Arabic Texts: Philosophy, Latin Translations of

Abstract

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a vast body of philosophical and scientific literature by Greek and Arabic authors was translated from Arabic into Latin. The translation movement peaked with the School of Toledo and the translators Gundissalinus and Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century and with the court of Frederick II and the translator Michael Scot in the thirteenth century. It was in the frontier regions between the Muslim and Christian realms, where learned individuals with the necessary linguistic skills were present, that the translations took place. In the area of philosophy, the impact of the translations can be seen in a renewed interest in the interpretation of the works of Aristotle and other Greek authors, shaped by their Arabic translators and interpreters, and in a transformation of the curriculum of philosophical learning as expressed in the teaching of the subject as well as in its conceptual shape. While it was mainly courts with their high-ranking patrons and rich resources that offered a social, intellectual, and institutional context for the translations, the later reception of the translated works took also place at universities. While some translators embarked on political careers or left, like Gundissalinus, their own, sometimes highly significant marks in the philosophical tradition of the West, other translators survive only with their names. Jews played a particularly important role in these transmissions. Several philosophical works originally written in Arabic, in particular, by Averroes, have not been preserved in their original form but survive only in Latin translations. Even though religious texts were translated for polemical purposes, anti-Islamic motives did not affect attitudes to Arabic philosophy in the Latin West.