ELŻBIETA JUNG, DARIUSZ GWIS, Averroes’ Lecture on the Substance of the World

SUMMARY

The translation presented here of Averroes’ Lecture on the substance of the world is the first translation from Latin to Polish this difficult text. Averroes was an Arab theologian, philosopher, and researcher active in twelfth-century Spain. The original Arabic version of this work has not survived, and we have only translations into Latin and Hebrew. Averroes’ Treatise was often commented upon in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Due to the concepts presented in it about the coherence of the world, it was a valuable resource: few works available in those eras combined natural philosophy and astronomy in any meaningful way. The Lecture on the substance of the world is a compilation of the views of Aristotle (drawn primarily from his Physics, On heaven, and On generation and corruption) as well as a summary of the views of Averroes himself, who provides an original interpretation of Aristotelian thought. The Arab philosopher and theologian was apparently convinced of the creation of a hierarchical world by the One God, and this work clearly expresses that point of view.