al-Faaraabii, Abu Nasr, also called Abunaser, in Latin, Alpharabius (870–950), Islamic philosopher. Born in Turkestan, he studied and taught in Baghdad when it was the cultural capital of the Islamic world, responsive to the philosophical and scientific legacy of late antiquity. Al- Farabi was highly instrumental in effecting a transition of Greek philosophy, last publicly known in its entirety in sixth-century Alexandria, into Islamic culture. Despite ongoing opposition because of philosophy’s identification with pagan and Christian authors, al-Farabi succeeded in naturalizing Western philosophy in the Islamic world, where it retained vitality for the next three hundred years. Al-Farabi became known as ‘the second teacher,’ after Aristotle the main source of philosophical information. His summaries and interpretations of the teachings of Aristotle and Plato were widely read, and his attempt at synthesizing their views was very influential. Believing in the universal nature of truth and holding Plato and Aristotle in the highest esteem, he minimized their differences and adopted Neoplatonic teachings that incorporated elements of both traditions. Unlike the first philosopher of the Islamic world, the ninth-century al-Kindi, al-Farabi was in possession of full Arabic translations of many of the most important texts of classical times and of some major Hellenistic commentaries on them. His own commentaries and digests of the works of Plato and Aristotle made them more accessible to later generations of scholars, even as his relatively independent treatises established a high standard of logical rigor and subtlety for later Muslim and Jewish philosophers. Avicenna found his Metaphysics commentary indispensable for understanding Aristotle’s text, while Maimonides recommended all his writings, calling them ‘pure flour.’ Medieval Scholastic thought, however, was more interested in Averroes and Avicenna than in al-Farabi. Contemporary scholars such as Leo Strauss and Muhsin Mahdi have emphasized the esoteric nature of al-Farabi’s writings, seen as critical for understanding much of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. Al-Farabi’s main interests lay in logic and political theory. He understood that the Organon was just that, a universal instrument for understanding and improving reasoning and logical discourse. Against the traditional grammarians of Islam, he argued for the value-free and neutral nature of Greek logic, while against the theologians of Islam, the mutakallimun, he emphasized the difference between their dialectical type of discourse and the preferred demonstrative syllogism of the philosophers. Much of the responsibility for the separation between Islamic theology and philosophy may be attributed to al-Farabi, who avoided engaging religious dogmas and specifically Muslim beliefs as much as possible. He was able to accommodate belief in prophecy and revelation to a general theory of emanation, though he made no special claims for the prophet of Islam. His general view of religion was that it was a popular and symbolic representation of philosophical ideas, often designed by philosophers. The influence of Plato’s Republic in this and other areas of political philosophy is evident, though al-Farabi’s Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the Best State manages to give an Islamic coloration to Platonic teachings. Al-Farabi’s metaphysical beliefs are more problematical still, and he was reputed to have disowned his earlier belief in the immortality of the soul.
See also ARABIC PHILOSOPH. A.L.I.