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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2015
Scholars disagree about the correct interpretation of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Virtuous City, treatises that have striking similarities, yet notable differences. For some, the treatises encapsulate Alfarabi's philosophy; for others, they express only politically salutary opinions. Both interpretations fail to explain why he wrote parallel works. If both reflect Alfarabi's genuine philosophic doctrines, why did he compose separate but parallel treatises, both written when his philosophy was mature? Alternatively, if the treatises are political or rhetorical, why did Alfarabi compose two versions, and why did he choose these two accounts rather than others? To answer these questions, I discuss several overarching differences between the treatises, concluding that each work has an inner coherence and develops a distinctive narrative. I offer suggestions to account for the works’ distinctive orientations, both to persuade doubtful readers of their philosophic significance and to suggest to both groups of scholars reasons for their systematic differences.
1 For bibliographic information, see notes 2 and 7–9 below.
2 Abu Naṣr al-Fārābī, On the Perfect State (Mabādi’ Ārā’ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila), ed. Richard Walzer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 1 (hereafter “Walzer, The Perfect State” for Walzer's comments and VC for Alfarabi's text).
3 Deborah L. Black, “Al-Fārābī,” in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London: Routledge, 1996), 178, 188–90; Thérèse-Anne Druart, “Al-Farabi and Emanationism,” in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. John F. Wippel (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1987), 22, 28, 38–42; Majid Fakhry, A Short History of Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Mysticism (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 40; Charles Genequand, “Metaphysics,” in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Nasr and Leaman, 783, 788–89; Damien Janos, Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī's Cosmology (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 39–42, 179, 326ff. (hereafter al-Fārābī's Cosmology).
4 Strauss, Leo, “Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maïmonide et de Fârâbî,” Revue des Études Juives 100 (1936): 1, 5, 30–31 Google Scholar.
5 Muhsin S. Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 3, 7, see 59, 123–24, 157 (hereafter Foundation). See Charles E. Butterworth, “Al-Fārābī's Introductory Sections to the Virtuous City,” in Adaptations and Innovations: Studies in the Interaction between Jewish and Islamic Thought and Literature from the Early Middle Ages to the Late Twentieth Century, Dedicated to Professor Joel L. Kraemer, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Josef Stern (Paris: Peeters, 2007), 27, 30 (hereafter “Introductory Sections”) (much of what appears to be philosophic in the treatises “in no way represent[s] how al-Farabi actually views the universe and its parts”); Joshua Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's Summary of Plato's “Laws” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 20. See also Christopher A. Colmo, Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 98–99; cf. 120–30.
6 Abû Nasr al-Fârâbî, La politique civile ou les principes des existants, ed. and trans. Amor Cherni (Paris: Dar Albouraq, 2011), 15–16. See also Miriam Galston, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), chap. 5; Philippe Vallat, Farabi et l’école d'Alexandrie (Paris: J. Vrin, 2004).
7 Al-Fārābī, The Political Regime (Al-Siyāsa al-Madaniyya, also known as the Treatise on the Principles of Beings), ed. Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1964), 16–17 (Arabic). For Alfarabi's life, see Gutas, Dmitri, “Fārābī. I. Biography,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 9 (1999): 208–13Google Scholar; Janos, al-Fārābī's Cosmology, 12–16.
8 Citations are to Najjar's edition followed by citations to the English translation of Charles E. Butterworth in Alfarabi, The Political Writings, vol. 2, Political Regime and Summary of Plato's “Laws” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). An English translation of the first half by Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman is in Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources, ed. McGinnis and Reisman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), 223–38 (hereafter Anthology). For English translations of the second half, see Fauzi M. Najjar, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963), 32–56 (hereafter Sourcebook); Charles E. Butterworth, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 37–55 (hereafter Sourcebook2). English translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
9 Citations are to Walzer's edition, above note 2, followed by that of F. Dieterici (Leiden: Brill, 1895/1964).
10 See Gutas, Dmitri, “The Meaning of Madanī in al-Fārābī's ‘Political Philosophy,’” Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph [hereafter MUSJ] 57 (2004): 259, 260–69Google Scholar, and Amor Cherni, La politique civile, 11–13 (both reject translating madanī as “political”). Compare Genequand, Charles, “Loi morale, loi politique: al-Fārābī et Ibn Bağğa,” MUSJ 61 (2008): 491, 499–503 Google Scholar. I use “Political Regime” because it is used widely and in Najjar's edition. See also Gutas, review of Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, by Mahdi, Muhsin S., International Journal of Middle East Studies 35 (2003): 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar (rejecting “Virtuous City” because the full Arabic title focuses on the principles of the citizens’ opinions).
