:42.159 got him in trouble later on. People don't like 00:13:42.159 --> 00:13:43.779 being told there's a secret truth they're not 00:13:43.779 --> 00:13:46.179 smart enough to handle. No, they do not. But 00:13:46.179 --> 00:13:48.840 before we get to his downfall, we have to talk 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:52.059 about the idea that made him famous and infamous 00:13:52.059 --> 00:13:54.600 in Europe. The one that really set the world 00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:58.220 on fire. Ah, yes. Unity of the intellect. Monopsychism. 00:13:58.700 --> 00:14:01.539 This is the big one. If you're a student of medieval 00:14:01.539 --> 00:14:04.820 philosophy, this is the radioactive core of Averroism. 00:14:05.019 --> 00:14:07.799 Okay, walk us through this. He's writing his 00:14:07.799 --> 00:14:11.580 long commentary on Aristotle's On the Soul. And 00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:14.159 he comes up with a theory that, you said it before, 00:14:14.340 --> 00:14:16.220 it sounds like science fiction. It really does. 00:14:16.519 --> 00:14:18.559 So he's trying to solve a problem in Aristotle 00:14:18.559 --> 00:14:20.940 about how human beings come to know universal 00:14:20.940 --> 00:14:24.279 truths. How do I know the concept of dog, not 00:14:24.279 --> 00:14:26.840 just my specific dog, Fido? With the abstract 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:30.159 idea. Exactly. And his solution is to propose 00:14:30.159 --> 00:14:33.220 that there is only one material intellect for 00:14:33.220 --> 00:14:36.559 all of humanity. One mind. One mind. Shared by 00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:39.419 everyone. Essentially, yes. He argues that this 00:14:39.419 --> 00:14:42.600 intellect is a separate, eternal substance. It's 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:45.440 unmixed with any individual body, and it's singular. 00:14:45.840 --> 00:14:49.139 Okay, I have to stop you there. Because... I'm 00:14:49.139 --> 00:14:50.600 definitely thinking my own thoughts right now. 00:14:50.659 --> 00:14:52.220 I hope so. I'm thinking about this microphone. 00:14:52.299 --> 00:14:53.899 I'm thinking about lunch. You're thinking about 00:14:53.899 --> 00:14:57.080 Aristotle. How can we possibly share one mind? 00:14:57.629 --> 00:15:00.090 If we are all thinking different private things. 00:15:00.330 --> 00:15:03.230 That is the million dollar question. And Averroes 00:15:03.230 --> 00:15:06.470 had a very specific, very clever answer. He distinguished 00:15:06.470 --> 00:15:08.490 between the universal intellect and something 00:15:08.490 --> 00:15:11.710 he called FIC. FIC. F -I -K -R. In Latin, it 00:15:11.710 --> 00:15:14.110 was translated as Cagitatio. And what is FIC? 00:15:14.309 --> 00:15:17.149 FIC is the active consideration of specific things. 00:15:17.330 --> 00:15:19.470 It's your brain processing sensory data. The 00:15:19.470 --> 00:15:21.809 images you see from your eyes, the memories you 00:15:21.809 --> 00:15:24.149 have of your childhood, the specific dog you 00:15:24.149 --> 00:15:26.230 are looking at right now. Those are individual. 00:15:26.570 --> 00:15:30.620 Those belong. So my memories are mine. My sensory 00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:32.860 experiences are mine. That part is personal. 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:36.559 Yes. But the capacity to abstract that sensory 00:15:36.559 --> 00:15:39.679 data into a universal concept, to understand 00:15:39.679 --> 00:15:42.659 that this dog and that dog and every dog are 00:15:42.659 --> 00:15:45.659 all part of the universal idea of dogness, or 00:15:45.659 --> 00:15:48.539 to understand a mathematical proof like 2 plus 00:15:48.539 --> 00:15:51.580 2 equals 4, that higher level processing happens 00:15:51.580 --> 00:15:53.980 in the shared universal intellect. Okay, I'm 00:15:53.980 --> 00:15:55.379 going to try an analogy here. Tell me if this 00:15:55.379 --> 00:15:57.539 works. Go for it. It sounds like cloud computing. 