Journal Article

العمل التأسيسي للأب جورج قنواتي 1905-1994

المصباحي، محمد

2022

Overview

Ahmad Amin described father Anawati 'Works of Avicennia' as 'a glorious work that was produced through a monasticism of science just like the monasticism of religion'. Indeed what really is amazing about this unique researcher is his great ability to bring together faith and science, or to be more accurate devotion to faith and devotion to science, in the same way like the great figures that he came in contact with. His double monasticism never prevented his eager involvement in the problems of society and humanity. He took as one of his cultural and spiritual obligations to pave the way for a real dialogue between religions. He did not wish to confine himself to the religious Weltanschauung, with its two components of theology and mysticism, but opened himself up to the rationalists Weltanschauung, with its two components of science and philosophy all alike. His attachment to Thomist thought and passion for it express the Egyptian spirit engulfing both Christianity and Islam. One does not expect of father G. Anawati to be an Averroist, for he publicly declared his preference of Avicennism and toAverroism. Such matter comes as no surprise due to his affiliation to the Dominican order, which made him a follower of St. Thomas Aquinas, who leant to Avicennia and mounted bitter critique against A verroes. The marking feature of Anawati's 'Works of Averroes' is that it presents an almost complete catalogue of the writings of Averroes, whether manuscripts and published works in the original Arabic language or Latin translations directly from Arabic (P. 263) or from Hebrew (269-75), starting from the 13th century to the age of Enlightenment (277-93). He goes furthermore to explain how the reading of Averroes's work in the medieval West led to the rise of Latin Averroism. \"The great work father Anawati presented, which was absolutely the most significant achievement in recent years, is not in our opinion more than reclaiming and collecting the content of former catalogues. He presented absolutely nothing new with regards to the writings of Averroes or his suspected manuscripts or their temporal order, he was not even concerned with the problems presented by the Averrosist texts nor the confusion, misunderstandings, and vagueness they contained\". Nonetheless, his work was a starting point and invitation for future works to fill in his gaps, among these works there is 'The Averrosist Text' of Al-Alawi and 'Averroes the Grand Son: A Documentary Biography' published in Casablanca in 1999 by Muhammad Ben Sharifa.

• Publisher: كرسي اليونسكو للفلسفة فرع جامعة الزقازيق
• Subject: الحضارة الإسلامية / الفكر الصوفي / الفلسفة الدينية / المجتمع المصري / قنواتي، جورج شحاتة، ت. 1994 م