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al-Fārābī

al-Fārābī, who died in 950, was known as the “second teacher”, the first being Aristotle. In The Attainment of Happiness he set out the names the Greeks gave the science: “true wisdom and the highest wisdom … and the scientific state of mind, philosophy (by which they meant the quest and the love for the highest wisdom) … the science of sciences, the mother of sciences, the wisdom of wisdoms, and the art of arts” (53, tr. Mahdi, in Lerner and Mahdi, 1963).

Philosophy, for him, is not complete in the one who knows it: “When the theoretical sciences are isolated and their possessor does not have the faculty for exploiting them for the benefit of others, they are defective philosophy” (54). And the philosopher and the ruler are one: “the idea of the Philosopher, Supreme Ruler, Prince, Legislator, and Imam is but a single idea” (58). The happiness it serves is not of this world: “That which is true happiness cannot possibly be of this life, but of another life after this”, and political science sorts true happiness from “such things as wealth, honor, and the pleasures” (Enumeration of the Sciences V, tr. Najjar).

Demonstration is its method, and the other kinds of argument stand below it. Assent comes either by “certain demonstration or … persuasion”, and “according to the ancients, religion is an imitation of philosophy”; when the same intelligibles are taught by persuasive methods, “the religion comprising them is called popular, generally accepted, and external philosophy” (Attainment 55). What the philosopher knows by demonstration he gives others in likenesses: “They are a religion for others, whereas, so far as he is concerned, they are philosophy” (59). In the Book of Letters (Kitāb al-ḥurūf) he puts the order in time: religion teaches the many by images and persuasion what philosophy found, and philosophy precedes it “as the user of instruments precedes the instruments”, and before demonstrative philosophy came the dialectical and sophistical kinds, “opined” and “sophistical” philosophy, “as the nourishment of the tree precedes the fruit” (108–111). Of philosophy left incomplete, “mutilated philosophy”, he names the holders “the counterfeit philosopher, the vain philosopher, or the false philosopher” (Attainment 60).

He also said how philosophers wrote. In his summary of Plato’s Laws: “the wise Plato did not feel free to reveal and uncover the sciences for all men. Therefore he followed the practice of using symbols, riddles, obscurity, and difficulty, so that science would not fall into the hands of those who do not deserve it” (tr. Mahdi).