cepts. Later he meets a Muslim from an inhabited island, and they discover
that the truths of faith and of reason are the same. But—and this is charac-
teristic of the political consciousness of the Spanish philosophers—when the
two friends travel to the inhabited island and try to explain their discovery,
they are attacked by the literalist theologians. Sadly the young man withdraws
again into solitude, having learned that his truth is only for the enlightened,
and not for the superstitious masses.
This position was shared by Ibn Bajja, Ibn Rushd, and Jewish contempo-
raries such as Ibn Zaddiq and to some degree Ibn Daud and even Maimonides;
later it would become the hallmark of the Averroists of the Christian and
Jewish world. Their doctrine is an insider’s position: truth has a double aspect,
crude and literal for ordinary believers, which can be reinterpreted at a higher
level, in keeping with the philosophy of the elite. The elitism is reinforced by
the doctrine that salvation happens only through the intellect. Bar Hiyyah had
distinguished classes of souls up through the wise and just who are reabsorbed
into pure Form; Ibn Zaddiq held that science is a necessary part of the
worship of God, and that only philosophers reach the perfection of the proph-
ets (Sirat, 1985: 86–87, 98).^32 In Ibn Rushd’s version, heaven and hell are
crude allegories, and there is no material resurrection of the body; the only
immortal part of the human individual is the intellectual soul, and indeed only
that part of it which is filled with universal truths from the transcendent world
soul, the Active Intellect (similarly Maimonides’ Guide 3.51, 54; see Mai-
monides, 1956). Ibn Rushd was above all a fanatical admirer of Aristotelean
logic: since salvation is achieved through the intellect, without knowing logic
one cannot even be saved. This means that crude literalists have no real
religious status; their religion as they take it is a delusion and brings them
nothing. Ibn Rushd, however, somewhat cynically declares that ordinary peo-
ple should be required to adhere to the literal religion for the good of the state;
heretics should be given no voice, but must be executed (Fakhry, 1983: 277–
283; de Boer, 1903: 189).
So far this stance of an insiders’ and outsiders’ truth could be compat-
ible with several different philosophies; Neoplatonism or Neo-Pythagoreanism
would work just as well as a secret doctrine as Aristoteleanism. Ibn Bajja and
Ibn Tufayl were still Neoplatonists; so were the Spanish Jews such as Ibn
Gabirol, Ibn Zaddik, Abraham ibn Ezra, and many minor figures. How does
it happen that Ibn Daud, Ibn Rushd, and Maimonides deliberately broke with
Neoplatonism and brought about the rediscovery of Aristotle?Creativity at the Point of Political Breakdown
Why is it that the generations of the mid- and late 1100s had such fateful
intellectual impact? One important reason is that, whereas earlier Neoplaton-442 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths