Description: "Dominicus Gundissalinus was both a philosopher and a translator; he was active in the unique context of Toledo in the second half of the twelfth century, a cultural melting pot of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. While he was philosophically trained in the Latin tradition, he found answers to the philosophical problems originating from that Latin training in the Arabic tradition of authors and texts which he himself translated. Outside the boundaries of specialised knowledge and research, this intriguing thinker is unknown; this study contributes to the re-discovery of Gundissalinus, with a philosophical and historical analysis of his metaphysical reflection in order to display its profound originality and pioneering contribution to the course of medieval philosophy."--
Review Quotes: In this much-needed and insightful study, Nicola Polloni makes intelligible the complex life-work of the translator and philosopher Dominicus Gundissalinus, the first major thinker of the Latin West both to translate and to incorporate into his own writings the diverse Arabic traditions exemplified by the works of Ibn Gabirol, Avicenna, and al-Farabi. The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics provides scholars with not only an invaluable historical account of Gundissalinus's translations but also an acute philosophical analysis of the Spanish thinker's own revisionary interpretation of his sources that integrates his newly acquired ideas and doctrines with his Christian inheritance. -- Richard C. Taylor, Marquette University & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven