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AL-Fārābī's Aphorisms of the Statesman1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

D. M. Dunlop
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Extract

As is well known, al-Fārābī formulated his political philosophy on more than one occasion. The most comprehensive statements of his political views are to be found in two texts which engaged the attention of the German orientalist Dieterici and whose Arabic titles may conveniently be rendered the Ideal State and the Political Philosophy. It is apparently these two works which are mentioned together in terms of the highest praise by the Qāḍī Ṣā'id of Toledo (died 462/1070). The general position developed in both works is the same, but the relation between them remains quite obscure. As certain topics receive greater development in the Political Philosophy it is natural to think of it as later in date than the Ideal State, which is said to have been begun at Baghdad in 330/941 and completed at Damascus in the following year. If this is correct, the Political Philosophy, like Plato's Laws, was produced in the last years of its author's lifetime. (Al-Fārābī died in 339/950.)

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1952 , pp. 93 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1952

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Footnotes

page 93 note 1

See also the author's previous article on Al-Fārābī, The Existence and Definition of Philosophy, Iraq XIII, Pt. 2, 76f. with Atabic-Greek glossary of philosophical tenns.

References

page 93 note 2 Risāla fī ārā'ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, ed. Dieterici, , Leiden 1895Google Scholar = Der Musterstaat von Aïfārābī transl. Dieterici, , Leiden 1900Google Scholar.

page 93 note 3 Die Staatsleitung von Alfārābī aus dem Nachlasse.. F. Dieterici herausgegeben von Dr. Peul Brönnle, Leiden 1904Google Scholar(Madkour, I., La place d'al Fārābī dans l'école philosophique musulmam, Paris 1934, p. 224Google Scholar, wrongly ascribes Dieterici's translation to Brönnle) = Kitāb as-Sīyāsāt (read as-Sīyāsa) al-madanīya Hyderabad 1346/1927Google Scholar. Farrukh, Umar, The two Fārābīs, Beirut 1950 (in Arabic), pp. 14–5Google Scholar, gives the Political Philosophy (as-Sīyāsa al-madanīya) and the Kitāb as-Styāsāt al-madanīya as separate works, no doubt misled by the title of the Hyderabad edition. The mistake is an old one. Iba abī Uṣaibi'ah (ed. A. Müller II 139) already lists a Kitāb as-Sīyāsāt al-madanīya, but it is a duplicate entry for the Political Philosophy. On the odber hand, Risāla fi-Sīyāsa ascribed to al-Fārābī, first edited by Cheikho in the periodical ai'Mashriq (vol. IV, 1901, pp. 648–653, 689–700)Google Scholar, is as Umar Farrukh rightly says (ibid.) a different work (cf. also Brockelmann, , Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, Sup. I 376)Google Scholar. The subject matter is, however, in spite of the title, ethical rather than political, dealing successively with a man's conduct towards superiors, equals, inferiors and himself, after a familiar pattern. For completeness'sake it may be added that the ‘Political Regime’ cited in two Nile Press editions by Hammond, in his Philosopky of Alfarati and its influence on mediaeval thought (New York 1947)Google Scholar is apparently the Ideal State.

page 93 note 4 Cited Ibn abī Uṣaibi 'ah II 156, cf. Blachère, R., Livre des catégories des nations, Paris 1935, p. 109Google Scholar.

page 93 note 5 Ibn abī Uṣaibi 'ah, II 138-9.

page 93 note 6 MS. Hunt 307,4 = Uri 102, 4 (120, 3 in Dieterici's ed., p. vii is a misprint).

page 93 note 7 Ibn abā Uṣaibi'ah II 139: Mukhtaṣar fuṣūl falsafāya muntaza'ah min kutub al-falāsifa; Kstāb fī'l-fuṣūl al-muntaza'a. li'l-ijtimā'āt; Fuṣūl lahu mimma jama'ahu min kalām al-qudamā.

page 94 note 1 Vid. transl, infra.

page 94 note 2 Ed. Lippert, p. 280: al-Fuṣūl ai-muntaza'ah min al-akhbār. Dieterici disguises the meaning in rendering Einzelne geschichtliche Abschnitte (Alfārābī's Philosophische Abhandlungen, Leiden 1892, p. 192)Google Scholar.

page 94 note 3 §25.

page 94 note 4 Excluding other works of al-Fārābī which bear on politics, the Kitāb Taḥsīl as-sa'ādah (Attainment of happiness), Hyderabad 1345/1946, and the Kitāb at-Tanbāh 'alā sabīl as-sa'adah (Indication of the way to happiness), Hyderabad 1346/1927. These are less comprehensive and, especially the latter, represent a somewhat different point of view. For the Risālah fī's-Siyāsa vid. p. 93, n. 2.

page 94 note 5 See the most recent bibliography of al-Fārābī by Ahmed Ateṣ in Belleten XV, pp. 175–192Google Scholar, Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, Ankara 1951 (in Turkish).

page 94 note 6 Op. cit., II 139.

page 95 note 1 Die hebräische Übersetzungm des Mittelaters, Berlin 1893. p. 292Google Scholar.

page 95 note 2 Wehēm nibhdālīm kīdhā'ah wehaṣ-ṣikhlüth “and they differ like knowledge and ignorance.”

page 96 note 1 Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. I 13. Al-Fārābī follows Aristotle in basing the division of virtue into intellectual (rational) and ethical (cf. § 7 and following) on the division of the faculties, the analysis of which he carries further. (Aristotle, loc. cit., within the irrational element distinguishes only the nutritive and appetitive.) Al-Fārābī's relatively long account here of the nutritive faculty, which is not called for by the argument, is no doubt owing to his being unwilling to forego what was of interest to him.

page 97 note 1 Sic.

page 98 note 1 Cf. § 51 for “accidents of the soul.”

page 98 note 2 Cf. Aristotle, , Eth. Nic. II 1Google Scholar The following §§ (8-19) arc concerned with the ethical virtues and vices. The intellectual (rational) virtues and vices are dealt with in §§ 30-50.

page 99 note 1 Cf. for the whole passage El régimen del solitario por Avempace, ed. Palacios, Asin, Madrid-Granada 1946, 16–7Google Scholar (Spanish translation, 47-8) Ibn Bājjah's Tadbīru 'l-Mutawaḥḥid, J.R.A.S. 1945, 80–1Google Scholar.

page 101 note 1 The doctrine of the mean is of course also Aristotelian (Eth. Nic. II 6–7Google Scholar, etc.). Al-Fārābī has adopted it elsewhere, see Kitāb at-Tanbīh 'alā sabīl as-sa'āda, Hyderabad 1346/1927, pp. 11–2Google Scholar; Dunlop, D. M., The existence and definition of philosophy ascribed to al-Fārābī, Iraq XIII, Pt. 2, 1951, § 25Google Scholar.

page 102 note 1 Al-Fārābī elaborates Aristotle's view (Pol. I 3) of the constituent relations of the household as master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. Unfortunately he does not make clear what is to be thought of under the “property and owner” relation, now distinguished from that of master and slave. Why this distinction has been introduced can only be conjectured. Does it correspond to milder conditions of servitude in Islam as compared with classical antiquity? Does it derive from some intermediate source? The Arabic version of the Oeconomicus of Bry80n mentions wealth (māl) as one of the essentials of the household, with servants, wife and children cf. Plessner, , Der οίκονομικόδ des Neupythagoräers Bryson, Heidelberg 1928, p. 214)Google Scholar. But we do not know that al-Fārābī had access to this work. The same four-fold analysis of the elements of the household as in al-Fārābī comes later in the 13th century Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī of Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī (Plessner, p. 60)Google Scholar.

page 104 note 1 Cf. Plato, , Republic, II 369dGoogle Scholar, ή άναγκαιοτάτη πόλιδ.

page 104 note 2 Here the ‘Indispensable’ city (al-madīnah ad-ḍarūrīyah) is contrasted absolutely with die ideal (al-madīnah al-fādilah), but aococdiag to al-Fārābī elsewhere it is simply one of sevetal types which stand in contrast with the ideal, cf. Der musterstaat ed. Dieterici, , p. 62 (transl. p. 98)Google Scholar, and at eomewhat greater length Die Staatsleitung, pp. 71–2 = Hyderabad ed., PP. 58–9Google Scholar.

page 107 note 1 Cf. § 7. Al-Fārābī now deals (§§ 30-50) with the rational virtues and vices.

page 107 note 2 Cf. §§ 31-34.

page 107 note 3 Cf. §§ 35-41 (there “practical intellect”).

page 108 note 1 The sober lyricism of this description of the hierarchy of existence is striking.

page 108 note 2 Arabicè shai'īyah an abstract derived from shai' “thing”, cf. Goichon, A.-M., Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sānā (Avicenne), Paris 1938, 172Google Scholar.

page 112 note 1 I.e. the imaginative impulse is from within, not without.

page 112 note 2 For an account of poetry, evidently much nearer to Aristotle than what is said here, cf. Arberry, A. J., Fārābī's Canons of Poetry, Kivista digit Studi Orientali vol. 17 (1937–1938), pp. 266–278Google Scholar.

page 112 note 3 In Arabic masḅat al-karāmah, cf. Lane, , Arabic English Dictionary 2714aGoogle Scholar. I owe the reading and explanation to Professor Arberry.

page 113 note 1 In the Ideal State al-Fārābī gives the characteristics of the ruler as twelve not eix, vid, Dieterici's edition, pp. 59-60 (transl, pp. 94-6). Here they are more schematically expressed, with reference to what has preceded.

page 115 note 1 Text: “in this class” (?).