philosophy · 4th century BCE · 4 crossings
On the Soul
Περὶ ΨυχῆςPeri Psychēs
Aristotle's treatise on what it is to be alive: nutrition, perception, imagination, intellect. Its third book, on the intellect, became the most fought-over text in medieval philosophy, in Arabic and then in Latin.
The chain
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translated by Ishaq ibn Hunayn in Baghdad
Ishaq translated the work twice; the Fihrist reports the first version was left slightly unfinished. His Arabic is lost as an independent text. An older anonymous Arabic version also circulated, which Averroes quotes in nine passages as 'the other translation'.
- Ibn al-Nadim 987 reports the double translation, the first incomplete
- Treiger 2017 reconstruction of the lost translation from its descendants
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commentary by Ibn Rushd
The Long Commentary quotes Ishaq's translation in full as its lemmata, which is why the lost Arabic survives inside it. Where it was written is not documented; Averroes was then moving between al-Andalus and the Almohad court in Marrakesh.
- Taylor 2009 dating to c. 1186, within a range of roughly 1181-1190
- Ben Ahmed 2021
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translated by Michael Scot
In use in Paris by about 1225, where Averroes became simply 'the Commentator' within a decade. The unicity-of-intellect reading drawn from this book was condemned at Paris in 1270 and 1277. Only a few of the fifty-plus manuscripts name Scot; stylometry supports the attribution.
- Hasse 2010 stylometric case for Scot's authorship of the anonymous Averroes translations
- Hasse 2020
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translated by Zerahyah ben Isaac Hen in Rome
Made from the Arabic in Rome. Together with the Latin lemmata, it is one of the witnesses from which Ishaq's lost translation is reconstructed. Its closing section follows a different Arabic version that completed Ishaq's unfinished text, as the Hebrew preface itself records.