“Power and Limits of the Human Mind: On the Arabic Reception of the Analogy of Bats and Daylight in Aristotle's Metaphysics (II [α], 993 b 9-11)”, Studia Graeco-Arabica, 14, 2024. Studies offered to Concetta Luna by her friends, colleagues, and pupils, ed. E. Coda, C. D’Ancona, S. Donati, pp. 515-545

This paper examines how some of the leading exponents of the so-called formative or classical age of Arabic philosophy responded to the puzzling analogy found in the first chapter of book Alpha Elatton of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (993 b 9-11), in which the intellectual capacity of the human soul in relation to the most evident things of all is compared to the visual capacity of the eyes of bats in relation to daylight. Against the back- ground of the two extant Arabic translations of Aristotle’s passage, the paper analyses the interpretations of al-Kindī, Avicenna, and Averroes in three different types of works they devoted to the Metaphysics (original metaphysical treatise in the case of al-Kindī; summa of philosophy in the case of Avicenna; literal commentary on the work in the case of Averroes). These interpretations explicitly address the problem posed by the analogy and answer the question of its compatibility with Aristotle’s more general conception of the nature and aims of metaphysics, and with his more optimistic view of the power of the human mind elsewhere. The three authors in question creatively modify the analogy through considerations that are, respectively, methodological, eschatological, and teleological: al-Kindī rephrases it in the context of a sharp distinction between intellectual and sensory knowledge; Avicenna locates its ultimate cause in the body-soul relationship during earthly life; Averroes retains its content but subverts its purport on the basis of the idea that the innate human desire for knowledge cannot remain unfulfilled.