Averroes (1126–98) wrote a commentary, or be’ur in the only extant
Hebrew translation, on Plato's Republic that is the subject matter of
the present anthology. He insists there that his aim
is to present Plato's doctrines without provoking
polemics and that the dialectical arguments are not
necessary to the understanding of those
doctrines.
Just as he did in his epitome of, or short commentary
on, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Averroes neither follows
the strict order of the Greek original nor preserves
the original division of books. While he gives his
reasons for the rearrangement in the case of the
Metaphysics, he does
not give any for the Republic. Although Averroes's work
follows Plato's text in many passages, the
independent structure of the work fits better into
an epitome than into a middle commentary. As for the
Arabic translation he was reading, we know that it
preserved the division into ten books but probably
not the dialogue form, since Averroes never mentions
the names of the figures participating in the
dialogue. In the Republic, Socrates narrates in the first
person, but in his commentary, Averroes give no hint
of Socrates's peculiar role in that work; on the
contrary, he presents Socrates only once, referring
to him in the third person and mentioning that he
held the belief that death is preferable to life
without human dignity.
Averroes lived two generations after Muḥammad ibn
al-Ṣā̔igh Ibn Bājja (d. 1139; henceforth Ibn Bajja),
who did not write a specific commentary on the
Republic. But he did
compose a treatise, titled the Governance of the Solitary, in which he
deals with some of the political issues raised by
Plato. There, as in some other works that we will
discuss below, Ibn Bajja refers to the Republic and to the Phaedo. In this chapter the
attempt will be made to reconstruct the influence of
Plato's Republic on
Ibn Bajja through his own texts, and incidentally,
to learn about the text that Ibn Bajja was
using.
Greek Philosophy in Arabic
Scholars have displayed a lively interest in the
reception of Greek philosophy by the Arabs for many
years, and a few studies of that reception in
connection with Plato should be mentioned.
