Miriam Galston has made a more recent attempt to describe Alfarabi’s manner of writing, and in particular the relationship between his works. Galston suggests that something about the subject can be learned from Alfarabi’s logical works, with a special emphasis on his treatment of dialectic (Galston 1990, 39–43, 48). Galston cites a number of memorable passages about the role of dialectic in fostering philosophical inquiry. By exposing the initiate to a wide variety of different and often contradictory arguments, dialectic prepares him for the pursuit of demonstrative philosophy (40–41). Galston concludes that “both rhetorical and dialectical modes are present in Alfarabi’s treatises, and that the former are subordinated to the latter” (54).
Galston’s conclusion is valuable in encouraging the study and comparison of Alfarabi’s numerous works, each of which is distinct in its own way. But it may be somewhat overstated. For one thing, Galston herself calls it only an “assumption,” and acknowledges that Alfarabi employed rhetorical as well as dialectical modes of writing (Galston 1990, 54). It should be added that Alfarabi may have employed demonstrative, poetic, or even sophistic modes as well. In the Enumeration of the Sciences, all five methods are presented as perfectly respectable uses of the logical art under certain circumstances (ES 103–13). That same work contains an introduction that indicates, if not the manner in which it is written, at least its intended audience (51–53). That audience, which includes both genuine men of science and crude impostors (Mahdi 2001, 66–67), is diverse enough to encourage the view that the work must be written in various ways for various readers.
What Galston does show is that if Alfarabi’s works can all be construed as an introduction to philosophy, then they must proceed dialectically, since dialectical training is indeed the best way to approach philosophy. Yet Alfarabi never proclaims that all his works serve only that function: as we just saw in the introduction to the Enumeration of the Sciences, he regards his varied readership as comprising more than just potential philosophers. In the absence of any indication from Alfarabi that all his works are written dialectically, we cannot corroborate Galston’s assumption. However, Galston’s idea of determining Alfarabi’s manner of writing by means of his logical works should not be discarded. On the contrary, further research in that direction is required. The challenge of integrating Alfarabi’s logical and political works, which together constitute the lion’s share of the writings that have come down to us, may ultimately prove as daunting as the challenge of integrating all the works of Aristotle into a single whole. As worthy as this project may be, it far exceeds anything that I can undertake here. In the absence of such an effort, how can we even begin to interpret Alfarabi’s works?
The lack of any comprehensive account of how to read Alfarabi does not make it impossible to approach my particular topic. Alfarabi’s writings are divided into a large number of treatises, and his treatment of any given theme varies from work to work. These variations might have something to do with the peculiar context and purpose of each work. Indeed, the unique aim and character of any major treatise of Alfarabi could become the subject of a valuable scholarly monograph. Yet in the undeveloped state of scholarship on Alfarabi, such works are generally not at our disposal: apart from Joshua Parens’s thorough interpretation of Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s “Laws” (Parens 1995) and Strauss’s lengthy article on the Philosophy of Plato (Strauss 1945), I cannot name a single one. In the absence of such works and the assistance they might afford, the project of interpreting every single treatise comprehensively within the confines of a single volume appears extraordinarily ambitious.
Three other recently published books on Alfarabi, by Galston (1990), Colmo (2005), and Parens himself (Parens 2006a), have taken a more thematic approach, exploring specific themes throughout Alfarabi’s writings. I follow up on that approach, offering a thematic interpretation of the Umma as it appears across many works. I strive to read each account with the care recommended by Strauss, assessing its depth and completeness while keeping in mind the general argument of the book to which it belongs. I will show that some accounts treat the Umma more thoroughly and satisfactorily than others. Most notably, the discussion in the Book of Letters, which focuses on language, is more revealing about the character of the Umma than the discussion in the Political Regime, which focuses on climate and nutrition. But no one account in any work is complete, so that each needs to be supplemented by others. The Book of Letters gives the fullest account of the Umma. However, with regard to the role of the stories of the Umma in the development of philosophy, it needs to be supplemented by the Philosophy of Aristotle; with regard to the precise relationship between philosophical language and the governance of the Ummas, by the Attainment of Happiness; with regard to the relationship between the Umma and religion, by the Book of Religion; and with regard to the nutrition of the Umma and its relationship to politics, by the Political Regime, Virtuous City, and Selected Aphorisms. By proceeding thus from work to work, weaving together the various strands of Alfarabi’s thought on the Umma into a single whole, I hope to provide a comprehensive account of the Umma’s significance for Alfarabi.
Having described the advantages of this approach, let me point out its most obvious limitation: while I cannot interpret the discussion of the Umma in each work without also considering that work’s general purpose, I am never able to fully elucidate that purpose. At most, I provide some observations that should facilitate the future study of each work. Finally, in dealing with an author of Alfarabi’s profundity and obscurity, some passages will inevitably remain quite dark. Peculiarities that I have not been able to explain have been left to the reader to puzzle over. Is it not encouraging that there may always be new things to say about, and learn from, Alfarabi?
One other feature of Alfarabi’s writing style that merits our attention is its apparent abstraction. The lack of references to specific people, countries, and events may indeed appear daunting. It should become less so if we are able through our own initiative to apply Alfarabi’s general arguments to particular things, from both Alfarabi’s epoch and our own. Indeed, many of Alfarabi’s terms would have evoked strong particular associations among his early readers. To state only the most obvious examples, “religion” would have meant, at least to most of his readers, Islam, while “prophecy” would have immediately recalled Muhammad, as well as the whole gamut of prophets who came before him. In order to grasp many of these allusions, I have tried to familiarize myself with Alfarabi’s historical milieu. Finally, Alfarabi does occasionally introduce particular references of his own. I have always paid special attention to these references, as the most solid indicators of Alfarabi’s concrete meaning. In approaching Alfarabi in this way, I hope to show that he is much more attuned to worldly affairs than many people think.
Alfarabi as a Philosopher Among Muslims
The past century of Alfarabi scholarship has often focused on his role as a transmitter of Greek thought. This applies not only to the work of such scholars as Franz Rosenthal, Richard Walzer, and Samuel Stern, but also to the philosophic interpreter Leo Strauss, whose two most mature works on Alfarabi examine his treatment of Plato (Strauss 1945; 1959, 134–54). These extremely fruitful efforts have laid the groundwork for further research on Alfarabi. I do not wish to deny or even downplay the link between Alfarabi and the ancients, which I will discuss at some length in Chapter 1 and return to throughout the book. However, I do hope to make the case for a more Muslim-oriented approach to Alfarabi, as especially suited to both Alfarabi’s concerns and our own.
While Alfarabi learned from the Greeks, he wrote primarily for Muslims and minorities living under Islamic rule.5 An excessive emphasis on Alfarabi’s Greek and Hellenistic sources risks losing sight of this simple and banal fact. It might have been easy enough to gloss over Alfarabi’s contribution to the understanding of Islam while the religion seemed dormant, and its adherents were still reeling under the yoke of various kinds of colonial rule. Yet with the resurgence of Islam as a religious and political force in the world, and the sharpening of the debate, among both Muslims and non-Muslims, over the interpretation of its doctrines, Alfarabi’s stature as the first great philosophic interpreter of Islam cannot be overemphasized.6