Summary of Plato’s Laws

Introduction

The Translation

The Arabic text of Alfarabi’s Plato’s Laws was first published by Francesco Gabrieli, who also translated it into Latin.1 Almost a decade after its appearance, Muhsin Mahdi subjected Gabrieli’s text to a detailed examination and presented additional evidence with a view to a new edition.2 Thérèse-Anne Druart took on the task and brought a painstakingly careful edition of the text to light about a decade and a half ago—its publication having been delayed for several years, a circumstance to which she alludes at the very beginning of the published text. As Druart graciously notes in the introduction to the edition, she was aided in no small measure by Mahdi pointing her to one manuscript and providing a microfilm copy of another.3 The present translation is based on this edition with minor modifications noted when they occur.

A translation of the introduction plus the first and second treatises of the Summary was published by Muhsin Mahdi over half a century ago.4 Moreover, about ten years after that, Mahdi prepared an early version of this translation for use with students. Revisited from time to time over the years, it has now been thoroughly revised in the light both of Druart’s new edition and more recent translations of Alfarabi’s other writings by both Mahdi and myself.

Mahdi’s division of the text into numbered sections, as well as into paragraphs within those sections, has been preserved. The same holds largely for the internal divisions of the paragraphs into sentences. Numbers in brackets in the body of the text refer to the pages of Druart’s text, Gabrieli’s original edition now having been surpassed by Mahdi’s emendations and Druart’s edition. The numbers in brackets at the beginning of some of the numbered sections and paragraphs refer to the pages and their divisions in Henricus Stephanus’s 1578 edition of the Greek text of Plato’s Laws. Similarly, brackets have been used to indicate what seem to be an introduction and conclusion, even though they are not set apart as such in the available manuscripts.

The only other translation of the Summary known to me is that into French by Stéphane Diebler.5 Appealing in linguistic elegance, inconsistent rendering of key terms diminishes its value as a faithful representation of Alfarabi’s text.

In this version, every effort has been made, consistent with good English, to translate the same Arabic word by the same English word and to render Alfarabi’s style in a faithful manner. Differently stated, although the goal is to provide a literal version of Alfarabi’s text, the need for the translation to make good sense in English has never been forgotten. Thus, it has sometimes been necessary to make explicit the antecedent referred to merely by a pronoun or to repeat a term that Alfarabi passes over in silence because Arabic syntax allows such indirectness. Students of Alfarabi are all too aware that this accords very well with his own penchant for elliptical expression. Brief notes are used to explain how key terms have been rendered and to draw attention to instances when liberties have been taken with the rendering of words or clauses. Interested readers may also find the Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossaries at the end of the volume helpful.

The Teaching of the Text

Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws consists of an introduction, accounts of the first nine books of Plato’s Laws, and a conclusion. In the introduction, Alfarabi explains Plato’s art of writing in general and the method he follows in writing the Laws in particular. Alfarabi also sets forth his own method of summarizing Plato’s Laws, points to the two groups of readers for whom the work was written, and indicates the benefit each might derive from reading it. Elsewhere—namely, in the Political Regime, the Enumeration of the Sciences, chapter 5, and the Book of Religion—he examines the place of legislation and laws in the broader context of political philosophy. Here, however, the question of laws, as well as how and why they are formulated, becomes the object of a specialized study. Of particular importance for Alfarabi is the relevance of Plato’s investigation concerning Greek divine laws for the study and understanding of all divine laws. Indeed, Zeus’s role in setting down Greek laws is emphasized at the very beginning of the commentary and reiterated in subsequent passages.6

Although Alfarabi never speaks directly of Islam or its divine law in the Summary, no less a successor than Avicenna draws attention to this link in his popular epistle entitled On the Division of the Rational Sciences. He depicts Plato’s Laws as treating prophecy and the divine law generally, then explains how Arab and Muslim philosophers understand the treatise and the subjects raised in it. Avicenna strives, above all, to explain what the philosophers mean when they speak of law—the term in question being nāmūs, the Arabic transliteration of the Greek nomos. Adamant that they do not use it with a view to deceiving or misleading the people, he contends that when they speak of law or nāmūs, it is traditional law (sunna) that they have in mind.7 This perspective allows him to infer that

through this part of practical wisdom, one becomes cognizant of the necessity for prophecy and the need the human species has of Law [sharī‘ā] for its existence, preservation, and life to come. Through it, one becomes cognizant of the wisdom in the universal penalties [al-ḥudūd al-kulliyya] common to [all] Laws and in those [penalties] particular to one Law or another having to do with one people or another and one time or another. And it makes known the difference between divine prophecy and all of the false claims to it.8

