Ibn Rushd, Spanish-Arabic philosopher and writer, 1126-1198, author of the Tahafut-ul-falasifa or Incoherence of the Incoherence, a reply to al- Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers
Fishburn and Hughes: "A celebrated Arab philosopher and physician born in Cordoba, known as 'The Commentator'. Averroes was one of the most important Islamic thinkers, renowned for his commentaries on Aristotle, which became the principal source of Greek thought for medieval Christian and Jewish theology. He also wrote a commentary on Plato's Republic. His most famous book is the Tahafut-ul-Tahafut ('Incoherence of Incoherence'). Averroes held that one universal intelligence exists for all humanity, and that the individual soul, destined to die with the body, is capable of thought only through its temporary union with it. This notion ran counter to the Islamic idea of personal immortality, and Averroes was accused of unorthodoxy. The discussion of Averroes's preoccupation with metaphor may be linked to a famous statement attributed to the philosopher about 'twofold truth', viz. that propositions may be theologically true and philosophically false, or vice versa; what Averroes actually taught, however, was that religious imagery expressed a higher philosophical truth. Averroes was physician to the Emir Yacub Yusuf Almansur, at Marrakesh, where he enjoyed a privileged position. After being attacked and dismissed, he was recalled to Marrakesh, where he died. Much of what is said about him in 'Averroes' Search' stems from Renan's Averroès et l'Averroïsme." (19)