Also 8–9 Averrh-. [f. Averroes or Averrhoes (see below) + -IST.] One of a sect of peripatetic philosophers who appeared in Italy some time before the restoration of learning, and adopted the leading tenets of Ibn Roshd or Averrhoes, an Arabian philosopher born at Cordova, viz. that the soul is mortal, or (as others stated it) that the only immortal soul is a universal one, from which particular souls arise, and into which they return at death. Hence Averroism, Averroistic a.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Averrhoists … yet protested to submit to the christian theology … But the corpuscular philosophy now introduced into Italy, seems almost to have extinguished Averrhoism.
1837. Hallam, Hist. Lit. (1847), II. 6. The Averroistic notion of an universal human intelligence.
1877. E. Thomas, Lange’s Materialism, I. 179. Averroism prepared the way for the new Materialism.
