The Cure of Souls: On Knowledge

The Cure of Souls (Ṭibb al-nufūs), written in Judeo-Arabic, is a wide-ranging ethical and psychological treatise on the soul, extant in manuscript but still unpublished, which treats not only the nature and activities of the soul, but also, using a common medical metaphor for ethics, how to improve (or “cure”) it. This excerpt focuses on the first requirement of a good teacher, namely, a perfect mastery of his subject. In explicating what that perfect mastery entails, Ibn ‘Aqnīn turns to interpret key verses from Deuteronomy, taken from the paragraphs following the recitation of the Shema‘, as referring to epistemology.