11 The systematic treatment of politics in PR begins midway through the work (PR 69:16). VC is not divisible into “halves” so neatly, since some topics covered by PR in the political half occur in the portion of VC prior to the explicitly political part.
12 For the details, see Janos, al-Fārābī's Cosmology, chap. 2.
13 See VC 56:2–100:9/5:4–18:3.
14 See PR 31:2–3/29:4–5.
15 Iḥṣā’ al-ʽulūm, ed. Osman Amine, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, 1968), 116:12–13 (hereafter Enumeration); see 11:4–6. English translation by Charles E. Butterworth is in Alfarabi, The Political Writings, vol. 1, Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 71–84 (hereafter Political Writings I).
16 On this term, see Gerson, Lloyd P., “Plotinus's Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?,” Review of Metaphysics 46 (1993): 559–74Google Scholar.
17 See VC 104:3–11/19:22–20:4, 114:1–2/22:9–10. The agent intellect is not mentioned by name until the end of the first half of VC (202:7–9/45:9–10).
18 The suggestion of independence is reinforced when PR refers repeatedly to “the second [intellects] and the agent intellect” (emphasis added) in places for which the counterpart passages in VC refer to “the second [intellects]” in aggregate, without distinguishing the agent intellect. Compare PR 49:1–52:5/44:1–46:13 with VC 100:11–104:11/19:1–20:4. See also PR 31:4/29:7–8 (assigning the second intellects to the second rank and the agent intellect to the third rank), 31:7–8/29:11–13, 34:16/32:21–22, 40:1/37:3; VC 104:6–11/19:23–20:5; Janos, al-Fārābī's Cosmology, 143–44, 174–76.
19 Of course, the sublunar world remains influenced by the supralunar world in other ways.
20 Contrast Druart, “Al-Farabi and Emanationism,” 38–42, who characterizes PR 31–42/29–39 as “a brief study of each of the principles he has just listed,” and PR 42–69/39–60 as “an account of how all beings derive from the first cause.”
21 For the view that the study of the soul belongs to natural science, at least insofar as it is connected with body, see Aristotle, On the Soul 403a27–28; Black, “Al-Fārābī,” 189.
22 Qiwām may refer to a thing's physical existence or survival. See VC 228:2–3/53:8–9. Elsewhere it refers to something fundamental, like a thing's core or self. See Alfarabi, Al-Fārābī's Philosophy of Aristotle (Falsafat Arisṭūṭālīs), ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dār Majallat Shiʽr, 1961), 89:16–17 (in his exploration of natural beings, Aristotle connects each being's “what-ness,” “substance,” qiwām, and “nature”). See also Alfarabi, Eisagoge (Kitāb Isāghūjī Ay al-Madkhal), in Al-Manṭiq ʻinda al-Fārābī, ed. Rafīq al-ʻAjam, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1985), 87:3; English in Anthology, 55.
23 See, e.g., PR 79:3–17/68:28–69:2, 83:12–13/72:31–34; VC 242:15–246:7/58:13–59:13. See also Muhsin Mahdi, Abū Naṣr Al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-Milla wa Nuṣūṣ Ukhrā/Alfarabi's Book of Religion and Related Texts (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1968), 45:7–9 (hereafter Religion) (connecting misery, but not happiness, with the next life). An English translation is in Butterworth, Political Writings I, 93–113. Butterworth has “the next life” modify both happiness and death (ibid., 95).
24 See PR 35:4–5/32:37–38 (the rational faculty is what a makes a human being a human being).
25 See Alfarabi, Fuṣūl Muntazaʻah (Selected Aphorisms), ed. Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut: Dar el-Mashriq, 1971), No. 81, 86:10–87:7; English in Butterworth, Political Writings I, 11–67.
26 Aristotle, On the Soul 3.5 430a14–17.
27 Philippe Vallat, al-Fārābī: Le livre du régime politique (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2012), 132–33, equates the faculty with the principle.
