New Books Network Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)
Nov 19, 2025
Yehudah Halper, a leading scholar in Jewish philosophy, dives into his latest work on Averroes, a 12th-century thinker. He discusses Averroes' unique approach to divine knowledge, prioritizing philosophical inquiry over traditional theology. Halper illustrates how Averroes navigated political pressures while preserving scientific reasoning and differentiates between his various commentaries for different audiences. He also explores intriguing themes like the yearning for the divine and the connections between Averroes' ideas and Kabbalistic thought, underlining his enduring influence on Jewish and Christian intellectual traditions.
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Aristotle As Model Of Independent Reason
- Averroes sought to make Aristotle the model of independent human reason distinct from theology.
- This made Aristotle the philosophical standard for approaching the divine without scripture.
Averroes' Political Rise And Fall
- Averroes initially tried to accommodate the new Almohad regime and later fell out of favor.
- He was exiled and his books burned, but his writings survived through Jewish and Latin translations.
Threefold Model Of Knowing
- Averroes divides people into rhetorical, dialectical, and demonstrative knowers with legal-political consequences.
- He defends a protected class of demonstrative philosophers to preserve pure reasoning from public misinterpretation.
