Islamic Political Thought

Political Rationality in Farabi’s Thought

Document Type : Research Article (Political Thought)

Author

Associate Professor of Political Sciences faculty at Imam Sadiq University

Abstract

Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Al Farabi is the founder of Islamic philosophy and the greatest philosopher of the Islamic world. Though, among Islamic thinkers, Farabi should be considered as a group of thinkers seeking harmony between reason and religion, but with a description of the earthly divine wisdom of man, inspired by the souls of the grace of the Plotinus, the intellect transcends the intellect beyond the imagination, and compares it with the religious version of the divine intellect and puts it to a higher rank than the creed. The study of political rationality in the sense of understanding the type of role and the flow of reason in the pillars of the political system with this Aristotelian philosopher shows that the starting point of his theory of reason is Aristotle’s book “On the Soul”; but the idealist Farabi is in favor of a unified system in utopia. Using the use of Islam and Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy, he describes the characteristics of a desirable society, a higher classification of society and the problems of the utopian system, Everywhere reason  rules  over other things, a rationale that compared with faith and religion(shariah) has some privilages. Farabi regards happiness as the ultimate goal of the political community and emphasizes the importance of intellect in individual and political ethics. The main question of the article is what is the role of reason in al-Farabi’s philosophical theorem, and how does Farabi make a relation between reason and religion in his political theory? The findings of the article show that reason and rationality play a pivotal role in theoretical philosophy of al-Farabi, being pivotal, descending, ultimate, and along with the revelation and even beyond it in Farabi’s political thought, and religion has a secondary role. Farabi’s approach in this way is philosophical.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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Islamic Political Thought
Volume 8, Issue 2
October 2021
Pages 33-48
  • Receive Date: 03 September 2017
  • Revise Date: 08 October 2017
  • Accept Date: 12 November 2017