How a rehabilitated notion of Latin Averroism could help in understanding Jewish Averroism

Today Averroism is a controversial historiographical concept among historians of Latin philosophy. This was not the case in the period ranging from the second half of the 19th through the first half of the 20th century, when this historiographical label was widely accepted, thanks to the pioneering studies of Ernest Renan and Pierre Mandonnet. Afterwards, under the criticism of various historians, the term “Averroism” was used with suspicion and frequently replaced with that of “Radical Aristotelianism”, at least for the Aristotelians of the 13th century. Although the notion of “Jewish Averroism” also sprang from Renan, it was not questioned in Jewish Studies, and on the whole it has been considered a valuable tool for describing an effective current of thought. Indeed, the momentous impact of Averroes’ translations on medieval Jewish philosophy cannot be underestimated. It is worth noting that with some exceptions, Jewish Averroists did not support two doctrines which are commonly attributed to Latin Averroists: the unicity of the material intellect and the so-called double-truth theory. Thus, it could be helpful to investigate the analogies and differences between Jewish and Latin Averroism (which have precise historical reasons in the transmission of Averroes’ texts), for a better understanding of what Jewish Averroism really is.