This, from the philosophical perspective, is the context for seeking to understand the way Alfarabi speaks of law in his Summary of what he contends Plato had to say about the divine—and also the human—origin of Greek laws, that is, the way he speaks not only of laws, but also of traditional law and of Law. In asserting that by nāmūs philosophers mean sunna, and then linking the latter with sharī‘a, Avicenna suggests that, at least for them, law is simply conventional. It therefore becomes imperative to investigate what it means to speak of law as coming about through prophecy and revelation. Alfarabi’s skillfulness at presenting all sides of complex issues makes him a most helpful guide in this quest.

Alfarabi’s Access to Plato’s Laws

In recent times, scholarly debate over whether Alfarabi expounds Plato’s text or merely an abridged version of it has engendered doubt about the value of this treatise. Alfarabi’s unique account of Plato’s approach presented in the introduction to the Summary, subsequent innovative explanations of the text, and willingness to make direct as well as indirect departures from it have prompted the suspicion that he may have been responding to something other than Plato’s Laws. Even though there is ample evidence that two Arabic translations of the Laws were easily available to Alfarabi, one by his student Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī,9 neither is now extant. It is not possible, therefore, to determine through textual comparisons which of the two he may have used or whether he actually used either one. Nor is it possible to identify the abridged version of the text he may have used or any other source that may have influenced him. It is known that an Arabic translation of Galen’s Synopsis of Plato’s Laws existed at the time Alfarabi was writing, but that is now lost as well. Precisely because these uncertainties have prompted controversy as to how the Summary is to be read and interpreted—that is, whether one can seek to learn something about Plato’s Laws from Alfarabi’s Summary with confidence or must instead be limited to conjectures about its role in the transmission of Greek texts into Arabic—the history of the question deserves attention here.

For our purposes, it begins with Francesco Gabrieli, the first editor of Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s Laws. Taken aback at Alfarabi’s novel explanations and unusual terminology, he accounted for them by postulating that Alfarabi was more beholden to Neoplatonic and Syriac intermediary accounts than to his own investigations of Plato’s text. Although Gabrieli was aware of Leo Strauss’s probing interpretation of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato, he dismissed the suggestion that this work contained an esoteric teaching as stemming more from Strauss’s ingenuity than scholarly exegesis. Strauss’s success in illuminating Alfarabi’s insights into Plato’s fuller teaching and admirably detailed examination of the arguments within the text notwithstanding, Gabrieli thought he paid insufficient attention to the influence putative Neoplatonic and Syriac sources could have had on Alfarabi. For him, nothing was to be learned from Alfarabi about Plato or Plato’s teaching. The suggestion that Alfarabi might be indirectly addressing the relationship between philosophy and religion and also between philosophy and politics occasioned no more pause than Strauss’s critique of the textual historian who, blind to the possibly nonhistorical philosophical character of Alfarabi’s text, fails to read him with the same care as Avicenna and Maimonides do. Even Strauss’s illustration of how contradictions and repetitions in Alfarabi’s text could be unraveled or more thoroughly explained by recourse to Maimonides fell on deaf ears.10

Shortly thereafter, Strauss indicated how one might read Gabrieli’s own edition of the Summary in order to elucidate the work’s fuller teaching. He indicated the flaws in Gabrieli’s assumptions about influences and—through detailed attention to particular themes relevant to lawgiving addressed by Alfarabi—identified the major subjects addressed in the text, then showed their affinity to questions raised in the Philosophy of Plato. Here, too, detailed analysis of the text itself and precise references to Alfarabi’s arguments allowed Strauss to reveal how much one could learn from careful and thoughtful reading. Muhsin Mahdi’s lengthy review of Gabrieli’s edition, emphasizing Alfarabi’s grasp of Plato’s teaching and the broad extent of his influence on the tradition of medieval Arabic-Islamic philosophy, appeared not long after. Taking a cue from textual historians, Mahdi used their own tools to show precisely what could be learned from Alfarabi’s medieval contemporaries. Moreover, examining more closely the single manuscript—Leiden Or. 133—used by Gabrieli, plus unpublished material from the renowned Arabist Paul Kraus, Mahdi corrected several errors and misreadings in Gabrieli’s edition.11

