totle was seen through the lens of Neoplatonism. In Christian Europe he had
been known since the time of Boethius (530 c.e.) mainly for his logic, in Latin
translation and through the introduction by Porphyry. As Plotinus’ follower,
Porphyry elaborated Aristotle’s classification of the levels of abstraction from
genera and species down to individuals as exemplifying Plotinus’ metaphysical
hierarchy of emanations. This was a reversal of ontological emphasis. For
Aristotle the greatest reality is at the level of the concrete individual, whereas
for Porphyry and the Neoplatonists the true reality is the transcendent One,
with each descending level more and more shadowy until the concrete individ-
ual is almost an illusion. This identification of Aristotle with Neoplatonism
was so firmly accepted that one of the most widely known texts circulating
under his name was the so-called “Theology of Aristotle,” which actually
consisted of portions of Plotinus’ Enneads.
For centuries Aristotle was regarded as part of the prevailing Neoplatonic
worldview, merely adding some logical classifications and providing a vocabu-
lary in which to discuss additional complexities regarding substance and form,
potency and act. But although this is understandable for Christian Europe,
where few Aristotelean texts were known before 1150, it does not explain the
fact that the Arab philosophers interpreted Aristotle the same way. For trans-
lators at Baghdad had made available virtually all of Aristotle’s original texts
by around 850–900 (Fakhry, 1983: 14–19). Yet al-Kindi and al-Farabi, who
were in the same networks as the translators, assimilated Aristotle to their
dominant Neoplatonism.^21 Ibn Sina, three generations later, self-educated in
the provinces, had access to all of Aristotle’s texts in the library of the local
prince. He claims that the one text he could not understand was Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, which he read 40 times. Small wonder! He was trying to see it
as Neoplatonic. It was only when Ibn Sina read al-Farabi that he saw how
Aristotle might be pressed into the dominant framework. There was no chal-
lenge to this distortion until the Spain of Averroës, in the generation 1165–
- Averroës sharply attacked the interpretations of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina,
and produced a massive commentary on Aristotle’s whole corpus, setting it
free from the framework of Neoplatonism. It was this commentary which was
soon translated and had such powerful repercussions in Christian philosophy
in the 1200s and 1300s.^22
Why then did it take 300 years—nine generations of intellectuals—to break
through a gross distortion of perhaps the most famous of the classic philo-
sophical texts of the time? There are two sociological questions here: What
determined the prevailing interpretation of Aristotle against the grain of the
existing texts? And what made it possible suddenly to reinterpret the texts?
The distortion was made possible in part because elements in Aristotle are
compatible with Platonic and Neoplatonic views. Although Aristotle had criti-
430 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths