of Aristotle, into an attack on the Muslim Neoplatonists from al-Farabi and
Ibn Sina right down to Ibn Bajja (exempting only his own patron, Ibn Tufayl),
and into a counterattack against al-Ghazali’s attempt to destroy philosophy.
Ibn Rushd is no mere transmitter of Aristotle, he elaborates Aristotle into
his own system. He depicts Aristotle’s world as eternally in a process of
becoming: Forms are not so much classifications or levels of reality as the
dynamic side of matter, moving everything in the world from potentiality to
actuality and back again endlessly. Since Ibn Rushd is also committed to
making this a religious vision, he cannot avoid certain aspects of Neoplaton-
ism, such as the hierarchy of Forms on up to the divine eternal Mover. But his
emphasis is as far as possible from the Neoplatonic stress on a transcendental
flow upward, still less an emanation of reality downward. Everything on every
level is eternal, and the whole makes up a vast interacting system. There is
even an eternal place in it for the Philosopher, who perceives the reality of all
the levels and thus participates in a special kind of intellectual Eternity.
Ibn Rushd and Maimonides represent different branches of this culmina-
tion of Spanish philosophy. In Maimonides we find much more a compromise
of evenhanded reasoning with scriptural particularism; he is willing to give
reason its due, demonstrate its limits, and show how it can peacefully coexist
with dogma. Maimonides directs his criticisms largely against the MuÀtazilite
atomists, by now the traditional school within Jewish rational theology (rep-
resented by Saadia and by the Karaites, the same enemy Halevi a generation
back had singled out for attack). Ibn Daud is more concerned to attack Ibn
Gabirol’s version of Neoplatonism (which was popular among current Jewish
thinkers such as Moses ibn Ezra and Ibn Zaddik); he declares Gabirol full of
bad arguments, as well as contrary to Jewish faith.^34 Ibn Rushd is an extremist
of philosophical reason capable of producing a complete religion in itself, with
which scriptural religion must coincide. Ibn Rushd is much more the pure
philosopher. He takes to its extreme the structural opportunities of the intel-
lectual field: not only to reject kalam but also to overthrow Neoplatonism as
the reigning religion of reason and replace it with his vision of Aristoteleanism.
His stance becomes clearer when we consider his rejoinder to al-Ghazali,
who had turned the weapons of philosophy against itself in favor of Sufi
mysticism. Ibn Rushd’s counterattack declares that al-Ghazali did no more than
destroy the Neoplatonism of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, not the purer philosophy
of Aristotle. Ibn Rushd even offers an alliance to the most conservative jurists,
for he declares that the rational theologians occupy a ridiculous and even
subversive position, and their attempt to use philosophy to interpret the scrip-
tures only confuses the masses without enlightening anyone to the true phi-
losophy. Ibn Rushd makes a bold effort to overturn the whole Islamic intellec-
tual field; he would drive out all the rationalized positions except his own, and
leave the rest to the dogmatists.444 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths