The Ash'arite Attitude towards Averroes and his Kashf Book: A Study of Ash’ari Thought and the Downfall of Averroism

Abstract

This paper casts doubt on the dominant Arab trend of attributing the demise of Averroes’s philosophy to a “catastrophic” political, social and economic stasis . The author rather seeks to find and unravel the epistemological reasons behind the eventual withering away of Averroes’s philosophy through a discussion of the “Islamic scholastic” (Kalam) arguments made against Averroes by members of the Ash’ari school of thought. The premise of this paper is that Ash’arite objections were the most effective factor in attacking Averroes’ philosophy. An understanding of these arguments could be a better explanation of the ostensible demise of philosophy—an arguable assertion—from the Muslim West.