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Alfarabi on the Prudence of Founders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Christopher Colmo
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Extract

Two striking features of Alfarabi's Book of Religion remind us of Machiavelli's Prince. Alfarabi is very much concerned with what Machiavelli would call a new prince, the founder of a political order. Like Machiavelli, Alfarabi emphasizes the extent to which the founder needs prudence, understood as the faculty by which political men make sound determinations about particular circumstances. The status of prudence is enhanced by the pervasiveness of change over time as Alfarabi sees it. The pervasiveness of change entails that any political founding will require repeated, and prudent, renewal. For Alfarabi, as for Machiavelli, the varying dictates of prudence in response to specific political situations pose a challenge to the universal rules or laws found in religion. Alfarabi differs from Machiavelli in carefully distinguishing prudence from mere cunning or cleverness, depending on whether or not the end sought is morally good.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , Fall 1998 , pp. 719 - 741
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1998

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References

1. I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Summer Stipend in 1997, which supported work on the original version of this essay.

2. All references are to pages of the Arabic text as it appears in Mahdi, Muhsin, ed., Kitab al-Millah wa Nusus Ukhra (The book of religion and related texts) (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq, 1968).Google Scholar I have used throughout the translation of the Kitab al–Millah generously made available to me by Charles Butterworth of the University of Maryland at College Park. All quotations are from Butterworth's version. A translation of the Book of Religion by Lawrence Berman, under the title On Religion, Jurisprudence, and Political Science, is available through the Translation Clearing House, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078–0220. Catalog reference number: A–30–55b.

3. “For this is a general rule that never fails: that a prince who is not wise by himself cannot be counseled well, unless indeed by chance he should submit himself to one person alone to govern him in everything, who is a very prudent man” (Machiavelli, , The Prince, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985], p. 95, italics not in original).Google Scholar

4. Machiavelli, , Prince, p. 92.Google Scholar

5. Aristotle distinguishes between prudence and shrewdness at Nicomachean Ethics 1144a24–1144b1. The issue is more complicated in Plato's Republic because Socrates there speaks of prudence as one power that can be turned toward good or ill (Republic 518e–519a).

6. Galston, Miriam, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

7. Alfarabi does, however, treat virtue as a means to something higher, namely, ultimate happiness (p. 54). See Galston, , Politics and Excellence, pp. 94, 172. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1120a25.Google Scholar

8. Umar, Yusuf K., “Strauss and Farabi: Persecution, Esotericism, and Political Philosophy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Calgary, 1987, p. 301 n.21),Google Scholar disputes this, arguing instead that “The principles of faith in [Alfarabi's] al-Madinah al-Fadilah amend openly the traditional Islamic conception of God, but those principles are not susceptible to change.” See also Umar, , pp. 293–94.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor Jene M. Porter of the University of Saskatchewan for my knowledge of this thoughtful and important dissertation. On Thomas, see Armstrong, Ross A., Primary and Secondary Precepts in the Thomistic Natural Law Teaching (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Galston, , Politics and Excellence, pp. 78, 96–7, 107.Google Scholar Umar points out the similarity between the discretion Alfarabi deems necessary in the first ruler and the discretion appropriate to the Imam in Shi'i Islam. “Shi'i theology and political theory allow the imam to annul what he deems to be incongruent with the present.

Farabi's reference to malek al-Sunnah [traditional king] is an indirect critique of Sunni political theory which, deifies the past as tradition that is both inviolable and eternal.” Umar, , “Strauss and Farabi,” p. 163n.5,Google Scholar which cites Alfarabi, , Al-Siyasah al-Madaniyyah (The political regime), ed. Najjar, F. M. (Beirut: Catholic Press, 1964), p. 81,Google Scholar but the limits of the traditional king are the same there as in the Book of Religion. See Umar, , pp. 173, 269, 300–301, 307, 344, 345Google Scholar n.115, 385, 394n.68, for his view of Alfarabi's relation to Shi'ism. See also, Najjar, Fauzi M., “Farabi's Political Philosophy and Shi'ism,” Studia Islamica, 24 (1961): 57–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Alfarabi never precisely clarifies the relation between the king of the tradition and the jurist.

11. It is not quite clear from Alfarabi's text whether Zayd is being treated for jaundice or fever or both.

12. This is my example, not Alfarabi's. Alfarabi's own example is that “the human being who is writing” is more particular, that is, more restricted by conditions that determine it, than “the human being” (p. 47).Google Scholar One is bound to wonder what Alfarabi intended by this strange example. Is the one who writes the legislator? Or is the reader intended to recall Alfarabi's own art of writing? On the example, see Galston, , Politics and Excellence, pp. 115–16.Google Scholar On the art of writing, see Galston, , pp. 166, 168.Google Scholar On Alfarabi's use of the word “determined” (muqaddar), see Galston, , p. 110.Google Scholar

13. Butterworth notes that the phrase is elusive. He gives, alternatively, “or with respect to all time—if possible.” I take the phrase to mean that, if possible, the prudent ruler determines the conditions that are in accordance with the time, that is, the particular occasion.

