A hidden source? Considerations on Averroes’ recourse to Avicenna’s Madḫal of the Šifāʾ in the Middle Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge

The paper is a review of Roland Hissette’s critical edition of the Latin translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge published in 2016 within the framework of the ‘Averroes Latinus’ project. The analysis of Hissette’s edition offered the occasion of a further inquiry into a number of passages of Averroes’ Commentary, compared to their Hebrew translation edited by H. A. Davidson in 1969. As a result of this inquiry, the paper proposes the hypothesis that some relevant points of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge might resort to Avicenna’s major reworking on the Isagoge, the Kitāb al-Madḫal of the Šifāʾ, as a source