Comments on Special Issue on Islamic Philosophy, The Maghreb Review, Vol. 40, No.3, 2015

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 41, 2, 2016 © The Maghreb Review 2016 This publication is printed on longlife paper COMMENTS ON SPECIAL ISSUE ON ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY, THE MAGHREB REVIEW, VOL. 40, NO.3, 2015 CHRISTOPHER COLMO* REMARKS ON ALFARABI A single issue of the Maghreb Review offers the reader a multifaceted encounter with Islamic philosophy, and the single name that connects all of the essays in this volume is arguably that of Abu Nasr Alfarabi (870-950; see the biography offered in the comprehensive article by Joseph Alagha, 321-323).1 Let me begin with a tentative summary of my own encounters with Alfarabi over the past twenty-five years. At the end of The Attainment of Happiness, the first part of his now wellknown trilogy, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, Alfarabi presents Plato and Aristotle as having but a single intention. That intention is to provide in their writings a route to the discovery of philosophy and to provide a route to its recovery if philosophy becomes lost. One way to interpret this claim is to suggest that it points us to Alfarabi’s intention only by pointing us away from the intention he ascribes to Plato and Aristotle. If philosophy has been lost or – amounting to the same thing – if it needs to be discovered for the first time by a particular individual, then the most useful books to consult are those by Plato and Aristotle. As Alfarabi tells us in the second part of his trilogy, The Philosophy of Plato, Plato investigates. In The Philosophy of Plato, Alfarabi catalogues these investigations but he does not provide a single example of a Socratic investigation in which Socrates attempts to move from opinion to knowledge. In many, perhaps all, of Plato’s dialogues, these investigations are aporetic. They lead to unanswered questions and additional questioning. According to Alfarabi’s explicit statement at the end of The Attainment of Happiness, it is from investigations such as these that the nature of philosophy can be discovered. Alfarabi offers writings of an entirely differently character. There is nothing like the First Book of Plato’s Republic in either Alfarabi’s Political Regime or in his Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Virtuous City. These political works instruct the reader in the first principles and draw conclusions. They do not dialectically investigate those principles in the manner of a zetetic Socrates. In The Philosophy of Plato, Alfarabi presents his account of even the most sceptical investigations, for example the Meno or the Theatetus, as ending in firm conclusions concerning the possibilities for human knowledge. Perhaps one way to account for this striking contrast is to explain that while Plato and Socrates are concerned with the ascent from * Dominican University, Illinois 1 All page references in the text are to The Maghreb Review, vol. 40, no. 3 (2015), Special Issue on Islamic Philosophy. COMMENTS ON SPECIAL ISSUE ON ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY 317 opinion to knowledge, Alfarabi characteristically speaks of the relationship between opinion and action. As Shawn Welnak makes clear in his very careful article, at least the literal surface of Alfarabi’s text presents demonstrative philosophy as performing a legislative function. Philosophy rules. Such philosophy can hardly be investigative and aporetic in the Platonic sense. It does not end with or primarily concern the ascent from opinion to knowledge. Instead, it is directed primarily at shaping opinions and the actions that result from those opinions. Whereas Plato and Artistotle aim to lead us out of the cave, Alfarabi aims to furnish the cave in a way that is compatible with all that is good in philosophy and with the goodness of those who must dwell with the philosophers in the cave. In Alfarabi’s hands, the furnishings of the cave have the appearance of theoretical constructions, by which I mean concepts that presuppose the discovery of philosophy and science. In problematising this view of Alfarabi, one might begin by questioning whether Alfarabi knew whether Plato’s dialogues were, in fact, dialogues. He refers to them as books, not dialogues. Perhaps Alfarabi knew the dialogues only in the form of summaries, and perhaps their aporetic nature was not visible from these summaries...