00:15:57.779 --> 00:16:00.059 Okay, go on. We all have our own laptops. That's 00:16:00.059 --> 00:16:02.059 our bodies and our individual brains. I have 00:16:02.059 --> 00:16:03.919 my own files on my desk. My laptop, my own photos. 00:16:04.019 --> 00:16:06.059 That's my ficker, my memories. Right. But when 00:16:06.059 --> 00:16:08.019 I want to run a massive calculation or access 00:16:08.019 --> 00:16:10.000 the vastness of the Internet, I'm connecting 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:12.720 to the cloud. The cloud is one thing shared by 00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:15.600 everyone. My laptop is just a terminal. That 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:18.539 is a surprisingly and slightly unnerving accurate 00:16:18.539 --> 00:16:22.000 analogy for a 12th century metaphysical concept. 00:16:22.360 --> 00:16:26.320 Yes. The cloud is the material intellect. It's 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:29.299 where true universal knowledge resides and happens. 00:16:29.379 --> 00:16:32.179 Your brain is just the access point. So why was 00:16:32.179 --> 00:16:34.179 this so controversial? On the surface, it sounds 00:16:34.179 --> 00:16:36.120 kind of poetic. We're all connected. One humanity, 00:16:36.220 --> 00:16:38.500 one mind. What's the problem? It sounds poetic 00:16:38.500 --> 00:16:40.539 until you ask the immediate follow -up question, 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:43.259 what happens when I die? Oh, right. If the part 00:16:43.259 --> 00:16:45.500 of me that is eternal, that is rational, the 00:16:45.500 --> 00:16:48.600 part that truly thinks, if that part isn't mine 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:51.700 but just belongs to the shared cloud, then when 00:16:51.700 --> 00:16:55.320 my laptop breaks, when my body dies, what's left 00:16:55.320 --> 00:16:57.940 of me? My local files are gone. My terminal is 00:16:57.940 --> 00:17:00.200 offline. And the cloud just keeps going without 00:17:00.200 --> 00:17:03.320 me. Exactly. It directly implies there is no 00:17:03.320 --> 00:17:06.599 personal immortality, no individual soul that 00:17:06.599 --> 00:17:08.980 survives death to be judged, to be punished in 00:17:08.980 --> 00:17:11.279 hell or rewarded in heaven. And for the medieval 00:17:11.279 --> 00:17:13.240 Catholic Church and for mainstream Islam, for 00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:15.480 that matter, that is an absolute deal breaker. 00:17:15.640 --> 00:17:18.059 It's a massive heresy. It destroys the entire 00:17:18.059 --> 00:17:21.180 moral fabric of revealed religion. If I don't 00:17:21.180 --> 00:17:23.279 survive death as an individual, why should I 00:17:23.279 --> 00:17:25.400 be good? Why should I fear God's judgment? The 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:27.400 whole system collapses. I can see why Thomas 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:30.740 Aquinas was. Not a fan is putting it so mildly. 00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:34.059 Aquinas wrote a specific book, a polemic, called 00:17:34.059 --> 00:17:36.599 On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Avarists. 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:39.720 He attacked this idea relentlessly. He felt it 00:17:39.720 --> 00:17:41.460 was a poison that would destroy the foundations 00:17:41.460 --> 00:17:43.940 of Christianity if it wasn't stamped out. It's 00:17:43.940 --> 00:17:46.680 just amazing that a commentary on an ancient 00:17:46.680 --> 00:17:49.900 Greek text could cause such a theological panic. 00:17:50.359 --> 00:17:52.720 But it shows how seriously they took these ideas. 