Alfarabi

Le but de cet écrit n'est pas de réaliser un lien historique entre la pensée averroïste et la pensée spinoziste, autrement dit son but n'est pas de montrer les développements de la pensée averroïste pour arriver à la pensée du philosophe néerlandais. Nous souhaitons plutôt montrer comment ces deux pensées se rencontrent au niveau de leurs possibilités critiques et politiques. La thèse qui traverse cet écrit est la suivante : la rencontre entre ces deux philosophes se fait sur le terrain commun de la félicité et de sa concordance avec la philosophie et la religion.

Scholarship on al-Farabi interprets his theoretical analysis of politics apart from its historical context, which results in a failure to understand how his political philosophy is useful for understanding Islamic politics. This paper brings al-Farabi's theory of the regimes into dialogue with Islamic political history. Al-Farabi modifies the political thought of Plato and Aristotle to illuminate the rise and decline of the caliphate according to Islamic principles. For al-Farabi, the mechanism of the decline of the caliphate rests in excessive material desire satisfaction and the misuse of wealth for the aggrandizement of political elites.

What is the relationship between friendship and human flourishing? This is a central topic in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one to which Maimonides also returned throughout his career. Despite the relative neglect of this topic in recent scholarship, I argue that friendship (philia) was an important link between moral and intellectual perfection for Maimonides. He identified Aristotle’s virtue friendship with the love between students and teachers and also interpreted many of the divine commandments as efforts to promote both family and virtue friendship among the Jewish people. Friendship was aligned thematically in Maimonides’ writings with topics like kinship and sexuality, circumcision, and the ethics of speech, all of which point in different ways to the unresolved tension between rational and sensual aspects of our human condition. This article therefore contributes to the investigation of the relationship between Maimonides’ legal and philosophical writing on social themes. While Aristotle clearly influenced his reading of biblical and rabbinic texts for example, I will also argue that Maimonides’ religious and communal commitments helped to push his reading of Aristotle in a broadly inclusive direction— both with respect to the range of different goods that are appropriate to an ideal human life as well as the potential accessibility of those goods to different classes of persons. I offer this article as a corrective to the exaggerated focus on seclusion and solitary contemplation that has characterized academic scholarship on Maimonides.

Prof. Charles E. Butterworth is an emeritus professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. He is one of the most prominent scholars studying Arabic-Islamic logic and philosophy. To learn about Prof. Butterworth and his important experiences and studies we talked with him about his academic journey and classical philosophy. The interview was done on July 27, 2018 at Georgetown University Lauinger Library, Washington, D. C. We hope this interview is going to be useful and helpful for those who study on Arabic logic and philosophy.

Kitabda Şərqin və Qərbin bir çox böyük filosofları müqayisə
olunur; müxtəlif dövrlərdə və müxtəlif coğrafi məkanlarda yaranmış
fəlsəfi təlimlərdə eyniyyət və fərq məqamları üzə çıxarılır.
Məqsəd filosofların həyatı, yaradıcılığı və təlimləri haqqında
məlum bilikləri oxuсulara çatdırmaq olmadığından, əsər dərslik,
dərs vəsaiti və ya ensiklopedik bir topludan daha çox, dünya fəlsəfi
fikrinin ayrı-ayrı məqamlarının müəllif mövqeyindən şərhidir.
Fəlsəfə ilə peşəkar səviyyədə maraqlananlar üçün nəzərdə tutulmuşdur.

Since the arrival of revealed religions and their encounter with Greek philosophy, the issue of the relationship between reason and revelation has been one of the most important problems in the history of thought. One important aspect of this issue is that it determines and guides the relationship that philosophers have with religious writings, which rest upon faith in divine revelation. Knowing that they are products of a miraculous contact with God, how should one approach them? Can they be read, understood, and evaluated like any other writing? Is a philosophic approach to revealed texts possible? More importantly, are revealed texts compatible with the spirit of philosophy? Do revealed texts approve or disapprove of the pursuit of knowledge through natural human reason?

The book focuses on two important areas in the philosophy of Robert Grosseteste at the beginning of the thirteenth century: Philosophy of Intellect and Philosophy of Vision. These two areas of Grosseteste's philosophy have not been thoroughly explored, nor their importance established. Robert Grosseteste was the first chancellor of Oxford University and Bishop of Lincoln 1235-53. This project aims to contribute to the importance of Robert Grosseteste in the history of philosophy, and to establish groundwork for further development in these two areas of philosophy, to contribute to contemporary philosophy. Emphasis is placed in the project on the relation between Grosseteste's philosophies and previous philosophical influences (classical, Greek commentators on Aristotle, Arabic commentators on Aristotle, Neoplatonic), as well as their relation to subsequent philosophies in the middle ages, and the Renaissance to the twentieth century. The philosophies are also considered in relation to the architecture of Lincoln Cathedral.

On the basis of this general framework, here I aim to elucidate how the concepts of dīn, millah and sharīʿah differ from each other. In particular, I intend to show why al-Fārābī preferred the concept of millah instead of dīn or sharīʿah and why Averroes preferred sharīʿah instead of dīn or millah. Study of these diverse choices in vocabulary will reveal much about the character of their philosophical understandings of religion as well as their philosophy. The methodological procedures and key choices made by these thinkers in their understandings of religion and philosophy can be helpfully elucidated by considering how their chosen conceptual vocabularies and their accounts of the meanings of key concepts such as dīn, millah and sharī‘ah manifest quite distinct approaches to the issues.

There are two 12th-century Latin texts of the De ortu Scientiarum: one by Dominicus Gundissalinus and the other by Gerard of Cremona. The first chapter of this work is devoted to the material disciplines: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These are the scientiae domatrices and are an introduction to science. Using this chapter as a starting point, we will
study al-Farabi’s renewed interest in transmitting Aristotle’s work in the Middle Ages.

Aristotle, though not the first Greek virtue ethicist, was the first to establish virtue ethics as a distinct philosophical discipline. His exposition of the subject in his Nicomachean Ethics set the terms of subsequent debate in the European and Arabic traditions by proposing a set of plausible assumptions from which virtue ethics should proceed. His conception of human well-being and virtue as well as his brand of ethical naturalism were influential from antiquity through the Middle Ages and continue to be influential today. DOWNLOAD: https://people.ucsc.edu/~jbowin/virtue.pdf

Abstract
Al-Fārābī's lost commentary on Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea is without doubt one of the most sorely missed lost works of the Islamic falāsifa. In part, this is because the commentary was in some respects a scandal, and scholars accordingly believe it may hold the key to resolving present-day disagreements on how to interpret al-Fārābī's views as expressed in his independent treatises. Perhaps al-Fārābī's most shocking or scandalous statement is that preserved by the Hispano-Muslim philosophers Ibn Bājja, Ibn Ṭufayl, and Ibn Rushd. According to them al-Fārābī says in his commentary on Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea that happiness is to be achieved only in this life, not in the afterlife; that there is no happiness but political happiness; and that union with the active intellect – generally considered the highest goal of human existence by the philosophers – is impossible. This paper addresses the following questions: What exactly is the debate about? Why is the question of immortality or conjunction related to Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea? And why was it so controversial to say, in the context of the Ethica Nicomachea, that there is no happiness but political happiness? Although the bulk of al-Fārābī's commentary is still lost, I have discovered two quotations of it in Hebrew manuscripts. As I will argue in this paper, these newly-discovered quotations – which are included with an English translation in the appendix – can shed light on the mysteries concerning al-Fārābī's commentary.
Résumé
Le commentaire perdu d'al-Fārābī à l’Ethique à Nicomaque d'Aristote est sans conteste, parmi les ouvrages perdus de philosophes islamiques, l'un de ceux dont on regrette le plus l'absence. Cela s'explique notamment par le caractère à certains égards scandaleux de ce commentaire, dont les spécialistes attendent dès lors qu'il recèle la clé pour résoudre les désaccords actuels quant à l'interprétation à donner aux idées formulées par cet auteur dans ses traités personnels. La thèse peut-être la plus choquante ou scandaleuse d'al-Fārābī est celle qui est préservée par les philosophes hispano-islamiques Ibn Bājja, Ibn Ṭufayl et Ibn Rushd: selon eux, il affirme, dans son commentaire à l’Ethique à Nicomaque, que le bonheur ne saurait se réaliser qu'en cette vie et non dans l'au-delà, qu'il n'y a pas de bonheur autre que le bonheur politique, et que l'union à l'intellect agent – généralement tenue par les philosophes pour être la fin suprême de l'existence humaine – est impossible. Cet article traite les questions suivantes: quel est exactement l'enjeu de ce débat? Pourquoi les questions de l'immortalité et de la conjonction sont-elles liées à l’Ethique à Nicomaque? Et en quoi était-il si problématique d'affirmer, en référence à cette œuvre, qu'il n'y a pas de bonheur autre que le bonheur politique? Même si le corps du commentaire d'al-Fārābī est encore perdu, j'en ai découvert deux citations dans des manuscrits hébreux. Comme je le soutiens ici, ces citations récemment découvertes – données dans l'appendice avec leur traduction anglaise – font un peu de lumière sur les mystères du commentaire d'al-Fārābī.

