Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works, and Influence

Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
1 Life and Works......Page 15
The genesis of philosophy......Page 19
Philosophy and religion......Page 21
Presocratics, stoics and peripatetics......Page 24
Plato and his philosophy......Page 25
The philosophy of Aristotle......Page 34
The harmony of Plato and Aristotle......Page 40
The interrelation of the sciences......Page 49
Logic and mathematics......Page 50
Physics and metaphysics......Page 53
Ethics and politics......Page 57
The Islamic sciences......Page 58
The logical corpus......Page 61
The analysis of logical terms......Page 62
The demonstrative art......Page 66
Rhetoric and poetics......Page 69
The nature of scientific knowledge......Page 75
The various senses of the term, ‘intellect’ ( ‘aql)......Page 79
The Active Intellect......Page 82
The Neoplationic legacy......Page 86
The nature of the First Being or the One......Page 88
The intellect, as the first emanation......Page 91
The heavenly bodies......Page 92
The material world......Page 94
The human soul and its faculties......Page 95
Prophecy and the imaginative faculty......Page 97
The attainment of happiness......Page 101
The moral virtues and their acquisition......Page 102
Evil and not-being......Page 104
Justice and friendship......Page 108
The principles of political association......Page 110
The master organ and the master ruler (ra’ıs)......Page 111
The qualifications of the chief ruler (ra’ıs)......Page 112
The virtuous city......Page 114
The non-virtuous cities......Page 116
The outgrowths (nawabit) as a hybrid class......Page 121
Lawlessness and discord......Page 122
Political justice and religious piety......Page 123
The fate of the soul after death......Page 126
9 Al-Farabi and Music......Page 132
The triumph of Neoplatonism......Page 137
Al-Farabi’s philosophical legacy......Page 138
Al-Ghazali’s onslaught on al-Farabi and Ibn Sına......Page 144
Ibn Bajjah and the Andalusian interlude......Page 145
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)......Page 149
Neoplatonism and Sufism......Page 155
Al-Farabi and the West......Page 157
Conclusion......Page 160
Appendix......Page 165
Bibliography......Page 170
Index......Page 175