14. In Islamic jurisprudence, one of the four roots of the law is reasoning by analogy or analogical inference. Esposito, John L., Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 83, offers the following illustration. “The determination of the minimum rate of dower offers a good example of analogical deduction. Jurists saw a similarity between the bride's loss of virginity in marriage and the Quranic penalty for theft, which was amputation. Thus, the minimum dower was set at the same rate that stolen goods had to be worth before amputation was applicable.” Thus, analogical reasoning allowed the jurist to move in an authoritative way from what was determined in the Quran and the traditions to what was not determined.Google Scholar

15. Galston, , Politics and Excellence, p. 125, sees the difference between the two accounts of prudence in terms of the “implied” reference to moral virtue in the first account. On my reading, if moral virtue is implied here at all, it would fit better in the second account, where the emphasis is on the good of cities and nations and, hence, on something compatible with law-abidingness.Google Scholar

16. This is a crucial point for the argument presented in Parens, Joshua, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's Summary of Plato's “Laws” (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. xxxvi, 7, 39, 89, and 98.Google Scholar

17. Galston, , Politics and Excellence, p. 103,Google Scholar cites Millah 59:3.Google Scholar Muhsin Mahdi begins the second account of political science at the phrase “This science has two parts.” See Mahdi, M., “Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Alfarabi's Enumeration of the Sciences,” in The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. Murdoch, E. J., and Sylla, E. D. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 132–36.Google Scholar The paragraph that Galston treats as introducing the second kind of political science is apparently treated by Mahdi as a concluding statement of the first kind of political science. Galston does not discuss the problem, but Butterworth, who divides the text as Galston does, discusses his disagreement with Mahdi in Butterworth, Charles, “Al-Farabi's Statecraft: War and the Well–Ordered Regime,” in Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition, ed. Johnson, James Turner, and Kelsay, John (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 94–95, n.4.Google Scholar

18. Galston, , Politics and Excellence, p. 96.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 103.

20. Ibid., p. 104.

21. Of course, when Alfarabi speaks of a political science that would take account of all of the actions of the supreme ruler, he is not unmindful of the fact that the actions in question are infinite in number and the political science that could take account of all of them is Utopian.

22. Galston, , pp. 55, 69–70, 77, 99n.9.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 69.

24. Ibid., pp. 98; see also pp. 111–12.

25. Ibid., p. 123.

26. Ibid., p. 105, 126.

27. Ibid., p. 98.

28. Ibid., p. 115–16, italics not in original; see also pp. 78–79.

29. Alfarabi draws obvious attention to this aspect of the Book of Religion in the short paragraph in which “religion” and “creed” are said to be “almost synonymous,” as are “law” and “tradition” (p. 46). Alfarabi follows up on this division by saying that “law” and “tradition” signify “most often” one of the two parts of religion, namely, actions. The synonyms, “law” and “tradition,” appear to describe one of the two parts of religion, namely, actions. Is the other part of religion “creed”? If Alfarabi intends to imply that “law” and “creed” are the two parts of religion, why does he first say that “creed” and “religion” are (almost) synonymous? Instead of reducing “creed” to a subdivision of “religion,” as one might expect, Alfarabi adds that the part of religion that is opinions may also be called law, so that “law,” “religion,” and “creed” are synonymous. Paradoxically, each of the parts somehow contains the whole. Why then does Alfarabi hold back from saying that “tradition” too is a synonym for “creed” and “religion,” a conclusion that would seem to follow from his assertion that “law” (=creed=religion) is a synonym for “tradition”? This way of drawing readers to the thought that religion need not be traditional-it can be the novel work of a founder-would be needlessly confusing; Alfarabi says this without any need for the reader to infer it. His method here draws attention to the possibility that our attempts to identify and differentiate using clearly defined concepts are never fully successful: terms that are “almost synonymous” are, in fact, equivocal. Religion is law, tradition, and creed, but the removal of one element, for example, tradition, does not mean that what is left is no longer religion. To communicate his thought while self–consciously acknowledging the equivocality of all language is the burden of Alfarabi's art of writing.

30. See Galston, , Politics and Excellence, p. 99, for a discussion of this idea.Google Scholar

31. Alfarabi does not restrain himself from explicitly drawing the conclusion that virtuous religion is not for philosophers (p. 47). The Book of Religion is sometimes referred to as The Virtuous Religion, so it is striking that this passage, the last explicit mention of virtuous religion, occurs in the first third of the book.

32. See the helpful discussion of induction in Galston, , Politics and Excellence, pp. 79n., 80, 90, 104, and 117n.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 103.

34. Cf. the complete craft of the complete king (p. 60).

35. Maimonides denies, not the knowability of universals, but their existence as anything outside the mind: “every existent outside the mind is an individual or a group of individuals” (Maimonides, , Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Pines, Shlomo, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963], III 18, pp. 474 and 476;Google Scholar cf. 151, p. 114). Since Judaism sees itself as a particular community, Maimonides, to the extent that he is addressing only that community, need not mount a challenge to universalism in the way that Alfarabi does.

36. Parens, , Metaphysics as Rhetoric, pp. 29–36.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., pp. 78, 84.

38. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 162–63.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 159.

40. Parens, , Metaphysics as Rhetoric, p. 161n.5, cites a passage from Natural Right and History occurring in the same chapter as the parallel passages.Google Scholar

41. This does not mean that any prudent man has the same latitude of action as the founder. Precisely one of the circumstances of which one needs to be aware is that one may lack the opportunity that made the founder's actions possible. One may need to work within a much more restricted sphere.

42. Mahdi, , “Science, Philosophy, and Religion in the Enumeration of the Sciences,” p. 135.Google Scholar

43. Durkheim calls this “organic solidarity.” When Alfarabi begins to talk about opinion as another way of holding a society together, he implies what Durkheim would call “mechanical solidarity.” Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 70–132. Alfarabi sees the two kinds of societal bond Durkheim describes as supplemental to each other rather than as alternatives.Google Scholar

44. Alfarabi “substitutes politics for religion. He thus may be said to lay the foundation for the secular alliance between philosophers and princes friendly to philosophy, and to initiate the tradition whose most famous representatives in the West are Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli” (Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing [Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1952], p. 15).Because Machiavelli is nearly silent about philosophy, the “secular alliance” Strauss describes is, in fact, characteristic of Alfarabi but not of Machiavelli.Google Scholar