Öz: Bu makalede, İslâm felsefesinin klasik çağının en fazla öne çıkan filozofları Fârâbî (ö. 339/950) ve İbn Sînâ'nın (ö. 428/1037) amelî felsefe anlayışlarının bir mukayesesini sunmak amaçlanmıştır. Mukayesede her iki filozofun da amelî ilim tasniflerinin şeklî farkları ortaya konmakta ve bu farklılıkların, amelî bilginin kaynağına dair temel bir düşünce ayrılı-ğına dayanıp dayanmadığı sorgulanmaktadır. Mukayesemiz neticesinde ilk olarak, Fârâbî'nin akılla temellendirilmiş, dinî ilimlerden farkı sarahatle ortaya konmuş müstakil bir amelî felsefe anlayışına sahip olduğu; İbn Sînâ'nın ise kısmen fıkıh tarafından kapsanan ve dinî belirleyiciliğe dayanması nedeniyle de müstakil olmayan bir amelî felsefe tasavvuru ortaya koyduğu sonucuna ulaşmaktayız. Ancak İbn Sînâ'nın amelî bilginin kaynağına dair muhtelif pasajlarında birbirinden farklı noktaların öne çıkarılmış olması, tüm bu görüşlerin tutarlı bir bütün haline getirilmesini gerektirmektedir. Bu gerekliliği yerine getirip söz konusu pasajları tek tek değerlendirmemiz neticesinde İbn Sînâ'nın, dinî belirleyiciliği kabul etmenin yanında amelî alandaki felsefî mirası da dikkate almaya imkân veren epistemolojik bir zemin inşa ettiğini ileri sürmekteyiz. Buna göre İbn Sînâ düşüncesinde müstakil bir amelî felsefe anlayışı olmasa da, müstakil bir amelî felsefe birikiminden istifade etme imkânı bulunmaktadır. Son olarak, amelî felsefe anlayışlarında ortaya konan farklılıklarının sebebi olması bakımından Fârâbî ve İbn Sînâ'nın hakikat, din ve felsefe ilişkisine dair düşünce ayrılığına işaret etmekteyiz. Anahtar kelimeler: Fârâbî, İbn Sînâ, ahlâk, amelî felsefe, amelî ilimler tasnifi. Abstract: The aim of this article is comparing the approaches to practical philosophy of the two most significant philosophers of the classical period of Islamic philosophy, Al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037). Initially, the two's classification of practical sciences will be examined and shown their formal differences. I also will question whether these differences point out a fundamental disagreement about the source of practical knowledge. One of the conclusions of my comparison is that Al-Fārābī has a rational and independent concept of practical philosophy which was manifestly separated than religious sciences but Ibn Sīnā, in reverse, has a standpoint which is religious-based, dependent and partially covered by Islamic jurisprudence. Since Ibn Sīnā, in the separate passages emphasizes the different points about the source of practical knowledge, it is required a holistic and consistent combination of these passages. Thus, by citing and discussing all these passages, I attempted to suggest that Ibn Sīnā did not only accept the prophetic legislation of practical sciences but also he provided an epistemological background which makes possible to take account of the ancient moral philosophers' legacy. Subsequently, even though there is not an independent practical philosophy in İbn Sînâ, his approach makes possible to benefit from the independent practical philosophical literature. Finally, I also pointed out that the main reason of these differences between Al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā's approaches to practical philosophy depends on their disagreement about the relation between religion and philosophy.

