A detailed analysis of Strauss’s first substantial commentary on a writing of Alfarabi, titled “Fârâbî’s Plato,” is provided in Chapter 3. This rather obscure, yet fundamental writing of Strauss contains some of his most important ideas about Alfarabi, his relationship with Plato’s philosophy and religion, Alfarabi’s view on esotericism, and what he later calls zetetic philosophy.

A detailed examination of Strauss’s interpretation of Alfarabi’s summary of Plato’s Laws is the subject of Chapter 4. Strauss’s complex article on Alfarabi’s summary, which complements his earlier “Fârâbî’s Plato,” has received minimal attention. The original manuscript of Strauss’s article, found among the Leo Strauss Papers, can substantially improve our understanding of this text and provide the opportunity for a more detailed commentary: The paragraphs of this manuscript are numbered, and contain headings which are absent in the published version of the article. My interpretation of this article will take these aspects of the original manuscript, as well as Strauss’s other writings and correspondence on Alfarabi and his course transcripts, into account.

The introduction concerns my division of the entire Arabic text and a brief discussion of the ways in which the various parts of the discussion fit into the larger whole. It groups the numerous divisions into parts and explains why my commentary will consider the parts in a specific order. It also offers a brief biography of Alfarabi including notes on his intellectual successors, a survey of historical reports concerning the ways in which his expansive body of work was received, in addition to a brief treatment of the art of dialectic as it was depicted by Plato’s Socrates and Aristotle.

Translation