Al-Farabi
1) His Biography:
Within the Islamic world, Abu Nasr Al-Farabi is largely considered as the creator of philosophy. Despite the fact that he had several notable forerunners, such as Al-Kindi and al- Razi, he was the first philosopher of his day to command unconditional respect from later generations. Many of Alfarabi’s ideas were considered by Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides, who all left written testaments of their appreciation for him. He was known as the “second teacher,” or the one who came after Aristotle. There is very little trustworthy information on Alfarabi’s life.
All of the surviving sources are from at least three centuries after his death. He was born in 870 in what is now Kazakhstan and died in 950. He spent the majority of his active career in Baghdad, where he primarily taught, wrote, and pursued his studies. Because of his interest in Greek language and thought, there has been speculation that he studied in Byzantium, but this has never been confirmed. He may have died in Damascus after fleeing Baghdad owing to political upheaval near the end of his life.
We have only identified around half of the objects indicated in mediaeval catalogues when it comes to Alfarabi’s writings. Nonetheless, the literature that has survived allows us to recognise his prominence as a unique philosopher whose achievements span all domains of thought. He published classic works on logic, physics, metaphysics, music, and politics, as well as significant Aristotelian and Platonian commentary. Much of today’s argument about Alfarabi revolves around which of these things he valued the most, yet they are all vital.
Due to the accurate translations of Muhsin Mahdi and Charles Butterworth, his political writings are the most generally available in English, but certain logical and scientific publications have also been properly translated. Furthermore, even his purportedly political texts contain passages that illuminate on his metaphysics and less frequently on his logic.
When a learner encounters Alfarabi for the first time, it can be difficult to start. Reading his major works provides a fair introduction to his recurring themes, which are repeated frequently but never from the same perspective. To really comprehend him, though, each work must be read numerous times. Let us take a quick look at the majority of the significant works that are available in English. Both The Political Regime and Virtuous City begin with cosmic tales, but end with political talks that clearly separate virtuous regimes and viewpoints from their ignorant equivalents.
Alfarabi later recognises Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as the authors of the Selected Aphorisms. Much material from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is adopted and adapted. The Enumeration of the Sciences, where only the final chapter is available in English, appears at first to be a dry enumeration of mediaeval Islam’s acknowledged sciences. This treatise, however, is not as basic as it appears. Metaphysics is designed to look more factual than natural science, and logic is emphasised at the expense of more traditional language disciplines.
The fifth chapter of the Enumeration of the Sciences has a lot of overlap with the Book of Religion. Despite the fact that the former finishes with a lengthy discussion on theologians’ excesses, the Book of Religion makes no mention of theology. Instead, it presents a purposefully vague narrative of religion’s origins, while demonstrating religion’s subordination to philosophy and jurisprudence’s subordination to political science.
The Book of Letters deals with logical, linguistic, and translation issues. The 3-part composition has only had the second piece translated. It posits a clear hierarchy of the arts, with philosophy at the top, multitude arts at the bottom, and religious arts like jurisprudence and theology in the middle.
Alfarabi’s The Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Divine Sages similarly tries to bring Aristotle and Plato’s ideas together. Many scholars have been hesitant to attribute this work to him since it appears so odd, even though it has not been convincingly ascribed to another author.
2) Main Works:
The Book of Letters:
“The Book of Letters” (also known as “The Enumeration of the Sciences”): This work is a compendium of Farabi’s ideas on a wide range of subjects, including logic, metaphysics, mathematics, politics, and ethics.
The Book of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City:
“The Book of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City”: This work is a treatise on political philosophy, in which Farabi outlines his vision of the ideal state. He argued that the ideal state is one in which all members of society are able to pursue their own intellectual and moral development, and in which there is a balance between individual freedom and social harmony.
The Attainment of Happiness:
“The Attainment of Happiness”: This work is a treatise on ethics, in which Farabi discusses the nature of happiness and how it can be achieved. He argued that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life, and that it is achieved through the cultivation of virtue and the pursuit of knowledge.
The Great Book of Music:
“The Great Book of Music”: This work is a treatise on music theory, in which Farabi discusses the role of music in society and its relationship to mathematics and science.
The Political Regime:
“The Political Regime”: This work is a treatise on political theory, in which Farabi discusses the nature of power and the various forms of government. He argued that the best form of government is one that is ruled by a class of philosopher-kings, who are able to use their wisdom and understanding to guide the state in the right direction.
