ABSTRACT
The 'short' commentaries are really epitomes, summaries of an Aristotelian work, restructuring it as required to bring out Aristotle's essential teachings on the particular subject, as well as Averroes' own views of it. Averroes' commentaries attest to his struggle to disentangle Aristotle from all these interpreters of his thought, and to present him in his original fashion. This, of course, is a near hopeless task, particularly for one like Averroes who had no Greek, and who had to rely on translations the accuracy of which he could not fully gauge. In the De anima commentaries, however, the Agent Intellect's role is restricted to the cognitive process. The actualizing reach of the Agent Intellect is limited to the material intellect and its immediate objects, the intelligible intentions of imaginative forms. The real connection is between the Agent and material intellects, the former acting upon both the individual intellect and its intended objects, actualizing their potential intelligence and intelligibility, respectively.
