Avempace
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Avempace
(or Ibn Bajja) (1085/90-1139) Disciple of Al-Farabi, born in Saragosa. He is remembered mainly for his political philosophy. Unlike Al-Farabi, he thought the philosopher could attain the highest point of human wisdom without living in a virtuous city, i.e. while solitary. All existing human society is imperfect, which is why cities need doctors, judges, and so forth, but they also need ‘weeds’ or idiosyncratic thinkers, among which might be those who followed the solitary life of perfection.
Avempace (ā'vəmpās, ä'vĕmpä'thā), Arabic Ibn Bajja, d. 1138, Spanish-Arab philosopher. Little is known of his life, but he was born in Zaragoza and died in Fès, Morocco. Developing the tradition of Islamic Aristotelian-Neoplatonism begun in the east by al-Farabi, Avemplace was the first important Spanish representative of this philosophy. Among his chief opinions was a belief in the possibility in the union of the human soul with the Divine, which later commentators found to be heterodox.
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