ABSTRACT
The past decades have seen the publication of many critical (and not so critical) editions of the commentaries on Aristotle made by Averroes (Ibn Rushd). As a result, we now have Arabic editions of all thirty of the thirty-six Averroean commentaries on Aristotle extant in Arabic and an increasing number of editions or partial editions of the medieval Hebrew and Latin translations of these commentaries. In addition, the past few decades have seen the appearance of impressive new annotated translations of Averroes’ commentaries, most notably that of Averroes’ Long Commentary on On the Soul. While most scholars of Islamic philosophy assume they know the differences among Averroes’ three kinds of commentaries, they tend to overgeneralize and are usually, at least to some extent, mistaken. This chapter seeks to show that their errors stem from unfounded assumptions. It also offers an informed assessment of the differences among the three kinds of Averroean commentaries.
