Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory

Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198 C.E.) emerged from an eminent family of scholars and jurists in Muslim Spain. He distinguished himself as an authority on medicine and jurisprudence, but he is most widely known today as the first and last great Aristotelian in the classical Islamic world. His meticulous commentaries on Aristotle influenced Latin Christian thinkers and earned him favorable mention (and a relatively pleasant fate) in Dante's Divina Commedia.The Decisive Treatise can be viewed as a plea before a tribunal in which the divinely revealed Law of Islam is the sole acknowledged authority. Averroes argues that the Law not only permits but mandates the study of philosophy and syllogistic or logical reasoning. In the course of his argument, he acquits certain earlier Muslim philosophers - particularly Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and al-Farabi - of the charge of unbelief. He dismisses al-Ghazali's criticisms of them as inconsistent and, indeed, as more harmful to the Islamic community than the philosophers' own views had been. For, says Averroes, al-Ghazali discussed difficult matters before audiences unequipped to understand them.

Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198) emerged from an eminent family in Muslim Spain to become the first and last great Aristotelian of the classical Islamic world; his meticulous commentaries influenced Christian thinkers and earned him favorable mention (and a relatively pleasant fate) in Dante's Divina Commedia. The Book of the Decisive Treatise was and remains one his most important works and one of history's best defenses of the legitimate role of reason in a community of faith. The text presents itself as a plea before a tribunal in which the divinely revealed Law of Islam is the sole authority; Averroës, critical of the anti-philosophical tone of the Islamic establishment, argues that the Law not only permits but also mandates the study of philosophy and syllogistic or logical reasoning, defending earlier Muslim philosophers and dismissing criticisms of them as more harmful to the Islamic community than the philosophers' own views had been. As he details the three fundamental methods the Law uses to aid people of varied capacities and temperaments, Averroës reveals a carefully formed and remarkably argued conception of the boundaries and uses of faith and reason.