28 People's capacity for perfection also depends upon their natural endowments, which are traceable, in part, to their material circumstances; these, in turn, reflect the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies. See PR 70:8–71:13/61:11–62:16.
29 See VC 198:4–15/44:1–9, 200:1–202:16/44:11–45:15.
30 Alfarabi uses forms of three terms in the passage summarized: ta'addub, irshād, and ta‘līm. Although in general ta'addub can mean breeding or moral education, in this context, it seems that Alfarabi has in mind rational development.
31 VC does, of course, speak to these qualities in a founder or ruler.
32 They are the rational, appetitive, imaginative, and sense-perceptive faculties.
33 PR 73:10–11/63:35–37 says that there are five faculties of the human soul: the theoretical rational, the practical rational, the appetitive, the imaginative, and the sense-perceptive. Thus, in this passage there are five faculties because the rational is subdivided into theoretical and practical faculties.
34 PR does, however, acknowledge the role of appetite in the genesis of volition (PR 72:5–7/62:30–35) and implies that appetite determines whether someone who grasps the nature of happiness through theoretical inquiry will make its pursuit his life's mission (see PR 73:13–18/64:4–12, 74:5–12/64:20–29).
35 See also VC 178:9–16/38:15–19 (describing how bodily functions and states affect the capacity for thinking).
36 VC 164:2–15/34:13–35:1. Similarly, the Summary of VC references the genesis of the objects of discussion repeatedly in the first half of the work. See VC 38–48/1–4.
37 Likewise PR initiates a discussion of several topics with a theoretical or conceptual map that situates the subject to be discussed in a larger framework. See, e.g., PR 31:2–11/29:4–17, 58:1–3/51:9–12, 69:5–17/60:1–22, 77:1–17/66:27–67:28.
38 See PR 36:15–16/34:11–13; Alfarabi, Taḥṣīl al-Saʻādah, ed. Jaʻfir al-Yasin (Beirut: Al-Andaloss, 1981), 52:10–17 (hereafter Happiness), translated in Sourcebook and Sourcebook2.
39 See PR 42:13/39:9–10 (the rational part of the human soul is itself a cause in the sense of an end and not in the sense of an agent).
40 See subsection 3 of the next section, below.
41 According to Najjar, Political Regime, 11–12 (Arabic), the first mention in Arabic sources of PR being known as The Principles of Being occurs in Ibn Abī Uṣaibi‘ah, ʻUyūn al–Anbā’ fī Ṭabaqāt al–Aṭibbāʾ, ed. August Müller (Königsberg, 1884), 2:139. He died three centuries after Alfarabi's death. As Najjar notes, the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides used that title almost a century earlier. See “Letter from Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon,” in Letters of Maimonides, ed. Isaac Shailat (Jerusalem: Maliyot, 1988), 530, 553 (medieval Hebrew text of the letter).
42 See PR 84:17–18/74:1–4; cf. 85:3–4/74:8–10. The list has more detail and a different emphasis in VC 276:10–278:5/69:6–17.
43 See Alfarabi, Religion 46:11–14; PR 85:18–86:2/75:1–3.
44 See PR 85:3–6/74:8–13; VC 278:8–11/69:19–70:1. In Religion (46:17–18), Alfarabi also observes that the opinions of the “virtuous religion” can be the truth (al-ḥaqq) or an image of the truth (mithāl al-ḥaqq).
45 See Religion 45:20–24; see also 43:3–44:6; Aphorisms, No. 61; VC 286–328/72–85 (how ignorant opinions influence conduct).
46 The text says, “Some are more judicious [aḥkam] and complete [atamm] imaginings, while others are more defective” (PR 86:11–12/75:18–19). Najjar translates aḥkam “better” (Sourcebook, 41); Butterworth translates “wiser” (Sourcebook2, 43). Arabic ḥ*k*m can refer to wisdom or judgment.
47 PR 86:11–14/75:18–23; see VC 280:11–13/70:14–16. “Points of contention” is Najjar's translation (Sourcebook, 41). Walzer (281) translates “grounds for objection.”