The Classification of the Sciences:
“The Classification of the Sciences”: This work is a treatise on the structure and organization of knowledge, in which Farabi divides the sciences into three main categories: theoretical sciences, practical sciences, and productive sciences.
The Aims of the Philosophers:
“The Aims of the Philosophers”: This work is a summary of the views of the various philosophers who have contributed to the field of philosophy, including Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists. Farabi provides an overview of the key ideas and arguments of each philosopher, and discusses the ways in which their ideas have influenced his own philosophy.
3) Main Themes:
Metaphysics and cosmology:
Al-Farabi’s cosmology is built on three pillars: Aristotelian causal metaphysics, Plotinian emanational cosmology, and Ptolemaic astronomy. The universe is depicted in his model as a series of concentric circles, beginning with the outermost sphere or “first heaven,” the sphere of stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and lastly the Moon. The sub-lunar realm, which houses the material universe, is at the heart of these concentric circles.
Each of these rings represents the sphere of secondary intelligences, which serve as causal intermediates between the First Cause i.e. God and the material universe. These are also considered to have come from God, who’s really their formal and effective cause.
The First Cause, whose primary activity is self-contemplation, starts the emanation process. Its significance in the construction of the cosmos is based on this intellectual effort. By thinking of itself, the First Cause “overflows,” causing the immaterial entity of the second intelligence to “emanate” from it. The second intellect, like its predecessor, thinks about itself and so creates its heavenly sphere i.e. the sphere of fixed stars, but it must also think about the First Cause, which results in the “emanation” of the next intellect.
The cascade of emanation proceeds until it approaches the tenth intellect, below which the material world exists. Each degree of existence becomes more complex since each intellect must consider itself and a growing amount of predecessors. This process is driven by necessity rather than willpower. To put it another way, God does not have a choice whether to create the universe, but He does so because of His own existence. This viewpoint also implies that perhaps the universe is eternal, which al-Ghazzali attacked in his critique of the philosophers.
Al-Farabi uses a lot of negative theology in his exposition of the First Cause (or God). It cannot be known through intellectual means, such as philosophical division, he claims, since the terms employed to characterise a thing are the substance of that. As a result, defining the First Cause would need each term to be a part of its essence and so act as a cause for its existence, which is impossible because the First Cause is uncaused i.e. it exists without being caused.
He also claims that it cannot be classified by genus or differentia because its substance and existence are unlike any other, and hence it has no group which it belongs to. If this were the case, this wouldn’t be the First Cause because something would exist before it, which is likewise implausible. This implies that the more intellectually straightforward something is, the better it is. According to Adamson, the entire hierarchy of al-Farabi’s cosmology can be seen as according to the classification into genus and species based on this finding. The main traits of each successive level in this structure are multiplicity and deficiency, and it is this always increasing complexity that characterises the material universe.
Epistemology and eschatology:
Humans are distinctive in al Farabi’s universe because they exist at the crossroads of two worlds: the “higher,” inconsequential world of celestial geniuses and universal intelligibles, and the “lower”, material world of creation and deterioration; they have a physical body, so they belong to the “lower,” but they also have an associated mental capacity, so they belong to the “higher.” In al-Farabi’s cosmology, each level of existence is defined by its progress toward excellence, which is to be like the First Cause, i.e. a perfect intellect. As a result, human perfection is associated with ongoing intellectual and contemplative activity.
Al-Farabi categorises intelligence into four types: potential, actual, acquired, and agent. In his emanational cosmology, the first three are distinct states of the human intellect, while the fourth is the Tenth Intellect (the moon). The potential intellect is the capacity to think that all humans possess, while the real intellect is an intellect that is actively thinking. Al-Farabi defines thinking as the abstraction of universal intelligibles from sensory forms of objects that have been perceived and held in the individual’s conception.
The Agent Intellect must act on the retained sensory forms in order to move from potentiality to actuality; similarly to how the Sun illuminates the physical world so that we may see, the Agent Intellect illuminates the world of intelligibles so that we can think. This illumination transforms them into fundamental intelligibles, which are rational concepts like “the whole is greater than the component,” by removing any chance and physicality.
The human intellect travels from potentiality to actuality by its act of intelligence, and as it gradually comprehends these intelligibles, it becomes identified therewith, as in accordance with Aristotle’s saying, by knowing something, the intellect becomes like it. Because the Agent Intellect is aware of all intelligibles, when a human intellect is aware of them all, it will become linked with the Agent Intellect’s perfection and is referred to as the acquired Intellect.
The afterlife, according to al-Farabi, is not the human experience envisioned in religious traditions such as in Islam and Christianity. After the death of the body, any individual aspects of the soul are destroyed; only the rational ability survives, but only if it has achieved perfection, which merges with all other rational souls inside the agent intellect and enters a realm of pure knowledge.
Henry Corbin relates this eschatology to the Ismaili Neo-Platonists, who believe that this process began the universe’s next big cycle. However, Deborah Black points out that we have reason to doubt if this was al-Farabi’s full and developed perspective, given later thinkers such as Ibn Tufayl, Averroes, and Ibn Bajjah claim that he refuted this view in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, which has been lost to modern specialists.
Psychology, the soul and prophetic knowledge:
Al-Farabi uses a fundamental Aristotelian outline to discuss the human soul, which is influenced by later Greek thinkers’ remarks. He claims it is made up of four faculties: appetitive (willingness for or abhorrence to a sense object), sensitive (corporeal substance perception by the senses), imaginative (the faculty that preserves images of rational objects after they have been viewed, then separates and combines them for a variety of purposes), and rational (the faculty of intellection). It is the last of the four characteristics that distinguishes humans from plants and animals. And it is the only part of the soul that lives on when the body dies. Internal senses, such as common sense, are noticeably absent from this theory, which later philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes would examine.
Al-Farabi’s portrayal of the soul’s imaginative faculty, which is crucial to his interpretation of prophethood and prophetic knowledge, deserves special emphasis. He grants the imagination the power to imitate in addition to the ability to store and alter sensible representations of objects. This refers to an object’s ability to be represented by an image different than its own. To put it another way, to copy “x” is to picture it with sensible attributes that do not represent its own look.
This expands the imagination’s representational ability beyond tangible forms to include dispositions, feelings, wants, and even intangible intelligibles or abstract immutable truths, as when one equates “evil” with “darkness.” In addition to his own intellectual abilities, the prophet possesses a powerful imaginative faculty that permits him to receive an abundance of intelligibles from the agent intellect. These intelligibles are then linked to symbols and visuals, allowing him to explain abstract truths in a way that regular folk can comprehend. Thus, what distinguishes prophetic wisdom is not its substance, which philosophers can access through explanation and intellection, but instead the shape that it is given by the prophet’s imagination.
Practical philosophy:
Al-Farabi’s concern with the practical implementation of philosophy was reflected in several of his works, and although most of his intellectual output was inspired by Aristotelian thought, his practical philosophy is plainly founded on Plato’s. Al-Farabi highlighted that philosophy has been both a theoretical and practical science, comparable to Plato’s Republic, and labelled philosophers who didn’t refer their learning to practical goals as “futile philosophers.”
He wrote that the ideal society is one that strives for “true happiness” which can be interpreted as philosophical enlightenment, and that as a result, the ideal philosopher must master all of the necessary rhetorical and poetical skills in order to communicate abstract truths to ordinary people, as well as having attained enlightenment himself. Al-Farabi linked the philosopher’s position in society to that of a physician in the body; the body’s health is affected by the “balancing of its humours,” much as the city’s moral habits are dictated by its people’s moral habits. He wrote that it was the philosopher’s responsibility to construct a “virtuous” society by healing people’s spirits, establishing justice, and directing them toward “real happiness.”
Of course, al-Farabi recognised that such a society was uncommon and necessitated a unique set of historical events, implying that only a few civilizations could ever accomplish that goal. He categorises those “vicious” cultures that fall short of the perfect “virtuous” society into three groups: ignorant, evil, and errant. Ignorant cultures have failed to grasp the meaning of human existence for whatever cause, and have replaced the pursuit of happiness with another inferior objective, whether riches, sensual satisfaction, or power. In the virtuous society, Al-Farabi discusses “weeds”: individuals who want to sabotage its progress toward the genuine human purpose. Al-Farabi’s work al-Madina al-fadila is the most well-known Arabic source for his political philosophy.
Academics disagree about whether al-Farabi intended to define a political platform in his writings. Henry Corbin, believes al-Farabi’s teachings should be interpreted as “prophetic philosophy” rather than being interpreted politically. On the other hand, according to Charles Butterworth, al-Farabi never mentions a prophet-legislator or revelations in his work, and the main debate is on the roles of “king” and “statesmen.” David Reisman, like Corbin, feels al-Farabi did not seek to teach a political ideology, but he does not go so overboard as to attribute it to Islamic Gnosticism.
He claims that al-Farabi was using various sorts of society as instances in an ethical discussion to demonstrate the impact that proper or incorrect thinking may have. Finally, Joshua Parens claims that al-Farabi was implying that a pan-Islamic society could not be created by using reason to demonstrate how many prerequisites (such as moral and deliberative virtue) would have to be met, leading the reader to infer that humans are unfit for such a society. Other authors, such as Mykhaylo Yakubovych, believe that for al-Farabi, religion (milla) and philosophy (falsafa) had the same praxeological worth i.e., the foundation for amal al-fadhil—”virtuous action”, but their epistemic level (ilm—”knowledge”) was different.
4) Platonic influence on Farabi:
The philosopher Al-Farabi (also known as Al-Farabius or Alpharabius) was a major figure in the Islamic Golden Age, and is considered one of the greatest Muslim philosophers of all time. He was heavily influenced by the work of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and his philosophy is often referred to as “Neoplatonism,” as it incorporates many elements of Plato’s thought.
One of the key ways that Plato influenced Farabi was through his concept of the “Forms.” In Plato’s philosophy, the Forms are eternal, unchanging, and perfect ideals that exist independently of the physical world. These Forms serve as the basis for all material things, and are the source of their intelligibility and goodness. Farabi adapted this idea, and argued that the ultimate cause of all things was a single, perfect being, which he called the “First Cause.” This being was the source of all other things, and was responsible for the order and intelligibility of the universe.
Another key Platonic influence on Farabi was his concept of the “World of the Sensible,” which refers to the physical world that we perceive through our senses. In Plato’s philosophy, the World of the Sensible is inferior to the World of the Forms, as it is imperfect and subject to change. Farabi similarly argued that the physical world was inferior to the metaphysical realm, and that our understanding of it was limited by our senses.
Overall, Plato had a significant influence on Farabi’s philosophy, and his ideas can be seen throughout Farabi’s work. However, Farabi also drew from other philosophical traditions, such as Aristotelianism, and developed his own unique ideas and contributions to the field of philosophy.
5) His Legacy:
He studied Greek philosophy, yet he wrote for Muslims. He made no attempt to explain Greek rituals such as the Zeus cult or lot elections to his readers, who would have only known Allah’s worship and the rule of the Caliph and his predecessors. Alfarabi’s presentation of Greek ideas focuses on themes that are important to his audience. Alfarabi returns to key Islamic subjects including legislation, prophecy, governmental inheritance, and philosophy on several occasions. He keeps the old Greek preoccupation with the virtuous city, but expands the scale of the virtuous society to a nation or several nations, reflecting Islam’s worldwide ambitions and imperial situations at the time.
The physics and metaphysics of Alfarabi are also appealing to Muslims. He favours depicting a perfectly organised, graded, and harmonious universe ruled by a single God who epitomises all kinds of perfection. Even Alfarabi’s logical writings are not only rehashes of Aristotle’s. Alfarabi shows how logic must be totally reformed to match the premises common to his audience in a key chapter in the Book of Demonstration.
Alfarabi did not intentionally corrupt Greek ideas, but he did convey it in a way that was more appropriate for his day. Whether he changed its content in the process is an open topic that can only be answered via a thorough examination of his works. Alfarabi is an unique philosopher who first explored the questions generated by the junction of Islam and classical philosophy. He is neither a Muslim, a Platonist, or an Aristotelian. Alfarabi presents an illuminating example of the kind of philosophic and religious adaptation that could foster both Islamic religion and Greek philosophy at an age when Islam must again wrestle with foreign thinking and Greek philosophy is often judged archaic.
6) Some Quotes:
“If boy would not fall in love, girl is not worthy of love.”
― Al-Farabi
“To accept something on mere presumption and, likewise, to fail to investigate it may cover over, blind, and lead astray.”
― Alfarabi, The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts
“Alfarabi first studied Islamic jurisprudence and music in Bukhara, then moved to Marv, where he began to study logic with a Nestorian Christian monk, Yūḥannā Ibn Haylān.”
― Alfarabi, The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts
“Widely referred to as “the second teacher,” that is, second after Aristotle, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad Ibn Muḥammad Ibn Ṭarkhān Ibn Awzalagh al-Fārābī (Alfarabi) is generally heralded as having founded political philosophy within the Islamic cultural tradition.”
― Alfarabi, The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts
