The History of Science Society

Al-Fārābī on Extramission, Intromission, and the Use of Platonic Visual Theory

Author(s): Bruce Eastwood
Source: Isis, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 1979), pp. 423-425
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/231378
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 NOTES & CORRESPONDENCE
AL-FARABI ON EXTRAMISSION, INTROMISSION,
AND THE USE OF PLATONIC VISUAL THEORY

By Bruce Eastwood*

David Lindberg's very useful Theories of Visionfrom al-Kindi to Kepler devotes a

brief section to al-Farabi's positions on the extramission and intromission theories of
vision.' Lindberg's concern is simply to classify al-Farabi's thinking on the matter.
Apparently he supported the extramission theory, described in Euclidean terms, in
his Catalogue of the Sciences, where vision is made a mathematical study and
therefore categorized in Euclidean language.2 Another time, in The Model State, al-
Farabi seems to describe an Aristotelian state of affairs wherein, claims Lindberg, the
external light of the sun is the active participant and the eye is passive.3 Regarding
this latter view, I believe Lindberg's reference to the sources is unduly limited and
that further investigation of al-Farabi's writings shows not exactly an "early opposi-
tion to the extramission theory of vision" in Islam but something quite different.4
Rosenthal observed some time ago that al-Farabi deals with the issue in at least five
works.5 In the Catalogue of the Sciences we find extramission; in The Political
Regime and On The Intellect we find intromission. In his Harmonization of the
Opinions of Plato and Aristotle, a polemical work in defense of Aristotle against
anti-intellectuals, he claims that the difference between Aristotle and Plato is one of
terminology, since neither an actual "emanating" nor a simple "influencing"occurs,
but rather a "power"joins vision and the seen object.6 Finally, we have The Model
State, in which the alternative views are both put forth within a few pages of each
other, according to Rosenthal.7
The particular text with which we are concerned is given by Lindberg as follows:
. . . visionis a potencyand a dispositionin matter.Beforeseeing,it is only potentialvision;
and colors,beforebeingseen,arevisibleonlypotentially.In the natureof the visualpower
that is in the eye, there is no aptitudeto becomevision in actuality;nor in the natureof
colors an aptitude to be visible in actuality.The sun impartsto the eye a light that
illuminatesit, and to colorsa lightthatilluminatesthem.Throughthe lightthatit receives
from the sun, vision becomes seeing in actuality.8

Lindberg then notes that al-Farabil placed this statement in the larger context of a
proportion wherein sun is to vision as agent intellect is to material intellect. Any good

*Department of History, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506.

' David C. Lindberg, Theories of Visionfrom Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1976), pp. 42-43. See my review in American Historical Review, 1977, 82:334.
2Lindberg, Theories, pp. 42-43, 233, n. 64.
3Ibid., pp. 43, 233, nn. 65, 66.
4Ibid., p. 42. The references are limited to pp. 70-71 of Friedrich H. Dieterici's translation of Der
Musterstaat von Alfarabi (Leiden: Brill, 1900), and the corresponding page of a French translation of the
same work, Idees des habitants de la cite vertueuse, trans. R. P. Jaussen, Youssef Karam, J. Chlala (Cairo:
Institut FranSais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1949), p. 66.
5 Franz Rosenthal, "On the Knowledge of Plato's Philosophy in the Islamic World," Islamic Culture,
1940, 14:412-416, discusses the Arabic traditions on intromission and extramission.
6See the text translation in al-Farabi, Philosophische Abhandlungen, trans. Friedrich H. Dieterici
(Leiden: Brill, 1892), p. 26. Cf. Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi (New
York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 3-4.
7Rosenthal, "On the Knowledge," p. 415. However, I do not find both views in this treatise.
8Lindberg, Theories, p. 43, quoting from The Model State.
ISIS, 1979, 70 (No. 253) 423
424 BRUCE EASTWOOD