The pivotal role of medieval European poetry on the aesthetics of Ezra Pound is well known: he received graduate training in Provençal and was committed to lifelong study of the Troubadours, whose innovations in poetic form he saw as precursors to Dante’s great elder contemporary, Guido Cavalcanti. Pound placed sufficient stock in Guido’s shaping role in the European poetic tradition that he undertook to publish a deluxe edition of the Rime, complete with photographic plates of manuscripts on vellum, putting more than one press out of business in the process. It was not only poetry that drove this fixation for Pound, but a conviction that medieval poets kept alight a flame of Gnostic wisdom counter to the predominating currents of Thomistic inflections of Aristotle. He saw in Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel the preservation of light philosophy reaching back beyond Grosseteste and Eriugena to the Presocratics and the early Neoplatonists. A tenuous but pivotal part of this hidden heritage resided in the Arabic transmission of classical texts, as well as major commentaries, especially those of Avicenna and Averroes on Aristotle’s De Anima. Scholars such as Peter Liebregts and Peter Makin have done admirable work in identifying and annotating the various citations and suggestive hints of this tradition throughout Pound’s poetry and prose. This paper seeks to establish wider aesthetic and strategic contexts for Pound’s use of medieval Arabic light philosophy: what purpose did this heritage serve for the poet who urged his peers to Make It New? How does it inflect his poetics, and how does it intersect with his personal and professional circumstances at particular points in his career? This attempt to give a broader picture to Pound’s very particular medievalism aims to give perspective on Modernist poetics, shaped in significant part by his influence.

This paper explores generally accepted opinions and particularity in the thought of Alfarabi and Maimonides. In Maimonides scholarship, it has become popular in some quarters to ascribe conventionalism to Maimonides. Though Alfarabi and Maimonides are not natural law theorists, they are natural right theorists. What does this mean for their ethical teachings?

N.B., These are PAGE PROOFS.

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric Alfarabi harmonizes Plato and Aristotle in terms of philosophic education by ordering Aristotle’s eight logical works onto Plato’s famous image of the cave. He represents the way out of the cave with Aristotle’s four logical works of ascent (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics) and the return into the cave through Aristotle’s four logical works of the descent (Topics, Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics). Alfarabi's image of ascent and descent also alludes to Socrates’ conception of protreptic education in Book VII of the Republic. In essence, protreptic education consists in the Socratic art that freely turns the soul from the images and political interpretations of things to being itself. In this essay I argue that for alfarabi the four logical works of ascent guide the soul to free itself from its habituations so as to contemplate real beings, particularly the good of one’s own soul and the souls of one’s fellow citizens. Yet the ruler needs to use the arts of “descent,” as demonstrated by Thrasymachus, in order to rule the city well. The way of Socrates consists of the logical methods used to come to possess knowledge of being, while the way of Thrasymachus comprises the methods of persuasion to habituate citizens and protect the philosophic quest for the truth. Alfarabi I conclude, combines the way of Socrates and the way of Thrasymachus in order to show that both ways are useful and necessary for good governance.

This is a mini-thesis requirement for Political Science 192 Course Subject.  This paper in general looks into the relationship of Moro
Islamic Liberation Front and Al Farabi‟s “societies of people” using the cross-referencing analysis. The study provides a better understanding of the MILF‟s insurgency and the ways in which the government can deal with them in the future.

Paper presented at the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Conference, Fordham University, New York, 2014.

