Thèmes, argumentations et style de l’œuvre d’Ibn Bâjja

Abstract

This article focuses on the Risalat al-Wada ‘(Farewell Letter) by Avempac-e (ca1085-1139), one of the books in which the author develops his theory of intelligence transmitted in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. The heterogeneous nature of the textual tradition is an example of the use of texts and philosophical doctrines crisscrossing linguistic cultural and religious backgrounds in the Mediterranean area in medieval times. Direct textual tradition, in Arabic, is limited and incomplete, and the indirect tradition in Hebrew acts as an essential witness in the study of the structure and the solution of many textual quandaries. From a philological approach, taking into account textual epistolary tradition addressing the historical, cultural and linguistic conjunction that characterizes it, this article examines a specific aspect of the work of Avempace: its proverbially cryptic and difficult nature. This paper analyzes the structure and  stylistic aspects of the Treatise, and provides an analytic framework of the Farewell Letter and its contents taking into account its distinctive obscurity arising from the dynamics of transmission within the text itself, that is, of the author and the way he writes his texts.