Stephen appears to link "Averroes and Moses Maimonides" in Nestor
because both of them sought to reconcile Aristotle's pagan
Greek philosophy with scriptural religion—Islam in the case of
Averroes, Judaism for Maimonides. But this pair of
philosophers also expresses Joyce's fascination with exotic
oriental locales: they lived and wrote in Moorish North Africa
and Spain.
Averroes (1126-98) was a Muslim philosopher and polymath in
medieval Andalusia (Stephen has been thinking of the medieval
"Moors") who wrote
commentaries on most of Aristotle's works, which he read in
Arabic translations. At the time when Averroes began writing,
ancient Neoplatonic ideas had been incorporated into
Christianity, but Aristotle had been largely forgotten.
Averroes' commentaries on the Greek master's works exerted a
powerful influence on Christian Scholastic philosophers, who
extended the Averroistic synthesis of theism and
Aristotelianism into their own religion. (Thomas Aquinas referred to
Averroes simply, and reverently, as The Commentator. Aristotle
was The Philosopher.) Gifford observes that "While he strove
to reconcile Aristotle with Moslem orthodoxy (with heavy
emphasis on God the Creator), he was suspected by the Moslem
world of heterodoxy."
Maimonides (1135-1204) was a Jewish philosopher, rabbinical
scholar, and physician. He was born in the same city as
Averroes, Córdoba, nine years later, and lived in Morocco
(where Averroes died) and Egypt. His 14-volume commentary on
the Torah still is regarded as canonical, famed for its
logical structure, its clarity, and its vast learning. A man
of scientific intelligence, he also adapted Aristotelian
thought to philosophizing about questions of faith. In this
latter endeavor more than a whiff of heterodoxy attends him,
just as it did Averroes. Many sophisticated Jews of early
thirteenth century Spain and southern France were inspired by
Maimonides' philosophy to reject traditional forms of belief
and observance. For a discussion of this history, see D. J.
Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean
Controversy, 1180-1240 (1965). In Ithaca Bloom
thinks of the "More Nebukim (Guide of the
Perplexed)," which Gifford describes as "a rational and
philosophical work on biblical exegesis finished c. 1190. It
is regarded as Maimonides' most important work, and ironically
enough, its attempt to reconcile Aristotelian reason and
Hebraic revelation led to a long and bitter conflict between
the orthodox and the liberal in Judaism."
The paired figures of Averroes and Moses Maimonides return,
very strangely, in Oxen of the Sun, when Stephen
cites them as joint authorities on one of the circumstances
under which women may become pregnant without intercourse.
Gifford notes that Averroes, in his medical work Colliget,
did indeed write about the case history of a woman impregnated
in her bath by a man bathing nearby, but that Maimonides has
nothing to say on this topic.
Bloom thinks in Ithaca that Maimonides was a
thinker of "such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to
Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses
(Maimonides)."
