The Transmutations of a Young Averroist: Agostino Nifo’s Commentary on the Destructio Destructionum of Averroes and the Nature of Celestial Influences

Abstract

This chapter examines Agostino Nifo’s analysis of the nature of celestial influence on the sublunary world in his commentary on Averroes’s Destructio destructionum (Tahāfut al-Tahāfut). First it explores how Nifo derives from sources contained in Averroes’s work and through the mediation of Albertus Magnus and other Latin philosophers, the idea that the heavenly bodies may cause ‘spiritual’ or ‘intentional’ as well as physical or corporeal change in the sublunary world. In his commentary (1497) on the fourteenth dispute of the Destructio, Nifo brings this dualist model of celestial influence together with material drawn from Neoplatonic, Hermetic and astrological sources in order to explain the principles of prophecy, alchemy, demonology and magnetism. Where Averroes had associated celestial influence with a form of unintentional causality, Nifo’s account suggests that celestial bodies follow patterns of intentional activity. In this way, celestial bodies are seen as a cause of change in the sublunary world, in general, and on man, in particular. The closing section contrasts Nifo’s method of synthesising conflicting philosophical positions and his defense of astrology with the work of his contemporary and sometime associate Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.