Tafsīr mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa

(lit.: Commentary on the Metaphysics)

Aristotle's *Metaphysics* quoted section by section in Arabic and explained — one of the long commentaries that taught Latin readers to call Averroes simply the Commentator.

by Averroes656 passages held

Arabic, the original language

Original language: Arabic

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Overview

The Arabic original survives in a single manuscript, now in Leiden, and Maurice Bouyges, a Jesuit scholar in Beirut, printed it in three volumes from 1938; Latin readers had been studying it since the thirteenth century. Tafsīr mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa is a commentary, not a treatise: Averroes's long commentary (tafsīr, a line-by-line exposition) on Aristotle's Metaphysics, the book about what it is to be and about the first causes of everything that is. Each section quotes a passage of Aristotle in the Arabic translation that reached Averroes, then explains it phrase by phrase, so that the reader holds Aristotle's words and the reading of them together. Scholars date it to around 1190, in the last decade of his life. He reads Aristotle through the Greek commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, the second-century head of the Aristotelian school, above all; on book Lambda, where Aristotle argues for an unmoved first mover, Averroes quotes so much of Alexander's commentary, now lost in Greek, that Jacob Freudenthal, a German historian of philosophy, could publish the fragments in 1885. The rival he corrects most often is Avicenna, who had taught that metaphysics proves the existence of the first principle and had built his metaphysics on the division of being into necessary and possible. Averroes answers that the first mover is proved in natural science, from the fact of motion, and that metaphysics receives it from there; Avicenna, he writes more than once, thought otherwise and was wrong.

Key concepts

What does "substance" mean in Aristotle's Metaphysics?

A substance is a thing that exists in its own right, such as this man or this horse, while everything else exists in it: its size, its colour, its place. Substance is therefore the first meaning of being, and the other meanings depend on it. Averroes's commentary keeps returning to the question of what makes something a substance, its matter, its form, or the two together.

What is the science of "being as being"?

It is the science that studies things simply insofar as they exist, not insofar as they move, as natural science does, or insofar as they can be counted and measured, as mathematics does. Averroes, following Aristotle, makes it the highest science, which looks for the first causes of whatever is, and studies what belongs to every existing thing as such, like unity and difference.

What do potentiality and actuality mean?

Potentiality is a thing's ability to become or do something it is not yet doing; actuality is that ability realised. Matter is potential, form makes it actual. Averroes uses the pair to explain all change without anything coming from nothing: what comes to be was already there as a possibility in some matter. At the top of the scale stands the first mover, which is wholly actual and has no unrealised ability at all.

What is a thing's essence, and how does a definition state it?

A thing's essence is what it is, as opposed to the features it merely happens to have. A definition states the essence by naming the general kind and what marks this thing out within it, as "human being" is stated by animal and rational. For Averroes only substances have definitions in the full sense, since everything else is defined by reference to the substance it belongs to.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What It Means to Be

When we say that something is, are we adding anything to it? A wrong answer, Averroes argues, sent the great Avicenna astray.

Following Aristotle, Averroes holds that being is said in many ways, but always with reference to substance, the individual thing that exists in its own right; size, colour and place exist only as belonging to one. Universals are not substances, and Plato's separate Forms explain nothing. Against Avicenna he argues that "existing" and "one" name the thing itself, not features added to it. Avicenna was misled partly by Arabic, whose word for "existing" is built like a word for a quality.

being
substance
unity
essence
categories
predication
universals
definition
forms
number
logic

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First Principles and Who Proves Them

Which science discovers that there is a first cause, and how do we come to know it? Averroes thinks Avicenna got the order of knowledge backwards.

Avicenna had taught that metaphysics proves the first principle exists. Averroes answers that it is found in natural science, which reasons from the fact of motion to a mover that does not move, and that metaphysics receives it from there. The first mover moves the heavens as something loved moves the one who loves it. Along the way he attacks Avicenna's notion of a thing possible in itself yet necessary through another, and blames habits learned from the theologians for much that clouds first principles.

first principles
causation
motion
natural philosophy
demonstration
potentiality and actuality
matter
matter and form
generation
change
contraries
knowledge
metaphysics

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Within this work

passages held: 656
distinct concepts: 362
by passages held, corpus-wide: #105

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “forms” and “substance”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 80 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
forms	substance	41
forms	matter	40
definition	substance	39
forms	universals	35
causation	forms	34
substance	universals	32
metaphysics	substance	27
substance	unity	25
causation	matter	24
causation	substance	23
matter	substance	20
definition	forms	16
forms	unity	16
unity	universals	14
causation	metaphysics	13
definition	universals	13
definition	unity	12
forms	metaphysics	10
causation	universals	9
matter	unity	8
matter	universals	7
metaphysics	unity	7
metaphysics	universals	6
causation	definition	5
causation	unity	5
definition	matter	5
definition	metaphysics	3
matter	metaphysics	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory (Faṣl al-maqāl)
The legal case for philosophy, written around 1179: the first of three works from those years on religion and reason, followed by an exposition of the proofs of doctrine and by the Incoherence of the Incoherence.
AR
Tafsīr mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa you are here AR
Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) (Tahāfut al-tahāfut)
The long sequel to the Decisive Treatise, written around 1180: the earlier book asks whether philosophy is allowed, and this one defends its doctrines in detail.
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Talkhīṣ manṭiq Arisṭū
The earliest layer of his work on Aristotle: most of these commentaries were finished by the mid-1170s, though the long commentary on the Posterior Analytics belongs to his last years.
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Talkhīṣāt al-ṭabīʿiyyāt
His first commentaries on Aristotle's science of nature; the long commentaries on On the Heavens and On the Soul, which reached Latin in the thirteenth century, came much later.
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