00:17:52.980 --> 00:17:55.160 They took them as seriously as we take political 00:17:55.160 --> 00:17:58.339 ideologies or economic theories today. This was 00:17:58.339 --> 00:18:00.880 the battleground of truth. We've talked a lot 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:03.460 about the philosopher, but we cannot ignore the 00:18:03.460 --> 00:18:05.940 scientist. Because as you said, if he had never 00:18:05.940 --> 00:18:08.460 written a single word about Aristotle, he'd still 00:18:08.460 --> 00:18:10.200 be famous for his medicine, right? Absolutely. 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:13.259 He wrote a medical encyclopedia called Al -Khuliat 00:18:13.259 --> 00:18:16.660 Fi Al -Tib, which was known in Latin for centuries 00:18:16.660 --> 00:18:20.079 as the Collegé. And again, just like with philosophy, 00:18:20.279 --> 00:18:22.940 he wasn't just copying old texts. He was observing 00:18:22.940 --> 00:18:25.420 and correcting them. The I -thing. When I was 00:18:25.420 --> 00:18:27.220 reading about that, it blew my mind. The retina. 00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:30.420 Yes. Explain what the prevailing theory was before 00:18:30.420 --> 00:18:32.799 him. Who was the authority? The authority was 00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:36.039 Galen, the ancient Greek physician who was basically 00:18:36.039 --> 00:18:38.079 the god of medicine for over a thousand years. 00:18:38.220 --> 00:18:41.019 What Galen said went. And Galen thought that 00:18:41.019 --> 00:18:43.740 the lens of the eye was the photoreceptor. He 00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:45.319 thought it was the part that actually sensed 00:18:45.319 --> 00:18:48.160 light. Which I guess makes intuitive sense. It's 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:49.799 the clear part right in the middle. It seems 00:18:49.799 --> 00:18:52.920 important. It does. But Averroes, based on his 00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:55.890 understanding of anatomy, said, No, that can't 00:18:55.890 --> 00:18:59.210 be right. The lens just focuses. It's the retina, 00:18:59.230 --> 00:19:01.450 that net light coating at the back of the eye. 00:19:01.690 --> 00:19:03.950 That's what actually receives the light and sends 00:19:03.950 --> 00:19:06.349 the image to the brain. That is a fundamental 00:19:06.349 --> 00:19:10.069 leap in anatomy and neuroscience. And he was 00:19:10.069 --> 00:19:12.250 completely right. He was. And he didn't stop 00:19:12.250 --> 00:19:14.490 there. He challenged Galen on the cause of strokes, 00:19:14.589 --> 00:19:17.529 too. Galen had this theory that strokes were 00:19:17.529 --> 00:19:19.710 caused by obstructions in the peripheral nerves. 00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:22.819 Not right. Not right at all. Averroes realized, 00:19:23.039 --> 00:19:26.420 no, this is happening in the brain. He proposed 00:19:26.420 --> 00:19:28.559 that it was an obstruction of the arteries leading 00:19:28.559 --> 00:19:31.059 from the heart to the brain. He was getting much, 00:19:31.079 --> 00:19:33.400 much closer to the modern understanding. He was 00:19:33.400 --> 00:19:35.920 literally mapping out the vascular system's connection 00:19:35.920 --> 00:19:39.289 to neurology. He was. And there's more. He gave 00:19:39.289 --> 00:19:41.589 one of the earliest clinical descriptions of 00:19:41.589 --> 00:19:43.990 what we now recognize as Parkinson's disease 00:19:43.990 --> 00:19:46.789 symptoms. He didn't name it, of course, but he 00:19:46.789 --> 00:19:49.670 described the tremors. And he identified the 00:19:49.670 --> 00:19:52.130 concept of acquired immunity. With smallpox, 00:19:52.349 --> 00:19:55.690 yes. He observed that if a patient got smallpox 00:19:55.690 --> 00:19:59.250 and survived, they never got it again. He understood 00:19:59.250 --> 00:20:01.509 on some level that the body learned to defend 00:20:01.509 --> 00:20:04.509 itself. Which is the entire basis of all modern 00:20:04.509 --> 00:20:07.849 immunology and vaccination. It is. He was a keen 00:20:07.849 --> 00:20:10.779 observer. That's the common thread. He didn't 00:20:10.779 --> 00:20:13.059 just accept authority. He looked at the world, 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:16.180 whether it was a text, a patient, or the sky. 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:19.099 And he did look at the sky, too. He did. He was 00:20:19.099 --> 00:20:21.440 an astronomer who actually had big problems with 00:20:21.440 --> 00:20:23.720 the Ptolemaic system. Why? I thought everyone 00:20:23.720 --> 00:20:25.619 used Ptolemy's model of the universe back then. 00:20:25.720 --> 00:20:29.279 They did, but Averroes was a purist. He was an 00:20:29.279 --> 00:20:31.920 Aristotelian purist. The problem with Ptolemy's 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:35.119 system was that it was messy. To explain why 00:20:35.119 --> 00:20:37.880 planets seem to move backwards sometimes, Ptolemy 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:39.799 had to invent these things called epicycles, 00:20:39.839 --> 00:20:41.980 little circles that planets made while moving 00:20:41.980 --> 00:20:43.500 on their bigger circles. Circles within circles. 00:20:43.920 --> 00:20:46.839 Exactly. For Averroes, this was an ugly mathematical 00:20:46.839 --> 00:20:50.160 hack. He believed Aristotelian physics demanded 00:20:50.160 --> 00:20:52.900 that celestial motion had to be perfectly uniformly 00:20:52.900 --> 00:20:56.039 circular around a single center. He couldn't 00:20:56.039 --> 00:20:58.339 come up with a better mathematical model. He 00:20:58.339 --> 00:21:00.500 admitted he failed to reform astronomy completely. 00:21:00.839 --> 00:21:03.400 But his critique was so powerful it inspired 00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:06.140 later astronomers to keep looking. And didn't 00:21:06.140 --> 00:21:08.980 he spot something on the sun? He did. He and 00:21:08.980 --> 00:21:11.940 another astronomer, Ibn Baja, observed dark spots 00:21:11.940 --> 00:21:14.519 on the sun. Now, their worldview didn't allow 00:21:14.519 --> 00:21:16.680 for the sun to be imperfect or have blemishes. 00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:19.059 Right. So they interpreted what they saw as the 00:21:19.059 --> 00:21:21.460 transits of Venus and Mercury passing in front 00:21:21.460 --> 00:21:24.240 of the sun. But modern calculations have shown 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:26.599 they were almost certainly observing sunspots 00:21:26.599 --> 00:21:29.440 with the naked eye. The man was a polymath in 00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:31.559 the truest sense of the word. But we have to 00:21:31.559 --> 00:21:33.599 remember his day job through all of this. We 00:21:33.599 --> 00:21:37.099 touched on it earlier. He was a judge. And not 00:21:37.099 --> 00:21:39.779 just any judge. His legal work, particularly 00:21:39.779 --> 00:21:42.599 his book Bidayat al -Mujtahid, is still studied 00:21:42.599 --> 00:21:45.160 in Islamic law schools today. It's considered 00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:47.460 a masterpiece of comparative jurisprudence. What 00:21:47.460 --> 00:21:49.519 made it so special? Was it just a list of rules 00:21:49.519 --> 00:21:51.839 like other law books? That's what most legal 00:21:51.839 --> 00:21:54.380 texts were. This is forbidden. This is allowed. 00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:57.779 The punishment for X is Y. Averroes took a completely 00:21:57.779 --> 00:22:00.960 different approach. He didn't just give the answer. 00:22:01.099 --> 00:22:03.980 He explained why the great jurists disagreed. 00:22:04.119 --> 00:22:06.680 He showed his work. He showed all the work. He 00:22:06.680 --> 00:22:08.519 identified the causes of difference. He would 00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:10.799 say, look, the Maliki school says this and the 00:22:10.799 --> 00:22:13.460 Hanafi school says that. The reason they disagree 00:22:13.460 --> 00:22:16.180 is because this word in the Quran is ambiguous 00:22:16.180 --> 00:22:19.259 or because they're using different analogies 00:22:19.259 --> 00:22:22.279 to a known case. He treated the dissent with 00:22:22.279 --> 00:22:25.299 profound respect. That sounds incredibly fair 00:22:25.299 --> 00:22:27.779 minded and intellectually honest. It was. He 00:22:27.779 --> 00:22:30.400 was an independent thinker, even in law, a field 00:22:30.400 --> 00:22:33.319 that values tradition above all else. And this 00:22:33.319 --> 00:22:35.400 independence, this willingness. to think from 00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:37.900 first principles led him to some social views 00:22:37.900 --> 00:22:41.359 that were, well, pretty radical for the 12th 00:22:41.359 --> 00:22:43.099 century. You're talking about his views on women. 00:22:43.579 --> 00:22:45.500 Specifically, yeah. This is one of the most fascinating 00:22:45.500 --> 00:22:47.500 parts of his commentary on Plato's Republic. 00:22:47.759 --> 00:22:50.220 So Plato, in his ideal state, argued that women 00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:52.700 should be guardians. They should rule and fight 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:56.400 alongside men. Right. And most medieval commentators, 00:22:56.400 --> 00:22:59.359 Christian or Muslim, would probably just gloss 00:22:59.359 --> 00:23:01.480 over that part or say, well, that's some crazy 00:23:01.480 --> 00:23:04.000 Greek talk. Let's move on. But Averroes didn't. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.480 He doubled down on it. He looked at his own society 00:23:06.480 --> 00:23:09.500 and Al -Andalus and said, essentially, we are 00:23:09.500 --> 00:23:12.180 wasting half our potential. He made an economic 00:23:12.180 --> 00:23:14.140 argument, didn't he? It wasn't just about fairness. 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:17.640 It was a deeply practical argument. He lamented 00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:20.779 that women in his society were limited to childbearing 00:23:20.779 --> 00:23:23.480 and domestic duties. He said this reduced them 00:23:23.480 --> 00:23:25.720 to a burden on the state because they weren't 00:23:25.720 --> 00:23:27.799 contributing to the economy or the common defense. 00:23:28.119 --> 00:23:31.380 He argued that women could and should be soldiers, 00:23:31.519 --> 00:23:33.920 philosophers and even rulers if they were just 00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:36.539 given the same education and opportunity as men. 00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:39.440 That is a massive what if moment for history. 00:23:39.619 --> 00:23:41.619 Yeah. I mean, imagine if that view had actually 00:23:41.619 --> 00:23:44.400 taken hold in the 12th century. It's tragic in 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:47.019 a way. He saw the potential for a much stronger, 00:23:47.119 --> 00:23:49.920 more dynamic society, but the culture just wasn't 00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:52.259 ready to hear it. Speaking of things the culture 00:23:52.259 --> 00:23:55.000 wasn't ready for, let's talk about the fall from 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.940 grace. Because for a long time, Avros was the 00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:00.160 golden boy. He's the friend of the caliph, the 00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:02.539 chief judge of Seville, a court physician. But 00:24:02.539 --> 00:24:06.319 then 1195 happens. The wheel of fortune turns, 00:24:06.460 --> 00:24:09.380 as it always does. The old caliph, his patron, 00:24:09.559 --> 00:24:13.180 has died. His son, Abu Yusuf Yaqub, who took 00:24:13.180 --> 00:24:16.200 the title Al -Mansur, is in charge now. And Al 00:24:16.200 --> 00:24:18.440 -Mansur has a problem. He has a big political 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:21.259 problem. He needs