Page 16 - Issue 39

ELITE Vol.1, Issue 39, January 2022
Vol.1, Issue 39, January

and maintaining his authority through a logical and ethical and the organs of movement— and even differences in shapes
framework. The fourth is the theory of Imamate or the politics and forms between the same organs as in different mouths,
of theologians (theology) which is essentially research written stomachs, hands and legs.
by Sunni theologians in response to statements presented by Seeing as the Aristotelian analogy is much more complex, the
various other Islamic sects concerning the issue of the state for him also consisted of a larger number of classes: the
Imamate, though particularly to the Shi'ites since this is farmers, the artisans and craftsmen, the traders and merchants,
considered a major principle of their religious creed. the wealthy, the servants, and the rulers and judges.
Eventually, this research became one of the fixed chapters of Abu Nasr Al-Farabi was not the first philosopher in Islam —
theology, although its original focus is on the essence of God, Al-Kindi had preceded him— but he was the one who
His attributes and His actions. introduced the Platonic traditions to the study of authority in the
Islamic cultural space. His contributions added a Platonic
The idea of the cosmion as an essay on the creation of the character to Islamic political philosophy; for to the same extent
world is most evident in Greek philosophy or classical political that Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was considered the greatest
science, as well as in Islamic political philosophy or civil commentator on Aristotle, Al-Farabi, too, focused extensively
politics. For what is called the anthropological principle on Plato. When the contemporary circumstances of his time and
prevailed in Plato and Aristotle's works, where the cosmion had place dictated him to write a book on politics, he explained
been based on the analogy of the city or the political existence Plato's Republic rather than Aristotle’s Politics. Still, the
with man. The anthropological principle for Plato followed the anthropological principle in its Aristotelian form found its way
analogy between the city and the human soul, and it took the to Al-Farabi's Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City.
form of "the city is man writ large." To Al-Farabi, the virtuous city is like the perfect body whose
Accordingly, the three classes that make up the city, the organs cooperate for the sake of continuing and preserving the
philosophers, the auxiliaries, and the producers, are nothing but life of an animal. Just as the body's organs differ in nature and
a reflection of the three driving forces of the soul: the rational, power, with one chief organ that is the heart, the components of
spirited and appetitive powers (reason, spirit and appetite). the city will also differ in their nature and forms with only one
This formulation of the principle represented the millstone of human acting as its chief. Nevertheless, despite these
Platonic political science. Meanwhile, the Aristotelian formula similarities between the body and the city, there still lies a
for this same anthropological principle took form of an analogy difference between them. This difference, in Al-Farabi's point of
between the city and the body, which is a common view. is that the organs of the body perform their actions
denominator between the non-speaking animal and the instinctively, by virtue of their nature, while the actions of the
speaking animal that is the human being. city's components emanate from will power.
Aristotle sees that the state is composed of several parts, just as Yet it seems that, in his other book, Civic Politics or Political
the body is composed of different organs. He likens the Regime, which is the mirror image of Opinions of the Virtuous
existence of differences between the forms of government in City, Al-Farabi had completely abandoned the anthropological
the state to the possible combinations of differences between principle for the sake of building the structure of his book on
the types of organs — like sensory organs, organs for nutrition, what can be called the cosmological or cosmic principle.

15