Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life,
Works and Influence
Abu Nasôr al-Farabi (870-- 950),
generally referred to in the Arabic sources as the Second Teacher (al-Muallim
al-Thani ), occupies a unique position
in the history of philosophy, as the link between Greek philosophy and Islamic
thought. His standing in the history of Aristotelian logic is pivotal; no
logician of any significance arose anywhere during the period separating
Boethius (d. 525), the Roman consul, who translated Aristotle's logical works
into Latin, and Ablard (d. 1141) in Western Europe. Of the Arab philosophers
who preceded al-Fa°ra°bi, al-Kindi (d. c. 866), a great champion of Greek
philosophy, which was in perfect harmony with Islam, according to him, does not
appear to have made a significant contribution to logic, although in other respects
his learning was vast. Al-Ra°zi (d. c. 925) had the highest regard for the
Greeks, and in particular for Plato, `the master and leader of all the
philosophers', but regarded philosophy and religion as incompatible. As the
greatest non-conformist in Islam, he rejected the whole fabric of revelation
and substituted for the official Islamic view five co-eternal principles, the
Creator (Ba°ri ), the soul, matter,
space and time, inspired in part by Plato and the Harranians.
It will be shown in due course how al-Fa°ra°bi, in a lost
treatise on the Rise of Philosophy ,
traced the history of Greek philosophy from the time of Aristotle, as it passed
through the Alexandrian medium, during the Ptolemaic period, down to the
Islamic period and up to his own time. In some of his other writings, he
expounded the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato in some detail and gave a
succinct account of the Presocratics. His own teacher in logic, Yuhôanna Ibn
Hôayla°n, as well as the leading logicians of the time, Abu° Bishr Matta (d.
940), the Bishop, Isra°il Quwayri, and Ibrahim al-Marwazi, are mentioned in the
Rise of Philosophy , given in the
Appendix. However, none of those Syriac logicians had gone beyond the first
four books of Aristotelian logic, the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Categories, De
Interpretatione and the first parts of Analytica Priora, because of the threat
to Christian religious belief that the study of the other parts, especially the
Analytica Posteriora, known in Arabic as the Book of Demonstration (Kita°b
al-Burha°n), was thought to present. Al-Fa°ra°bi was in that respect the first
logician to break with the Syriac tradition; his logical commentaries and
paraphrases covered the whole range of Aristotelian logic, to which, following
the Syriac tradition, the Rhetorica and Poetica were added, as we will see in
due course.
Not only in the sphere of logic, but also in cosmology and
metaphysics, al-Fa°ra°bi stands out as a leading figure. Neither al-Kindi nor
al-Ra°zi had contributed substantially to the systematization of cosmology and
metaphysics. Al-Fa°ra°bi should be regarded, therefore, as the first
system-builder in the history of Arab-Islamic thought. He built upon Plotinus's
emanationist scheme a cosmological and metaphysical system that is striking for
its intricacy and daring. Thoroughly imbued with the Neoplatonic spirit of that
Greek-Egyptian philosopher, mistakenly identified with Aristotle in the Arabic
sources, al-Fa°ra°bi developed in his principal writings, such as the Virtuous
City (al-Madi°nah al-Fa°dôilah) and the Civil Polity (al-Siya°sah al-Madaniyah)
an elaborate metaphysical scheme in which the Qura°nic concepts of creation,
God's sovereignty in the world and the fate of the soul after death are
interpreted in an entirely new spirit. This scheme is then artfully coupled
with a political scheme, reminiscent of Plato's utopian model in the Republic.
In the metaphysical scheme, God or the First Being (al-Awwal ), as al- Fa°ra°bi prefers to call Him, following the example of Proclus of Athens (d. 485), the last great Greek expositor of Neoplatonism, stands at the apex of the cosmic order; but unlike the One (ToŞ hen) of Plotinus (d. 270) or the First (ToŞ ProŞton) of Proclus, who are above being and thought, al- Fa°ra°bi'