A farabi’s | Philosophy of. © Plato and Aristotle HE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOEANNOUNCING A NEW SERIES OF BOOKS FROM THE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOE Agora Editions GENERAL EDITOR: ALLAN BLOOM Published Rousseau: Politics and the Arts To be Published Plato: The Lesser Dialogues, 3 volumes NEWLY TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY SETH BENARDETE AND ALLAN BLOOM Montesquieu: The Greatness of the Romans and Their Decadence NEWLY TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY DAVID LOWENTHAL Nietzsche: Thoughts out of Season NEWLY TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY WERNER J. DANNHAUSER The Anti-Federalist Writings EDITED BY HERBERT STORING Reader in Medieval Political Philosophy EDITED BY RALPH LERNER AND MUHSIN MAHDIB7S3 + F33 P53 1962 by The Free Press of Glencoe, a Division of The Macmillan Company Printed in the United States of America [All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address: ‘The Free Press of Glencoe A Division of The Macmillian Company, ‘The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company 60 Fifth Avenue, New York 11 DESIGNED BY BERNARD SCHLEIFER Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-1856 FOREWORD ‘The Agora Editions welcomes the addition of Dr. Mahdi’s translation of Alfarabi to its list. The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is one of the most authoritative commentaries on these two authors and has never been available in its entirety in English. It is of incomparable value not only for the understanding of Arabic thought but also for an authentic interpretation of Plato and Aristotle. This book goes to the origins of modern philosophy; and it is to be hoped that its publication will mark the beginning of a general interest in the Arabic view of ancient thought which is so often mentioned but so rarely studied. It is of interest to the serious student of philosophy as well as to the historian. ‘The translation is of the highest degree of accuracy consistent with intelligibility. Hence the reader can judge of Alfarabi's thought with confidence that he is not studying the modern thought of the translator. Thus we continue our policy of presenting un- available classics of political thought in scholarly translations. ALLAN BLOOM, General Editor of the Agora Editions ixCONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION Part 1 THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS Part It THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO, ITS PARTS, THE RANKS OF ORDER OF ITS PARTS, FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END Part III THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE, THE PARTS OF HIS PHILOSOPHY, THE RANKS OF ORDER OF ITS PARTS, THE POSITION FROM WHICH HE STARTED AND THE ONE HE REACHED NOTES NOTES TO THE ARABIC TEXT OF THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS INDEX aie 13 53 n 133 151 157ALFARABI'S PHILOSOPHY OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLEINTRODUCTION The general practice of introducing a new work by placing it in the broader context of the tradition to which it belongs en- counters a peculiar difficulty in the case of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. That is because this work does not conform to the current view of the Islamic philosophic tradition. This view was developed in the nineteenth century and is based on a wide range of representative works and authors. It sees Islamic philos- ophy as a mixture, blend, or synthesis of Aristotelian, Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and, of course, Islamic doctrines. It represents Moslem philosophers as being guided by the belief in the harmony cof various philosophic and religious ideas and traditions, with little awareness of the essential heterogeneity of the elements they sought to combine. The estimates of the extent to which indi- vidual Moslem philosophers were aware of possible conflict be- tween philosophy and religion may vary, but the prevailing view is satisfied that they were able to resolve this conflict in favor of their religious faith and the Islamic world-view. This conception of the general character of the Islamic philosophic tradition is not wholly erroneous. It was, in fact, propagated by the Moslem phi- losophers themselves in their effort to convince their fellow ‘Moslems that the teachings of philosophy did not contradict the revealed teaching and that philosophic activity, far from under- ‘mining religion, was undertaken in defense of the faith. The labor of the last generation of scholars has presented con- vincing evidence that the founder of this tradition was Alfarabi (al-Farabi, ca. 870-950). But as in the case of most other Moslem Philosophers, Alfarabi is known primarily through his popular and political writings—the Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle, the Virtuous City, the Political Regime, and