{"id":35524,"date":"2026-02-11T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/averroes-and-the-universal-intellect-an-ethics-of-truth-and-an-aesthetics-of-thought-in-al-andalus\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:18","slug":"averroes-and-the-universal-intellect-an-ethics-of-truth-and-an-aesthetics-of-thought-in-al-andalus","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/averroes-and-the-universal-intellect-an-ethics-of-truth-and-an-aesthetics-of-thought-in-al-andalus\/","title":{"rendered":"Averroes and the Universal Intellect: an ethics of truth and an aesthetics of thought in al-Andalus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Mounia Ait Kabboura<\/strong> (Royal Military College Saint-Jean, Canada \/ University of Sherbrooke) spoke as part of Strand 1, Ethics and aesthetics in the Islamic heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

This paper explores the deep links between ethics and aesthetics in the thought of Averroes, drawing on the concept of the Universal Intellect as it unfolds in his Aristotelian commentaries and in the cultural and philosophical setting of al-Andalus. It offers a rereading of the Andalusian philosopher as an emblematic figure of an ethical rationalism founded on the recognition of cognitive pluralism and the pursuit of intellectual harmony. Averroes affirms the unity of truth while valuing the diversity of the rational paths that lead to it, according to the intellectual disposition of each person. This pluralism grounds a genuine ethics of knowledge, one of discernment, measure and intellectual responsibility, in which reason is conceived as a shared heritage of humanity.<\/p>\n

The paper also brings to light an implicit aesthetics of thought in Averroes: through order, rigour and demonstrative clarity, truth takes on a form that elevates the mind. This aesthetics of reasoning, or beauty of the logos, links an ethics of discourse to a formal coherence that reflects a wider ontological order. The Universal Intellect thus designates a living space of shared memory and co-construction of knowledge, and offers a normative horizon for our time: a call to move beyond closed belongings and to think a conviviality of knowledge rooted in mutual recognition.<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/strong>, under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all four papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage: history, language and philosophy<\/h4>\n

Held on Wednesday 11 February 2026, 12:15\u20132:00 pm, in Hall 1 of the Bishop’s Palace of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, this panel was chaired by Wasim Salman. It brought together four speakers: Mounia Ait Kabboura (Royal Military College of Saint-Jean, Canada \/ Universit\u00e9 de Sherbrooke, CERC), a historian of philosophy and of contemporary religious studies; Aziz Hilal (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo), doctor in Arabic philosophy and specialist of Andalusian thought (Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b); Constance Arminjon (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”), historian of contemporary Islamic doctrines and of hermeneutic renewals, joining by videoconference; and Essaid Labib (Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco), a scholar working at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics and gender studies. The panel explored the conceptual foundations of the articulation between ethics and aesthetics in classical Islamic thought, through major figures \u2014 Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, R\u016bm\u012b \u2014 and their contemporary receptions. Its coherence rested upon a shared refusal to separate the beautiful, the good and the true, and upon a conception of Islamic heritage as a living space of thought, open to dialogue and reinterpretation.<\/p>\n

Mounia Ait Kabboura and Aziz Hilal converge on an integrated conception of the true, the good and the beautiful. In Averroes, the universal Intellect grounds a cognitive pluralism in which the rigour of demonstration constitutes an aesthetics of logos<\/em> inseparable from an ethics of intellectual responsibility. In al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, the doctrine of emanation (fay\u1e0d<\/em>) makes beauty not a supplement to the real, but the sensible manifestation of universal harmony: order, proportion and intelligibility are at once ontological criteria and aesthetic criteria. Constance Arminjon, for her part, showed that the spiritual poetry of R\u016bm\u012b actively irrigates the reflection of three contemporary Iranian philosophers \u2014 Soroush, Shabestari and Malekian \u2014 who take hold of it in order to renew moral theology and Shi’i dogmatics. Classical poetry thus becomes a hermeneutic instrument, a mediation between a medieval Sunni heritage and the demands of a contemporary religious thought. Essaid Labib, finally, analysed a passage from Averroes’s commentary on Plato’s Republic<\/em> to show that art \u2014 and music in particular \u2014 becomes there an argument in favour of social and political equality between women and men. Against Renan’s reading, he brought out the beginnings of an inclusive Islamic ethico-aesthetics, mobilising the frameworks of Foucault and of gender studies for a critical rereading of the classical text.<\/p>\n

The exchanges brought three main tensions to light. The first bears on the risk of anachronism: how are we to draw on classical thinkers to shed light on contemporary stakes without reducing their historical complexity? Raised in connection with both Averroes and al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, this question remained open. The second concerns the internal coherence of al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b’s work: since the doctrine of emanation is absent from several of his treatises, the room questioned the possibility of a truly unified Farabian aesthetics. Finally, Arminjon’s paper gave rise to questions on the representativity of the Shi’i figures studied within today’s Iranian intellectual landscape, and on the institutional status of poetry within theology.<\/p>\n

The main contribution of this panel lies in the way it brings to light an integrated conception of knowledge, of the beautiful and of the good, across several traditions and periods of Islamic thought. By articulating medieval philosophy, mystical poetry and contemporary rereading, it shows the plurality of entries into Islamic heritage and its capacity to feed present-day reflections on pluralism, gender and intercultural dialogue. Its limits lie mainly in the absence of any questioning of the concrete \u2014 artistic and social \u2014 mediations through which these categories may have been embodied in effective practices. The density of Arminjon’s dossier (three authors, several centuries) would have deserved a longer space of discussion. Among the tracks left open: a systematic comparison of the theories of beauty in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b and Averroes, and the study of non-Iranian receptions of mystical poetry in contemporary theological debates.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":83},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35524","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nAverroes and the Universal Intellect: an ethics of truth and an aesthetics of thought in al-Andalus - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/averroes-and-the-universal-intellect-an-ethics-of-truth-and-an-aesthetics-of-thought-in-al-andalus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Averroes and the Universal Intellect: an ethics of truth and an aesthetics of thought in al-Andalus - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. 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