48 Cf. Happiness 91:11.
49 As Joshua Parens notes, Alfarabi attributes this potentially heretical proposition to “the Ancients” (Parens, An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006], 97; see Alfarabi, Happiness 90:14–15). Alfarabi seems to elaborate the doctrine in his own name in Religion 46:22–47:16; Alfarabi's Book of Letters (Kitāb Al-Ḥurūf): Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dar el-Mashriq, 2004), 131, ¶108.
50 See VC 282:6–284:12/71:1–21. In some cases, imagery that triggers controversy can have a beneficial effect. See VC 280:15–282:5/70:18–71:1; PR 104:17–105:6/91:13–25.
51 See generally VC 300:11–308:7/76:7–78:14. This brief summary does not do justice to the richness of the description in these passages.
52 See PR 57:1–3/50:16–19 (the first cause is the cause of both necessary being, which must exist, and possible being, which can exist or not); VC 94:7–8/17:2–3 (same).
53 See Abû Nasr al-Fârâbî, Opinions des habitants de la cité vertueuse, ed. Amor Cherni (Paris: Dar Albouraq, 2011), 124n2, 126n2.
54 This is a brief summary of PR 56:13–62:10/50:7–54:28. The counterpart passage in VC (144:3–162:13/30:6–34:11) also emphasizes that the existence of contrariety and generation and corruption derive from the natures of matter and form, describes the changes that occur as what they merit, and uses “justice” to describe the changes dictated by their natures.
55 On different meanings of ʽināyah see Alfarabi, Aphorisms, No. 87. See also Walzer, The Perfect State, 473–74.
56 VC (142:8–13/29:20–23) also notes that heavenly bodies may assist or oppose the sublunar beings. However, this general statement is not connected to the activity of the agent intellect and does not draw out the implications for the possibility of human perfection, as occurs in PR. The counterpart general statement is at PR 64:13–14/56:19–20.
57 Reading yaʻlamahā with Dieterici (69:6) and Cherni (281:4), rather than yaʻmalahā with Walzer (276:10).
58 See PR 79:12–80:3/69:9–23; VC 244:1–16/58:15–59:4.
59 The quotation ends “to his passive intellect through the mediation of the acquired intellect; then to his faculty of imagination” (VC 244:12–13/58:22–23). See Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 9–12. The role of imagination in revelation in VC has been discussed extensively. See Fazlur Rahman, Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), 30–91.
60 Noteworthy, of course, is that VC references “Allah.” However, the contrast is not between a natural as against a theological account of revelation. Despite the religious terminology, the portrayal of revelation in VC depicts natural processes, i.e., the interaction between the rational and imaginative faculties of the human soul.
61 Both Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias wrote a book with this title. See Cherni, La politique civile, 160n395.
62 Religion 44:12–13.
63 See PR 79:3–80:5/68:28–69:27; VC 240:1–248:14/57:9–60:11.
64 See also Religion 44:6–13.
65 Religion (49:9–14) is more forceful: it is the obligation of a first ruler who follows another first ruler “to alter much of what the [original] first had legislated and to determine it in another way, when he knows that this is best for his time—not because the first one erred, but because the first one made a determination according to what was best for his time and this one makes a determination according to what is best subsequent to the time of the first, this being the kind of thing the first would alter also, were he to observe it” (trans. Butterworth).
66 That the first ruler, who establishes rules for a community (millah), does so based upon knowledge obtained through revelation is stated in Religion 44:6–7 and is implied in PR 79:3–80:3/68:28–69:24.
67 For competing views about the role of Islam in Alfarabi's thought, see Wain, Alexander, “A Critical Study of Mabādi’ ārā’ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila: The Role of Islam in the Philosophy of Abū Naṣr,” Journal of Islamic Philosophy 8 (2012): 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Philippe Vallat, “al-Fārābī's Arguments for the Eternity of the World and the Contingency of Natural Phenomena,” in Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity, ed. Josef Lössl and John W. Watt (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 259.
68 This analysis is based upon Qur'an 33:40. See Brannon M. Wheeler, Prophets in the Quran: An Introduction to the Quran and Exegesis (New York: Continuum, 2002), 332–33. Fiqh applies and extends the Prophet's teachings; it does not replace them.