Aristotelian would agree then with Lindberg'sconclusion that "he [al-Farabi] thereby
makes it quite clear that in his opinion the eye and the power of sight participate
passively in the visual process."9 But the character of al-Farabi's Aristotelianism here
is just what requires further discussion. To begin with, a revision of the above
translation is needed as well as addition to that translation and notice of other
statements by al-Farabi in the same treatise. The chapter within which the quotation
appears concerns the intellect and how it works. Reference to vision is intended to
clarify by means of an analogy. Al-Farabli says,10
Neither in the intellect nor in that which Nature provides is there a sufficiency so that it
[the intellect] may become by itself an actualized intellect. To become that it needs
something else, which takes it from potentiality to actuality. It becomes actual intellect, if
intelligibles have existence in it. The intelligible in potentia becomes actual whenever it
becomes an intelligible in actu for the intellect. Thus the intelligible requires something
else to carry it from potentiality to actuality. The agent that translates the intelligible from
potentiality to actuality is an essence, the substance of which is an intellect both actual and
immaterial. This intellect confers on the material intellect, which is only potential intellect,
some thing corresponding to the illumination which the sun gives to vision. Vision is a
power and a tendency in matter and only potential vision before one can see; colors are
only potentially visible and apparent until they are seen. In the substance of the visual
power in the eye there is not a sufficiency (kifdya)lIfor sight to become effective, andjust
as little a sufficiency is there in the substance of colors to be actually seen and looked at,
for the sun confers on the vision a light which enlightens and on colors a light whereby
they become bright. Thus by the light dispensedfrom the sun the vision becomes actually
seeing and actually fit to see. Likewise by this light colors come to be actually seen and
actually looked at after being seen and looked at only potentially. And so the actual
intellect bestows on the material intellect some thing which it [the actual intellect] has
imprinted on it. This latter thing is to the material intellect as the light is to the vision. Just
as the vision, through the light itself, looks at the light, the cause of seeing, and then also
sees the sun, cause of the light in the eye, and finally sees the objects which were formerly
visible only potentially but now become visible actually, so it is also with the material
intellect. This last thinks through that which is to it as the light is to the eye and then
thinks the actual intellect,'2 which is the cause whereby the thing is imprinted on the
material intellect. Hereby things only thought potentially before come to be thought now
in actuality; likewise it [the material intellect] becomes actual intellect after having been
only potential.'3
As represented in this text-and indeed throughout the treatise-the actual (or
active, or immaterial) intellect and the material (or passive, or potential) intellect are
considered primarily in their states of acting, not in their states of being. The activity
of the material intellect by itself, like the activity of the vision without light, is
insufficient to produce an effect. When something is added to the material intellect

9Ibid.
'l0n the following translation the italicized portion corresponds directly to the translation provided by
Lindberg.
"Two translations for the text are those of Dieterici and of Jaussen et al. (see n. 4). The Arabic text
appears in Alfarabi's Abhandlung, Der Musterstaat, ed. F. H. Dieterici (Leiden: Brill, 1895), pp. 44-45.
Both translations seem to preserve the sense of the original rather well, although there occasionally occur
-ratherdrastic reorderings of phrases. Only with this word do I find a significant variation between the two
translations. Whereas the French translation (Jaussen et al.) uses aptitude, the German translation offers
Geniuge,which better preserves the meaning of the Arabic kifaya. Kifdya is used consistently in the passage
(p. 44, lines 7, 17, 18), and I translate it as "sufficiency." The nuance of meaning is important. By
"sufficiency"I do not mean simply a quantitative difference, but I do mean that there is already a capable
part, needing the cooperation of another part with complementary capability.
121.e.,the material intellect makes use of ("thinks through") the gift from the actual intellect ("as the light
is to the eye") and then becomes sufficiently like the actual intellect to "think the actual intellect" (like
seeing the sun); this transformation of the material intellect is mentioned again in the final clause of the
quotation, below.
13Alfarabi'sAbhandlung, Dieterici ed., pp. 44-45.
 AL-FARABI ON VISUAL THEORIES 425