In Aristotle’s De anima 3.5, the relation between intellect and thought, and between thought and object, is not accessible to discursive or conscious thought; an understanding of the relation requires nous, intuitive or “unconscious” thought. The “active” intellect is accessible to discursive reason only sporadically. “Mind does not think intermittently” (De anima 430a10–25): mind is always thinking, consciously and unconsciously. Alexander of Aphrodisias saw the active intellect as transcendent in relation to the material intellect. The thought which is an object of thought is immaterial, or unconscious. In his De intellectu (108), there must be something at work in thought for which “what it is to be intellect does not lie in its being thought by us,” that is, unconscious. In the De anima of Themistius, mind as passive, in its material potentiality, is destructible and subject to time, but mind as active is free from its material conditions. Discursive thinking is equivalent to thinking in time; time is not present in the same way in unconscious thought or dreams. In the De intellectu of Alfarabi, when intellect “thinks that existent thing which is an intellect in actuality, it does not think an existing thing outside of itself but it only thinks itself,” in unconscious thought. Intellect as the object of its own thought is inaccessible to conscious reason. Intellect ascends from material to agent intellect and we ascend “from that which is best known to us to that which is unknown,” in the unconscious. The knowledge of things which are most accessible to intellect is the lowest form of knowledge; in order to develop, intellect must come to grasp the knowledge which is least accessible and most unconscious. In the Liber Naturalis of Avicenna, intellect is seen as a palimpsest of traces of forms and thoughts of varying clarity in relation to cognition, conscious thought. Unconscious thought is seen as the intelligible in cognition in the Aristotelian model, only accessible to conscious thought or actual intellect to varying degrees. The active intellect of Averroes can be seen as a form of unconscious thought. In his Long Commentary on the De anima, the activity of the active intellect makes images intelligible in unconscious thought, according to Franz Brentano.

This essay examines Alfarabi’s "Book of Religion" in order to understand his claim that “religion is an imitation of philosophy.” In particular, we shall see how poetry, broadly understood, is the essential means for communicating to the city the opinions and actions that constitute the common custom or law in which it must firmly believe. But in addition to supporting firm belief in the law, Alfarabian religion also contains the seed of its own demise within the individual soul by guiding its citizens towards truth. It points its own more astute citizens to the underlying philosophical problems in its poetic images. My approach, however, will not merely articulate Alfarabi’s understanding of religion. I shall also show how Alfarabi deploys his understanding within the "Book of Religion" itself. We shall thus see how even a book of Alfarabi’s that “pronounces simply orthodox views” on the surface of the text as “his own doctrine,” thus inculcating firm belief for the pious, is far from orthodox upon careful examination.

Al-Ġazālī’s Aims of the Philosophers is a philosophical treatise summarising major
concepts in the philosophy of al-Fārābī and Avicenna. Al-Ġazālī stated that it was
written as an introductory treatise to be followed by a tractate that would prove the
philosophers’ errors. Al-Ġazālī did indeed compose his Incoherence of the Philosophers,
which scrutinises Muslim Neoplatonism. However, Aims of the Philosophers did not
serve as an attack on philosophy. Instead, it was read as a comprehensible summary
of Neoplatonic philosophy. Moses Narboni wrote a commentary on the Hebrew ver-
sion of the Aims of the Philosophers. He believed that the process of writing one book
explaining the philosophers’ ideas and another book contradicting them was a ruse
that al-Ġazālī had conceived that would enable him to engage in philosophy despite its
prohibition. The current study discusses Narboni’s analysis of Aims of the Philosophers and explains the manner in which Narboni drew on al-Ġazālī’s ideas in order to inter-
pret biblical themes.

In a 2013 issue of Utopian Studies, Alireza Omid Bakhsh argues that Alfarabiestablished the foundation of Iranian and Islamic utopianism. According to Bakhsh, Alfarabi bases utopianism on (1) a conception of justice that resists social discrimination and (2) opposition to violence. While social equality and nonviolence are worthy political aspirations, Alfarabi does not endorse them in the way Bakhsh suggests. In actuality, Alfarabi’s view of justice entails that the virtuous society should be hierarchically organized according to the inherent worth of individuals and the tasks they perform. Alfarabi also allows some leeway for offensive wars to enforce happiness. In addition, he advises the virtuous ruler to use coercion against rebellious individuals he calls “weeds” and to enslave or execute feral human beings who roam the wild. Bakhsh’s misinterpretation masks these crucial issues and, consequently, Alfarabi’s nuanced theoretical reflections on the virtuous city and the political realities it faces.

