Jean-Baptiste Brenet is a French philosopher, professor at the Sorbonne, an expert on the works of Averroes, Arab Aristotelianism of the 9th–12th centuries and its interaction with European scholasticism. In this book - his first work translated into Russian - he proposes, in a way, to start thinking from scratch, that is, to look at thinking itself from the perspective of a beginner-pioneer. Fifteen chapters serve as the first reference points on the map of the world of thought, which the reader will have to rediscover in the light of the heritage of Arab-Latin culture - the amazing phenomenon of the reception of ancient philosophy in the Arab world, from where the works of Aristotle, translated from Greek into Arabic, commented on and again translated from Arabic to Latin, were returning to Western civilization.