Influence of IBN Rushd’s Concept of “Two Truths” on Western Philosophers

Abstract

The spiritual harmony of the medieval East and West, as a special necessity, created such personalities who were able to unite several continents at once. For example, the great Arab-Spanish philosopher Ibn Rushd is not only a great philosopher but also a bridge connecting Africa and Asia, Asia and Europe, and Christianity and Islam. Moreover, Europe rediscovered itself thanks to Ibn Rushd. Having translated the works of the great Greek philosophers from Arabic into Spanish, he introduced the European peoples to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the founders of Greek culture. And in Averroism, for the first time, embers of knowledge and reason were revealed. This scientific thinking led to the emergence of such great intellectuals as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Ibn Rushd is the last major representative of the Eastern school of peripateticism associated with the term “philosophy” in the medieval Muslim world.

This article highlights the different attitudes of later philosophers to Ibn Rushd's views that religion and philosophy are parallel to each other and that they are the result of the same phenomena with logical views that do not contradict each other. The theoretical and ideological successors of Ibn Rushd's concept of “Two Truths” are presented on the basis of these conclusions. Also, after Ibn Rushd, issues of concern to both philosophers and theologians, who expressed different opinions about the harmony of religion and philosophy, were presented and compared. Even if the ideas of the philosophers of the Middle Ages and the modern period do not correspond exactly with the views of Ibn Rushd, they have a special place in the history of philosophy in relation to faith and reason, and can serve to define the position of people in this regard.