so on—all of which seem to bear out the common view of Islamic philosophy 3ae INTRODUCTION outlined above. This is particularly true of the first of these works. Alfarabi was aroused by public controversies over such issues as the creation of the world, the survival of the soul after death, and reward and punishment in the hereafter, in which it was claimed that the two leading philosophers had disagreed—that is, that Aris- totle, unlike Plato, denied that such things were possible and hence held views in conflict with religious beliefs. He responded by writ- ing the Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle in which he undertook to show that, properly understood, Aristotle’s opinions on all such issues are in agreement with those of Plato and hence with religious beliefs. In general, exception can be taken to Alfarabi's mode of argumentation in that work. The reasoning is too flexible for a reader having first-hand acquaintance with the works of Plato and Aristotle or of Alfarabi’s commentaries on them; in many instances his conclusions depend upon ones’s ac- cepting as genuine some documents of questionable authenticity, notably the extracts from the Enneads of Plotinus that gained currency in Islamic thought as the Theology of Aristotle. As to the substance of his argument, it is sufficient to point out that when the great Moslem theologian and mystic al-Ghazali (d. 1111) set ‘out to expose the “intentions” of the philosophers, he refused to pay the slightest attention to this work and was able to assert that the real views of Aristotle and Alfarabi on these issues—that is, the views for which they believed they had proof and that they pre- sented in their scientific or philosophic works—were exactly the opposite of the ones defended by Alfarabi in the Harmonization of the Opinions of Plato and Aristotle. Alfarabi’s scientific or philosophic works prope mentaries, especially his large commentaries, on indi by Plato and Aristotle—which established his reputation as the greatest philosophic authority next to Aristotle (Alfarabi was known as the “Second Master”) and which could be expected to enlighten us on the principles underlying his popular and political works, have always remained inaccessible to the general public, and for the most part inaccessible even to the small scholarly circle interested in the history of Islamic philosophy. Many of these works seem to be lost; the ones that have survived remain for the most part unedited and hardly ever studied; and the few that have Se INTRODUCTION been edited deal with specialized subjects whose relevance to the general character of Alfarabi’s thought and of Islamic philosophy is not easy to establish. It is true that this situation can only partially be remedied by the present work, which presupposes extensive knowledge of the works of Plato and Aristotle that were available to Alfarabi and acquaintance with his specialized commentaries on them. Yet it has the distinct advantage of being Alfarabi’s only comprehensive account of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle as well as of his own views on the nature of philosophy and religion. It can, there- fore, be expected to provide an answer to some of the problems raised by the works in which the harmonization of the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle through Neo-Platonism and the harmoniza- tion of philosophy and religion occupy the foreground. To look for that answer, it is advisable to begin with the most apparent and striking features. Alfarabi presents here three sepa- rate and largely independent accounts of philosophy—one in his own name, another in the name of Plato, and a third in the name of Aristotle—without attempting to harmonize any of the doc- trines or teachings of the two masters. He departs from this course in two instances. (1) At the end of the Attainment of Happiness (1, sec. 64) he requests the reader to make clear to himself that Plato’s philosophy and Aristotle's philosophy have the same aim or purpose and that Plato and Aristotle “intended” to pre- sent the same philosophy or had the same end in view when pre- senting their philosophy. (2) At the beginning of the Philosophy of Aristotle (III, sec. 1) Alfarabi says that Aristotle had the same view of the “perfection of man” as Plato, but was dissatisfied with the lack of sufficient evidence for that view; hence he chose to “begin” from a different position, proceed differently, and so forth. Readers may differ on the interpretation of these two pas- sages and on their significance for the understanding of Alfarabi's view of the relation between Plato and Aristotle. But Alfarabi's reticence on the area of agreement between Plato and Aristotle (as regards either their explicit or implicit doctrines) is certainly striking. Furthermore, nowhere in the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle do we find any reference to the writings, or any traces of the doc-