Thinker

Al-Farabi quotes

6 passages in English · c. 870–950 · Islamic Philosophy.

Overview

Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (c. 870–950), later called the ‘Second Teacher’ after Aristotle, worked mainly in Baghdad and Syria. He wrote on logic, music, and especially the virtuous city, adapting Platonic and Aristotelian politics to a revelatory community. Selected Aphorisms, The Perfect State, and The Attainment of Happiness form a coherent program of soul-health and civic cooperation toward happiness.

Main ideas

Soul and city share a medical analogy: virtue is psychic health, vice sickness. Happiness is the good sought for its own sake; the excellent city cooperates toward that end. Political science studies voluntary actions and ways of life ordered to human perfection. The first ruler combines philosophical insight with the capacity to legislate for different natures.

Major works

  • Selected Aphorisms
  • The Perfect State (al-Madīna al-fāḍila)
  • The Attainment of Happiness
  • Enumeration of the Sciences

Legacy

Al-Fārābī shaped Avicenna, Maimonides, and Latin political philosophy. He remains the classic Islamic source for the philosopher–ruler and the ranking of sciences.

Themes in this archive

Happiness (2) · Politics (2) · Virtue (1)

  1. The soul has health and sickness just as the body has health and sickness.
  2. The health of the soul is for its traits to be traits by which it does good, fine, and noble actions.
  3. The excellent city is the one in which people cooperate toward the things by which true happiness is attained.
  4. Happiness is the good desired for its own sake; it is never desired for the sake of something else.
  5. The statesman and the king are like the physician: they seek the health of the city as the physician seeks the health of the body.
  6. Political science inquires into the kinds of voluntary actions and ways of life, and into the happiness that is the end of the human being.