(or to the vision) an actuality (or seeing) is the result. The nature of the potential
being (material intellect, vision) is not inert passivity but rather something in need of
completion. Al-Farabi emphasizes just this point when he discusses intellect and
leadership in a later chapter14and claims that the philosopher is in a state where his
passive intellect has become so filled with intelligibles that it is more like an active
intellect and might best be called an "acquired intellect." Similarly we find al-Farabi
observing at the end of the quotation given above that the material intellect becomes
actual.
Shifting to the other side of the analogy, we are meant to conclude that the vision
too becomes like the sun when light is present, and this is because the vision had such
a tendency and potential, albeit incomplete and insufficient, to begin with. Al-
Farabi's language is not unambiguously Aristotelian but rather leans toward a
Platonic conception of vision. In fact, if we recall the theme of the treatise, the ideal
State, and turn to Plato's ideal State (an ideal State was not discussed by Aristotle),
we can find the likely source of inspiration for al-Farabi's text. In Book VI of The
Republic (507D-508D) Plato says,
Though vision may be in the eyes and its possessor may try to use it, and though colour be
present, yet without the presence of a third kind of thing specifically and naturally adapted
to this purpose, you are aware that vision will see nothing and the colours will remain
invisible.... The bond then that yokes together visibility and the faculty of sight is more
precious by no slight form than that which unites the other pairs [of sense and object]....
Neither vision itself nor its vehicle, which we call the eye, is identical with the sun.... But
it is ... the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense.... And does it not receive the
power which it possesses as an influx, as it were, dispensed from the sun?.... Is it not also
true that the sun is not vision, yet as being the cause'5 thereof is beheld by vision itself?'6

It is this text of Plato rather than any from Aristotle that best explains the nature
of the visual process as quoted from al-Farabi's Model State, Chapter 22. What al-
Farabi seems to have done is to use a Platonic understanding of vision in order to
modify an Aristotelian notion of the passive intellect with the ultimate purpose of
making the intellect of his philosophical leader more like an active than a passive
intellect. The visual theory used comes from Plato and is quite compatible with that
of Galen, which Lindberg describes.'7 As Lindberg himself remarks, "Aristotle, like
Plato, solves the problem of vision by arguing that the eye and external media
become parts of a homogeneous chain capable of transmitting motions (in the
broadest sense) to the intellect of the observer."'8We need only add that Plato and
Galen required sunlight in the medium for vision to occur. The critical difference,
then, is the notion of activity on the part of the eye. For Aristotle the eye is not active.
For Plato and for al-Farabi vision is always a power of the eye and is simply
insufficient until something is added by the sun; the eye is not purely passive. The
passive, Aristotelian sense of vision does not seem to be intended in al-Farabl's text.
This minor point in the philosophy of al-Farabi suggests that one must be careful
not to see him as either a thoroughgoing Aristotelian or Platonist. Instead, his
questions and his solutions may well involve a distinctive amalgamation of Plato and
Aristotle (along with other sources). In the history of visual theories we can conclude
that al-Farabi's brief mention of vision is not an abstracted scientific statement but
rather an engaged philosophical statement.

'4Der Musterstaat, Dieterici trans., Ch. 27b, pp. 90-94.

15 Here the Greek aitios means "cause" in the sense of being responsible for, not in the sense of being the
origin of.
161 use the very literal translation by Paul Shorey in the Loeb Classical Library version (London:
Heinemann, 1946), pp. 98-102 (Greek), pp. 99-103 (translation).
17Lindberg, Theories, pp. 9-11. Al-Farabi also refers to a Galenic, purifiedpneuma in the sense nerves
(Ch. 21, Dieterici trans., pp. 59-63, esp. p. 62).
18Lindberg, Theories, p. 9.