to rally support for a massive 00:24:21.259 --> 00:24:23.579 jihad against the Christian kingdoms in the north 00:24:23.579 --> 00:24:26.440 of Spain. And to get that support, he needs the 00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:28.839 religious conservatives on his side. He needs 00:24:28.839 --> 00:24:31.380 the Orthodox Ulema. Yeah. The theologians and 00:24:31.380 --> 00:24:33.740 jurists. The very same Ulema who do not like 00:24:33.740 --> 00:24:36.140 Averroes. They see his philosophy as foreign, 00:24:36.299 --> 00:24:39.500 dangerous, and heretical. So Averroes becomes 00:24:39.500 --> 00:24:42.420 a political pawn to appease the fundamentalists 00:24:42.420 --> 00:24:44.819 and drum up support for the war that Caliph throws 00:24:44.819 --> 00:24:46.859 him under the bus. And it wasn't just a quiet 00:24:46.859 --> 00:24:49.460 firing. It was a public humiliation. It was a 00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:51.880 show trial. A tribunal was convened in Cordoba, 00:24:51.900 --> 00:24:54.519 and he was formally condemned. They ordered that 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:56.740 his books on philosophy be collected and burned. 00:24:56.920 --> 00:24:58.960 Ugh, that image always hurts. Burning books. 00:24:59.470 --> 00:25:01.769 It's the ultimate symbol of rejecting knowledge. 00:25:02.069 --> 00:25:04.650 He was then banished to a small town called Lucina, 00:25:04.809 --> 00:25:07.970 which was mostly inhabited by Jews. He was isolated, 00:25:08.210 --> 00:25:10.730 disgraced, and forbidden from continuing his 00:25:10.730 --> 00:25:12.950 work. He did get a reprieve at the very end, 00:25:12.970 --> 00:25:14.529 though, right? It wasn't the end of the story. 00:25:14.710 --> 00:25:17.130 He did. A couple years later, once the political 00:25:17.130 --> 00:25:19.470 winds shifted back again, the caliph called him 00:25:19.470 --> 00:25:22.130 back to favor in Marrakesh. But he was an old 00:25:22.130 --> 00:25:25.170 man by then, likely broken by the exile. He died 00:25:25.170 --> 00:25:28.779 shortly after, in December of 1198. And here 00:25:28.779 --> 00:25:31.900 is the great final twist of the knife. He dies. 00:25:32.519 --> 00:25:34.839 He's eventually reburied in his hometown of Cordoba. 00:25:35.019 --> 00:25:37.779 But what happens to his legacy in the Islamic 00:25:37.779 --> 00:25:40.359 world? It largely evaporates. It fades away. 00:25:40.420 --> 00:25:42.460 The intellectual center of the Islamic world 00:25:42.460 --> 00:25:45.180 had shifted east to Cairo and Damascus, and they 00:25:45.180 --> 00:25:47.599 had moved on. They were more interested in the 00:25:47.599 --> 00:25:50.279 philosophy of Avicenna or had turned away from 00:25:50.279 --> 00:25:52.680 Greek philosophy entirely towards mysticism. 00:25:52.940 --> 00:25:55.000 So in his own world, he becomes a minor figure. 00:25:55.140 --> 00:25:57.579 A respected jurist, but a philosophical dead 00:25:57.579 --> 00:26:00.890 end. But in the West. In the West, he explodes. 00:26:00.990 --> 00:26:03.970 He becomes a giant, an absolute titan. It's the 00:26:03.970 --> 00:26:07.180 ultimate irony. The man who was banished and 00:26:07.180 --> 00:26:09.940 had his books burned by a Muslim caliph becomes 00:26:09.940 --> 00:26:12.960 the father of rationalism for Christian Europe. 00:26:13.119 --> 00:26:15.480 His commentaries were translated first into Hebrew 00:26:15.480 --> 00:26:18.420 by Jewish scholars in Spain and France, and then 00:26:18.420 --> 00:26:20.960 from Hebrew into Latin. They fled it into the 00:26:20.960 --> 00:26:23.619 new universities, being born in Paris, Padua, 00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:26.640 Bologna, and they started a movement. Latin Averism. 00:26:26.880 --> 00:26:29.680 Exactly. You had these radical thinkers, guys 00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:32.420 like Segaroff of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia 00:26:32.420 --> 00:26:35.950 at the University of Paris. Averroes' most controversial 00:26:35.950 --> 00:26:39.089 ideas, like the eternity of the world and the 00:26:39.089 --> 00:26:41.309 unity of the intellect, and they ran with them. 00:26:41.369 --> 00:26:43.250 They were pushing the absolute boundaries of 00:26:43.250 --> 00:26:45.089 what the church could tolerate. And as we mentioned 00:26:45.089 --> 00:26:47.549 with Aquinas, the church pushed back. Oh, they 00:26:47.549 --> 00:26:50.529 pushed back hard. In 1270, and again in 1277, 00:26:50.650 --> 00:26:53.069 the Bishop of Paris issued formal condemnations. 00:26:53.210 --> 00:26:56.990 They listed 219 specific philosophical theses 00:26:56.990 --> 00:26:59.230 that were forbidden to be taught or even discussed 00:26:59.230 --> 00:27:01.569 at the university. A huge number of them were 00:27:01.569 --> 00:27:04.759 pure Averroes. Yet, despite the ban, He stuck 00:27:04.759 --> 00:27:07.200 around. You can't really kill an idea once it's 00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:10.059 out there. You can't. He was too important, too 00:27:10.059 --> 00:27:13.380 useful to ignore. Even his enemies had to respect 00:27:13.380 --> 00:27:16.480 his intellect. We talked about Dante. In his 00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:19.220 divine quality, he places Averroes in limbo. 00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:21.940 That's the nice part of hell. It is. It's for 00:27:21.940 --> 00:27:24.180 the virtuous pagans, the great minds who lived 00:27:24.180 --> 00:27:26.819 before Christ or outside the faith. He's there 00:27:26.819 --> 00:27:29.000 in this noble castle of thought, sitting alongside 00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:32.279 Euclid, Ptolemy, and even Saladin. And Dante 00:27:32.279 --> 00:27:34.700 describes him as the one who made the great commentary. 00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:36.759 And then Raphael puts him right in the middle 00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:39.119 of the Vatican. In the school of Athens, one 00:27:39.119 --> 00:27:41.680 of the most famous paintings in the world. It's 00:27:41.680 --> 00:27:43.519 a celebration of human knowledge. And if you 00:27:43.519 --> 00:27:46.099 look closely... Peering over the shoulder of 00:27:46.099 --> 00:27:48.940 Pythagoras, there's a man in a green robe and 00:27:48.940 --> 00:27:52.180 a white turban. That's Averroes. He is literally 00:27:52.180 --> 00:27:54.839 inside the heart of the Vatican, immortalized 00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:57.359 as one of the pillars of Western wisdom. I love 00:27:57.359 --> 00:27:59.660 that story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis 00:27:59.660 --> 00:28:02.200 Borges about him, Averroes' search. Oh, that's 00:28:02.200 --> 00:28:04.799 a brilliant, brilliant piece of literature. It 00:28:04.799 --> 00:28:07.930 just captures the... the tragedy of the translation 00:28:07.930 --> 00:28:10.910 gap so perfectly. It's about Averroes trying 00:28:10.910 --> 00:28:14.349 to translate Aristotle's poetics. He comes across 00:28:14.349 --> 00:28:17.430 the words tragedy and comedy, but he has no frame 00:28:17.430 --> 00:28:20.049 of reference. None at all. Theater as we know 00:28:20.049 --> 00:28:22.829 it didn't exist in the Islamic world of his time. 00:28:22.970 --> 00:28:25.289 So Borges describes him looking out his window, 00:28:25.390 --> 00:28:27.690 seeing some children playing make -believe, and 00:28:27.690 --> 00:28:30.430 trying to deduce from that what a play or a stage 00:28:30.430 --> 00:28:33.529 could possibly be. He's a genius trying to grasp 00:28:33.529 --> 00:28:36.009 a concept without any of the cultural context. 00:28:36.410 --> 00:28:38.650 It's such a powerful metaphor for the whole project, 00:28:38.750 --> 00:28:40.809 the difficulty of one culture understanding another. 