69 PR famously never mentions prophets or prophecy, whereas VC explains in detail how prophecy occurs.
70 See below, section IV.
71 Mahdi, Foundation, 6–7, 123–24, 156–57.
72 See Strauss, “Quelques remarques,” 5 (the treatises’ views on metaphysics and natural philosophy are actually the opinions of citizens of the perfect city).
73 See Mahdi, Foundation, 157.
74 Contrast Butterworth, “Introductory Sections,” 38, who says that in the first part of VC, “without invoking any kind of religious doctrine, [Alfarabi] has shown what is sound in the religious narrative with which we are familiar. His account has also suggested how these matters might be depicted in a manner friendly to revealed religion yet without calling on the tenets of any particular creed.” Butterworth does not address the issues raised by the existence of two narratives. In addition, the two works do far more than identify aspects of conventional religion that are “sound.” The works also seem too abstract to guide leaders to citizen-friendly religious teachings.
75 Mahdi, Foundation, 6–7. Mahdi seems to have borrowed this expression from Strauss. See Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 1.
76 Mahdi, Foundation, 7.
77 Ulrich Rudolph, “Reflections on al-Fārābī's Mabādi’ ārā’ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila,” in In the Age of al-Farabi: Arabic Philosophy in the Fourth/Tenth Century, ed. Peter Adamson (London-Turin: The Warburg Institute, 2008), 1, 6–13 (hereafter “Reflections”).
78 See Butterworth, “Introductory Sections,” 42; Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric, 19–20, 139–41.
79 For Alfarabi's overview of the methods of some theologians, see Enumeration 132:8–138:5.
80 Rudolph, “Reflections,” 14. Cf. Massimo Campanini, “Alfarabi and the Foundation of Political Theology in Islam,” in Islam, the State, and Political Authority, ed. Asma Afsaruddin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 35.
81 Rudolph, “Reflections,” 3.
82 Whether or how works of philosophic theology, such as Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed, represent an author's philosophy is a question beyond the scope of this article.
83 VC accords a higher status to imagination than does PR in other ways. The most obvious example is that imagination is central to the former work's discussion of prophecy. Compare VC 240:10–246/57:13–59:9 with PR 79:3–80:4/68:28–69:25.
84 For a fuller account of this notion, see Happiness 90:3–91:12 (describing what is “called popular, generally-accepted, and external philosophy” [trans. Mahdi]). Butterworth translates words from the root ʻ*r*f as forms of “cognizance” rather than “knowledge,” so that the reader can recognize distinctions Alfarabi makes between the two terms.
85 See also PR 73:9–18/63:37–64:12 (happiness can be known only through theoretical reason and only on that basis can the good subject to human control be known).
86 See Crone, Patricia, “Al-Fārābī's Imperfect Constitutions,” MUSJ 57 (2004): 191Google Scholar. PR (80:7–9/69:30–70:3) contemplates the possibility of individual people subject to the “rule” of a first ruler without, however, living in one place or at one time. The word siyāsah, in the title, does not appear in the body of the work. For Alfarabi's understanding of the term, see Enumeration 125:10–11; Religion 54:14–15; Aphorisms, Nos. 88–91.
87 See Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric, 166n1.
88 Compare VC 238–240/57 (a hierarchy of political arts).
89 For Alfarabi's understanding of war in his commentary on Plato's Laws, see Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric, 69–75.
90 Compare PR 69:16–17/60:20–22 with VC 228:2–8/53:8–15. The passage in VC says “every one” or “every person” three times. See also Galston, Politics and Excellence, 150n13.
91 Butterworth translates “This is the marvelous and happy city.”
92 Alfarabi adds that this is “especially [the case] if honors and people's rankings in honors are because of what is most useful for others—whether wealth, pleasure, or other useful things a seeker desires” (PR 93:13–94:1/81:13–17).
93 On this potential contradiction, see Khalidi, Mohammad Ali, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003): 379–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar (concluding that Alfarabi favored democracy over timocracy).
94 In other words, PR seems to be pointing out the fragility of the human project understood in terms of cultivating conditions for the life of the mind (e.g., the work's observations about the variation among human aptitudes, the impediments caused by the material properties of human beings and nature as a whole, and the necessity of theoretical knowledge for the possibility of perfection or happiness).
95 See Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, rev. ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), xv–xvii; Galston, Politics and Excellence, 192–99.
