Averroes (Ibn Rušd) and the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy

Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Andreas Speer, Jun.-Prof. Dr. David Wirmer | Thomas Institute Gefördert durch das Akademienprogramm / Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste Averroes Edition is part of the international large-scale project Averrois opera. This project was initiated in 1931 by the Medieval Academy of America under the direction of H. A. Wolfson. Under the title “Averroes and the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy”, the Thomas Institute began a trilingual edition project comprising commentaries and writings on the Aristotelian corpus by Ibn Bāǧǧas (d. 1139) and Ibn Rušd (1126–1198) in 2016. The project is being funded within the framework of the Academic Programme of the North-Rhine Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts under the aegis of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI). The editing program includes all commentaries and treatises of Averroes in the field of natural philosophy that have not yet been critically edited as well as three commentaries on natural philosophy from Ibn Bāǧǧas (Avempace).Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle form the sum of late-antique and the subsequent Arabic reception of Greek philosophy. As such, especially in their Latin and Hebrew translations, they had a significant influence on the respective scientific discourses for centuries. In the recent past, supported through the research of the trilingual transmission of the work, awareness of Averroes’ entire corpus of work including his legal, theological and medical works has increasingly been raised.Similarities and differences between the three named language traditions as well as the manifold translation and reception processes in particular are considered within the frameworks of the Averroes Edition and in the Digital Averroes Research Environment (http://dare.uni-koeln.de/) of the Thomas Institute. In addition, the digital infrastructure for the editing work has been developed so that the editors now have a comfortable transcription tool at their disposal (see image), which is presently being expanded to include a function to create collations.

_{Text: Andreas Speer}