The idea of a single, universal intellect associated with all human knowledge had been proposed by philosophers before Averroes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) proposes a "maker intellect" which enables thinking by making things intelligible, much like light allows seeing by making things visible. Plotinus (d. 270), whose works were well known in the Islamic world, proposed that human beings gained knowledge through their relation to a divine intellect. Muslim philosophers Al-Farabi (d. 951) and Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina, d. 1037) further develop this theory and call it the "agent intellect", which gives forms to matter and facilitates human knowledge. Avempace (also known as Ibn Bajja, d. 1138) proposed a theory of the intellect that was to influence Averroes's theory, but, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, his preserved works are so obscure and incomplete that scholars of philosophy do not know how well-developed his theory was.
