Charles E. Butterworth provides a bilingual edition (Arabic and English) of several of this influential twelfth-century philosopher's greatest works.

Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation examines the controversial causation issue. That causes produce their effects and can be known to do so is the view that Averroes defends in his Tahafut Al-Tahafut, where he summarizes and evaluates the debates about causation—debates that took place over several generations between the philosophers and the theologians of medieval Islam. Drawing from his Tahafut, his commentaries, and other writings, Kogan shows that Averroes' discussion of causation represents a dialogue across the generations and a rich contribution to the history of the causal controversy. Averroes responds to al-Ghazali's proto-Humean critique of the philosophers' account which treats causation as an entailment relation. In this response Averroes develops an independent position that is of philosophical interest because it clearly anticipates many of the contemporary responses to Hume associated with the singularist position. Building on this analysis, Kogan resolves many long-standing paradoxes in Averroes' treatment of miracles, eternal creation, God's causal knowing, and the theory of emanation.

The first English-language translation of a crucial medieval Arabic commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, with context on its contribution to intellectual history. Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd (d. 1198 AD), known as Averroes in the West, wrote one of the most significant medieval Arabic commentaries on Aristotle’s famous treatise, Rhetoric. Averroes worked within a tradition that included the Muslim philosophers Al-Farabi (d. 950) and Avicenna (d. 1037), who together built an early canon introducing Aristotle’s writings to the academies of medieval Europe. Here, for the first time, Lahcen El Yazghi Ezzaher translates Averroes’ Middle Commentary into English, with analysis highlighting its shaping of philosophical thought. Ibn Rushd was born into a prominent family living in Córdoba and Seville during the reign of the Almoḥad dynasty in the Maghreb and al-Andalus. At court, he received support to write a body of rhetorical commentaries extending the work of his Arabic-Muslim predecessors, a critical step in fostering Aristotle’s influence on European scholasticism and Western education. Ezzaher’s meticulous translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary reflects the depth and breadth of this engagement, incorporating a discussion of the Arabic-Muslim commentary tradition and Averroes’ contribution to it. His research illuminates the complexity of Averroes’ position, articulating the challenges Muslim scholars faced in making non-Muslim texts available to their community. Through his work, we see how people at different historical moments have adapted intellectual concepts to preserve rhetoric’s vitality and relevance in new contexts. Averroes’ Middle Commentary exemplifies the close connections between ancient Greece and medieval Muslim scholarship and the ways Muslim scholars navigated an appreciation for Aristotelian philosophy alongside a commitment to their cultural and religious systems.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"The goal of the book is to provide an anthology covering the reception of Plato's Republic in the Islamic world, with a focus on Averroes's outstanding but underappreciated commentary on Plato's most famous dialogue. Despite the publication of Ralph Lerner's excellent English translation almost 50 years ago, very few scholarly studies have been written on it. We propose the following chapters, keeping in mind that some might be changed owing to collaboration with contributors"--