00:28:41.049 --> 00:28:43.910 But it also humanizes him. He was a giant, but 00:28:43.910 --> 00:28:46.089 he was still a man working with the tools and 00:28:46.089 --> 00:28:48.529 the information he had. So let's try and bring 00:28:48.529 --> 00:28:50.049 this all together. What does this all mean for 00:28:50.049 --> 00:28:53.250 us? We have a devout Muslim judge born in Spain 00:28:53.250 --> 00:28:55.430 whose books were burned by his own government, 00:28:55.529 --> 00:28:57.990 who ends up becoming the foundation for Western 00:28:57.990 --> 00:29:01.250 scholasticism and a hero to secular rationalists. 00:29:01.609 --> 00:29:03.930 It's the ultimate irony of history, isn't it? 00:29:04.369 --> 00:29:07.289 Averroes represents a path not taken by his own 00:29:07.289 --> 00:29:10.730 civilization, but a path that, in a way, saved 00:29:10.730 --> 00:29:13.890 another. He drew a line in the sand and said 00:29:13.890 --> 00:29:16.789 that faith and reason could coexist, that you 00:29:16.789 --> 00:29:19.069 didn't have to choose between God and Aristotle. 00:29:19.130 --> 00:29:21.289 And that idea that you don't have to check your 00:29:21.289 --> 00:29:23.250 brain at the door of the mosque or the church 00:29:23.250 --> 00:29:26.819 or the synagogue. His truly enduring legacy. 00:29:27.160 --> 00:29:29.039 Absolutely. He was a champion of the intellect. 00:29:29.319 --> 00:29:31.819 He believed, fundamentally, that human beings 00:29:31.819 --> 00:29:34.220 were designed to think. That using our reason 00:29:34.220 --> 00:29:36.420 to understand the world was not an act of rebellion 00:29:36.420 --> 00:29:38.660 against God, but the highest form of worship. 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:40.940 It really makes you wonder about those what -ifs. 00:29:41.500 --> 00:29:44.039 If the Almohad Caliphate hadn't turned on him, 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:46.640 if his rationalism had become the dominant strain 00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:49.339 of thought, if that argument for women in society 00:29:49.339 --> 00:29:52.339 had been heard. How different would the last 00:29:52.339 --> 00:29:54.380 800 years have looked? It's one of the great 00:29:54.380 --> 00:29:57.319 counterfactuals of history. A world where Cordoba, 00:29:57.319 --> 00:29:59.880 not Paris, remained the center of avant -garde 00:29:59.880 --> 00:30:02.319 philosophy might have accelerated the scientific 00:30:02.319 --> 00:30:04.619 revolution by centuries. We just don't know. 00:30:04.839 --> 00:30:06.599 I want to leave you with one final thought to 00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:08.980 mull over. We talk about his most controversial 00:30:08.980 --> 00:30:11.960 theory, the unity of the intellect, this idea 00:30:11.960 --> 00:30:14.799 that we all share one big mind, like a cloud 00:30:14.799 --> 00:30:17.480 server. Right. In his time, that was heresy. 00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:19.900 It seemed to erase the individual. But think 00:30:19.900 --> 00:30:22.450 about us today. We are constantly plugged into 00:30:22.450 --> 00:30:24.970 the Internet. We offload our memory to Google. 00:30:25.069 --> 00:30:28.170 We process information and form opinions collectively 00:30:28.170 --> 00:30:31.369 on social media. We are feeding all our thoughts 00:30:31.369 --> 00:30:34.789 and all our knowledge into AI models that aggregate 00:30:34.789 --> 00:30:37.269 everything humanity has ever written. That is 00:30:37.269 --> 00:30:41.069 a slightly chilling thought. Isn't it? Are we 00:30:41.069 --> 00:30:43.990 right now building a technological version of 00:30:43.990 --> 00:30:47.049 Evero's single shared mind? Maybe he wasn't wrong. 00:30:47.190 --> 00:30:49.480 Maybe he was just 800 years early. Perhaps the 00:30:49.480 --> 00:30:51.460 material intellect is just a server farm in the 00:30:51.460 --> 00:30:53.880 desert somewhere. On that note, thanks for diving 00:30:53.880 --> 00:30:55.799 deep with us. Keep thinking. See you next time.