This article is part of a larger project that explores how to channel people's passion for popular arts into legal social justice, by reconceiving law as a kind of poetry and justice as dance, and exploring different possible relationships between said legal poetry and dancing justice. I begin by rehearsing my previous new conception of social justice as organismic empowerment, and my interpretive method of dancing-with. I then apply this method to the following four "ethicopolitical choreographies of justice": (1) the choral dance of souls qua winged chariot-teams (from Plato); (2) a dancingly beautiful friendship with the community (from Aristotle); (3) a tightrope-dance of the cool (from Alfarabi); and (4) humans dancingly reimagined as positioned actors in fluidly moving groups (from Iris Marion Young). I then synthesize these analyses into "dancing justice," defined as the dynamic equilibrium sustained by a critical mass of a community's members comporting themselves like social dancers.

An examination of geometrical topics of significance for Gersonides's philosophy. Through this course, students will have direct access to one aspect of the intellectual background of medieval philosophers. Students will acquire a familiarity with the fundamental concepts and tools of classical geometry, in order to better understand the treatment of geometrical topics in medieval philosophical discourse.

The study of geometry occupied a central place in the education of medieval scholars. Maimonides went so far as to describe mathematics as an essential stage in the preparation of the student for whom The Guide of the Perplexed was intended. The importance of geometry is especially apparent in the works of Gersonides (Provence 1288-1344). In his philosophical magnum opus, Milhamot ha-Shem, Gersonides uses a particular geometrical proof connected to Euclid's Elements, in the context of his doctrine of miracles. Gersonides treats the topic at greater length in his Commentary on the Elements. In this course we will study the chain of propositions leading to Euclid's demonstration that the total value of any triangle's three angles is equal to two right angles (180 degrees). In the second stage we will study the topic as treated by Gersonides. In Gersonides's view, some of Euclid's premises require demonstration or philosophical explication. No prior knowledge in mathematics is required for this course.

It is not difficult to observe, when reading Alfarabi, that he seems to diverge from Plato and Aristotle in his accounts of their thought.  This is then often taken to indicate that Alfarabi didn’t fully understand these thinkers–either faultlessly in certain cases, because he didn’t have their original texts in front of him; or less faultlessly in others, because he simply didn’t grasp their thought; or both.  My modest goal here is to consider, in light of these seeming divergences, Alfarabi’s introduction to his “Short Treatise on the Syllogism.” I hope to show that readers of Alfarabi should often be more surprised by those passages where Alfarabi fails to diverge from Plato and Aristotle, than those where he follows their words closely.  We’ll see that the “Short Treatise” provides us with a hermeneutic key to more properly engage Alfarabi’s writings.  It highlights one particular, and underappreciated, aspect of his complicated rhetoric: the difference between following an author’s deeds rather than his words. The main pay-off of this is that it offers a pedagogic reason–rather than the controversial political one–for taking Alfarabi seriously as a faithful interpreter of the Greeks even when–or rather, precisely when–he seems to misunderstand them.

Though currently marginalised in Western philosophy, tenth-century Arabic
philosopher Abu Nasr Alfarabi is one of the most important thinkers of the
medieval era. In fact, he was known as the ‘second teacher’ (after Aristotle) to
philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes. As this epithet suggests, Alfarabi and
his successors engaged in a critical and creative dialogue with thinkers from other
historical traditions, including that of the Ancient Greeks, although the creativity
of his part is often marginalised as well. In this article, I offer a new interpretation
of Alfarabi’s sweeping volume, The Principles of the Opinions of the Virtuous
Community. My focus is the materialism that overflows Alfarabi’s account of soul
in general and the imaginative power in particular. The political conclusion of this
account is that Virtuous Community does not directly present Alfarabi’s ideal ruler or
community. Instead, it offers a materialist critique that prefigures critical theory and
post-structuralism and thereby provides guidelines for how to more effectively engage
monotheistic communities in the pursuit of social justice – including along the axes of
race, gender and sexual orientation.

Resumen: Este trabajo pretende exponer la teoría del conocimiento del autor al-Fārābī dentro del marco de su pensamiento como sistema, ahondando en dos asuntos: teoría del conocimiento, profetología y problema entre fe y razón (sección primera); algunas de las fuentes principales de su pensamiento (sección segunda).

Abstract: This work is aimed to set out the theory of knowledge of al-Fārābī, seen as part of his own system, and deepen in two aspects: the theory of knowledge itself, the prophecy and the boudaries between reason and faith (first section); some of the main sources of his thought (second section).