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Ernest Renan and Averroism: The Story of a Misinterpretation

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Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

My essay sets Ernest Renan’s famous study of Averroism, Averroès et l’averroïsme (first edition 1851) into the context of its author’s intellectual development. It shows how it can be seen in some respects as the precursor to his best-selling Vie de Jésus, because of its awareness to the importance of myth in intellectual history: myth not just around the founding figures of religions, but also in connection with the scientific texts which, by constituting an orthodoxy, obstruct scientific progress. Renan’s view emerges as a complex one, which holds in tension both the human spirit’s fecundity in fostering myth and misinterpretation, and the philologists’ scientific expertise in demythologizing and in correcting error. The concluding section examines how recent scholarship has cast aside the whole notion of Latin Averroism but, by doing so, risks missing the links captured by Renan between philosophy and wider intellectual life in the Middle Ages and early modern period.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, Charles Chauvin, Renan (1823–1892) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2000) 4 lines on Averroès et l’averroïsme [AA] (p. 35); Henri Peyre, Renan (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1969) 2 lines on AA (p. 14); Harold W. Wardman, Ernest Renan: A Critical Biography (London: Athlone Press, 1964) 3 lines on AA (p. 62); François Millepierres, La vie d’Ernest Renan, sage d’Occident (Paris: Rivière, 1961) 3 lines on AA (p. 199); Johannes Tielrooy, Ernest Renan, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris: Mercure de France, 1958) AA not mentioned; Lewis F. Mott, Ernest Renan (London: Appleby, 1923) 3 lines on AA, emphasizing the cost of printing it; Jean Pommier (Renan d’après des documents inédits (Paris: Perrin, 1923) dedicates a paragraph to AA (pp. 94–95), where he finds links with Renan’s crisis of faith, his trip to Italy and the play, Caliban, which he went on to write).

  2. 2.

    Henriette Psichari, Renan d’après lui-même (Paris: Plon, 1937).

  3. 3.

    Jules Chaix-Ruy, ‘“L’Averroès” d’Ernest Renan’, Annales de l’Institut d’études orientales, 8 (1949–50), pp. 5–60; Ernest Renan (Paris: Vitte, 1956), pp. 152–179. Chaix-Ruy concentrates on themes in Averroès’s philosophy that Renan, he believes, adopted into his own thought, and on Renan’s view that the story of Islamic civilization shows what happens when religious faith succeeds finally in stifling philosophical speculation.

  4. 4.

    Jean-Paul Charnet, ‘Le dernier surgeon de l’Averroïsme en occident: Averroès et l’Averroïsme de Renan’, in Multiple Averroès, ed. Jean Jolivet (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), pp. 333–348 [Charnet is a specialist on Islamic history and politics]; Pierre Thillet, ‘Renan, Averroes et l’Averroïsme’, in Mémorial Ernest Renan, ed. Jean Balcou (Paris: Champion, 1993), pp. 239–250 [Thillet is an historian of ancient philosophy and its Arabic tradition]; Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Renan, la Bible et les juifs (Paris: Arléa, 2008), pp. 246–257.

  5. 5.

    Reprint of 2nd edn of Averroès et l’averroïsme by Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris (2002), pp. 7–19.

  6. 6.

    Antoine Albalat, La Vie de Jésus d’Ernest Renan (Paris: Société française d’éditions littéraires et techniques, 1933), pp. 62–63.

  7. 7.

    Ernest Renan, Œuvres Complètes, ed. Henriette Psichari, 10 vols (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947–1961) (hereafter: OC), IX, pp. 1002–1003.

  8. 8.

    The choice of subject did indeed please Cousin, whom he met for the first time in October 1848 and who was ‘ravi de ma thèse sur Averroès’ (Letter to Henriette 22 October 1848, OC IX, p. 1134).

  9. 9.

    It was first published in 1855, though its appearance was already announced on the back of the first edition of Averroès et l’averroïsme: OC VIII, pp. 129–589; cf. p. 134.

  10. 10.

    Histoire de l’étude de la langue grecque dans l’Occident de l’Europe depuis la fin du V e siècle jusqu’à celle du XIV e. The work, though ‘crowned’ by the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres in 1848 and announced to appear soon in 1852, remained in manuscript until it was edited by Perrine Simon-Nahum and published in Paris (Cerf, 2009).

  11. 11.

    It was first printed in 1890: OC III, pp. 715–1151.

  12. 12.

    De philosophia peripatetica apud Syros (Paris: Durand, 1852). The work was not reprinted, even in Renan’s Oeuvres Complètes.

  13. 13.

    The first edition: Averroès et l’averroïsme (Paris: Duran, 1852 [AA 1]); the second edition of 1861 is reprinted in OC III, pp. 11–365 [AA 2].

  14. 14.

    Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, 2nd edn, 6 vols (Leipzig: Weidmann and Reich, 1767), III, pp. 100–101; Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann, Geschichte der Philosophie, 12 vols (Leipzig; Barth, 1810), VIII/1, p. 420.

  15. 15.

    AA 1, pp. 18–19; AA 2, pp. 37–38.

  16. 16.

    See the Chap. 16 by Akasoy in this volume.

  17. 17.

    Thillet (‘Renan’, pp. 241–242) points out the parallels between Averroes’s career and Renan’s; Charnay (‘Le dernier surgeon’, pp. 340–341) points out how Renan rejects the Averroistic ‘theory of double truth’ but ends up adopting a position not far from Averroes’s idea of there being a single Intellect for all humans.

  18. 18.

    Harold W. Wardman, Renan, historien philosophe (Paris: Société d’enseignement supérieur, 1979), pp. 19–20, does indeed quote an important passage of Averroès et l’averroïsme on the value of misinterpretation in his treatment of Renan’s thought on religion.

