Averroes' Middle Commentary on Metaphysics Δ as the Plain Meaning of Metaphysics

In this paper, I present the results of a philological comparison of Usṭāth's 9th century Arabic translation of the Metaphysics, which is still extant in Arabic, with Averroes' Middle Commentary on Metaphysics Δ, which survived only in Hebrew. The comparison shows that the main purpose of the Middle Commentary was to elucidate and correct the text of Usṭāth's translation, creating a text that Averroes felt was the way Aristotle intended to have written the Metaphysics. The Middle Commentary was necessary, I argue, because, contrary to the generally accepted opinion established by Richard Walzer, the Arabic translation of the Metaphysics made by Usṭāth in the 9th century CE was not very good and, in many cases, formed a text that was hardly recognizable as Aristotle's Metaphysics. By examining the Middle Commentary on the Metaphysics we can thus get a good sense of what Averroes saw as the plain meaning of Aristotle's Metaphysics. In contrast, the Short and Long Commentaries present Averroes original metaphysical interpretations. The Middle Commentary is useful for discovering where in the other commentaries on the Metaphysics Averroes' original thought differs from what he considered to be the plain meaning of Aristotle's Metaphysics.