Nomina sunt consequentia rerum

Abstract

This essay considers Dante’s Averoìs through the perspective of literary characterization, drawing on the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Salman Rushdie in order to expand on the usual approach to Dante and Averroës informed by the history of philosophy. By reading across Inferno IV, Purgatorio XXV, and Paradiso X and focusing on name, namelessness, and substitution (Siger for Averroës), we might think differently about Dante’s representation of the Cordoban philosopher. Attention is also given to early commentaries of the Commedia, as well as Dante’s allusions to Averroës in the Convivio and Monarchia, in order to consider the dynamics of Dante’s engagement across his own work and the cultural context provided by some of his first readers. By so considering the figure of the Cordoban philosopher in Dante’s fourteenth century and in the more global perspective adopted by the works of Borges and Rushdie, we might better appreciate how Dante’s Averoìs urges us to appreciate the value of bringing worlds together through a unified pursuit of knowledge and the provocative nature of his presence.