  19. 19.

    ‘Les historiens critiques de Jésus’, Liberté de penser, 3 (1849), pp. 365–384 and 437–470 (Paris: Joubert), reprinted in Études d’histoire religieuse (1857)  =  OC VII, pp. 11–303 (116–167). Page references are to both editions because in some cases there are changes.

  20. 20.

    ‘Historiens critiques’, p. 371 (OC VII, p. 124).

  21. 21.

    Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vols (Tübingen: Osiander, 1835–1836). There is an English translation of the fourth edition translated (for the main part) by the novelist George Eliot, ­published in 1846: re-print – David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (London: SCM Press, 1973).

  22. 22.

    Renan made the same remark in his L’Avenir de la science (OC III, p. 946) and he anticipated it in his Cahiers de jeunesse (Nephthali) (OC IX, pp. 189–190).

  23. 23.

    ‘Historiens critiques’, p. 451; OC VII, p. 156 (where the text is revised).

  24. 24.

    ‘Historiens critiques’, p. 469; OC VII, p. 166, where the final sentence is changed to read: ‘As for the man of Galilee, who is almost stolen away from our eyes by the reflections of divinity, what does it matter if he escapes us?’

  25. 25.

    AA 1, pp. 345–346; AA 2, pp. 322–323. The aspect of Renan’s work brought out in this conclusion, though noted by others (e.g. Charnay, ‘Le dernier surgeon’, p. 340), is treated most fully and with the greatest penetration by Alain de Libera (‘Préface’, pp. 15–19).

  26. 26.

    AA 1, pp. 66–67; AA 2, pp. 84–85.

  27. 27.

    AA 1, pp. 233–234; AA 2, pp. 228–229. See Akasoy in this volume for further references.

  28. 28.

    Alain de Libera and Maurice-Ruben Hayoun, Averroès et l’averroïsme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991).

  29. 29.

    Ruedi Imbach, ‘L’Averroïsme latin du XIIIe siècle’, in Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra Otto e Novocento. Contributo a un bilancio storiografico, ed. Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maierù (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1991), pp. 191–208 (195).

  30. 30.

    In addition to Imbach, ‘L’Averroïsme’, see Gianfranco Fioravanti, ‘Boezio di Dacia e la storiografia sull’averroismo’, Studi medievali, 3a ser., 7 (1966), pp. 283–322. A fascinating recent contribution on an aspect of the subject that has very little to do, however, with Renan is Luca Bianchi, Pour une historie de la double vérité (Paris: Vrin, 2008).

  31. 31.

    Barthélemy Hauréau, ‘Un des hérétiques condamnés à Paris en 1277: Boèce de Dacie’, Journal des Savants (1866), pp. 176–183; Mandonnet’s book, Siger de Brabant et l’averroïsme latin au XIIIme siècle: étude critique et documents inédits (Fribourg: Libraire de l’université) was published in 1899, but it had been preceded by articles: cf. Imbach ‘L’Averroïsme’, p. 195.

  32. 32.

    See Imbach ‘L’Averroïsme’, pp. 199–202.

  33. 33.

    For basic bibliography (including details of the attack on Van Steenberghen’s attribution by Bruno Nardi and others), see Imbach, ‘L’Averroïsme’, pp. 202–205.

  34. 34.

    The fullest exposition of this idea, with many references to his earlier presentations of it and arguments against those who have criticised it, is in ‘L’Averroisme Latin’ in Fernand van Steenberghen, Introduction à l’étude de la philosophie médiévale (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires and Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1974), pp. 531–554.

  35. 35.

    René Antoine Gauthier, ‘Notes sur les débuts (1225–1240) du premier “averroïsme”’; ‘Notes sur Siger de Brabant: I. Siger en 1265’; ‘Notes sur Siger de Brabant: II. Aubry de Reims et la scission des Normands’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 66; 67; 68 (1982; 1983; 1984), pp. 321–374; 201–232; 3–39. Gauthier is, however, mistaken in identifying the ‘first Averroism’ of the earlier thirteenth century (each human has their own agent and possible intellect) with Averroes’s genuine doctrine and claiming that the ‘second Averroism’(the agent intellect and the possible/material intellect are separate) – which is the doctrine of Averroes’s long commentary on On the Soul – was the creation of Latin theologians.

  36. 36.

    Other recent writers re-read Siger so as to make of him,rather, a weightier and more consistent thinker than had been thought: see, for example, François-Xavier Putallaz, Insolente liberté. Controverses et condamnations au XIIIe siècle (Paris and Fribourg : Éditions du Cerf and Éditions universitaires, 1995) (Vestigia 15), pp. 15–49.

  37. 37.

    ‘L’Averroïsme’, p. 207.

  38. 38.

    For an argument that, even from a narrower philosophical point of view, it is worth keeping the label Latin Averroism, see John Marenbon, ‘Latin Averroism’, in Islamic Crosspollinations. Interactions in the Medieval Middle East, ed. Anna Akasoy, James E. Montgomery and Peter E. Pormann (Exeter: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007), pp. 135–147.

  39. 39.

    I should like to thank the anonymous reader of the volume for a valuable comment about Gauthier’s understanding of Averroes, which I have followed.

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  1. Trinity College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, CB2 1TQ, UK

    John Marenbon

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  1. Auf der Papenburg 14, Bochum, 44801, Germany

    Anna Akasoy

  2. Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB, United Kingdom

    Guido Giglioni

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Marenbon, J. (2013). Ernest Renan and Averroism: The Story of a Misinterpretation. In: Akasoy, A., Giglioni, G. (eds) Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 211. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5240-5_14

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