The decorum and civil address that stand as hallmarks of these exchanges notwithstanding, the fundamental question at issue about how past authors are to be studied and understood is readily evident. Clearly intent on discerning what in Alfarabi’s exposition so intrigues subsequent thinkers within this medieval Arabic-Islamic and Arabic-Jewish tradition and open to learning something new about Plato from Alfarabi, Strauss and Mahdi strove to grasp Alfarabi’s philosophic teaching. Conversely, Gabrieli and those who follow his lead intimated that their grasp of Plato’s teaching is so accurate as to necessitate explaining deviation from it by a commentator—even one of Alfarabi’s stature—in terms of influence from outside sources. To them, Alfarabi is a merely derivative thinker. The interpretive skills as well as enviable grasp of Plato’s teaching plus medieval Arabic-Islamic philosophy displayed by Strauss and Mahdi laid bare the tenuous character of the arguments about extraneous influences on Alfarabi and showed that it was possible to learn about Plato from him, but did not suffice to make the question prompting Gabrieli’s original doubt disappear. Not even the conjectures of Richard Walzer—usually ranked among the partisans of explaining texts by seeking their supposed sources—that Alfarabi must have had access to Plato’s Laws gave pause to those who doubted.12

Quiescent for a number of years, the controversy erupted anew following the appearance of Thérèse-Anne Druart’s research note concerning one of the two additional manuscripts—Escurial ms. 888 (Casiri 883) and Kabul ms. 217—she had consulted for her new edition of the Summary. Comparison of the manuscripts suggested to her that Escurial 888 is an abridgement of the full version of the text such as that found in Leiden 133. For what follows, it is important to note that she nowhere claimed Escurial was an abridgement of Leiden—a point she emphasized in her subsequent edition. Moreover, Druart pointed out that Escurial is about a century earlier than Leiden.13 As noted, factors beyond her control delayed publication of her new edition for two decades, but she shared the unpublished version with fellow scholars—in particular, Dimitri Gutas and Joshua Parens, both of whom were working on the Summary.14

From his own study of the manuscripts, Gutas determined that Escurial could not be a shorter version of Leiden and incorrectly represented Druart as having made a claim to that effect. Then, averring that the treatises found in both manuscripts had to be independent works drawing on a common source, he denied it could be a version of Alfarabi’s Summary and insisted, rather, that it must be Galen’s Synopsis of Plato’s Laws. To support his contentions, he pointed to readings from Plato’s Laws found in Escurial, but not in Leiden, as well as to other readings in Escurial found neither in Plato’s Laws nor in Leiden. The features common to both manuscripts suggested to Gutas that even though Escurial and Leiden (which he presented as Alfarabi’s text) must have used the same source, Alfarabi had surely altered it. For Gutas, then, Alfarabi expands on the common source in ways not reflected in Escurial and takes far greater liberties with it than the author of the earlier manuscript does. Finally, focusing on the way Alfarabi emphasizes acquiring moral virtues toward the middle of the commentary, but somehow overlooking the way the same topic is developed at the very beginning, where Alfarabi explains the goal of Plato’s Laws, Gutas asserted this to be evidence of his debt to Galen and concluded that “the common source … was either Galen’s Synopsis of the Laws, as it left the pen of its translator … or very closely related to it; the precise relationship has yet to be determined.” Oblivious to how he was thereby donning the mantle of the philosophically myopic textual historian caricatured half a century earlier by Strauss, Gutas went on to proclaim his desire to “study in greater detail the Greek exegetical tradition and reception of Plato’s Laws from Posidonius to Galen” and “highlight the precise ways in which Fārābī molded transmitted material to fashion his own philosophy.”15

In 1991, that is, some years before the article appeared, Gutas shared with Parens a draft in which these insights or conjectures were formulated. On the basis of the draft, Parens contended that Gutas had misunderstood Druart’s description of the relationship between Escurial and Leiden, as well as of what each represents; provided insufficient evidence for identifying Galen’s Synopsis as the common source of which both purportedly provide an account; and—in characterizing Alfarabi as merely abridging Galen’s text—failed to appreciate his role as a commentator. Recurring to the very sources cited by Gutas, especially Posidonius and Galen, Parens suggested why Alfarabi may well have known more about Plato’s Laws than he admits.16 Parens acknowledged that pointing to the flaws and logical inadequacies in Gutas’s interpretation was not sufficient to prove Alfarabi did have access to Plato’s Laws, but then went on to pre-sent a detailed interpretation of the Summary based on a comparison with the Laws as the needed evidence.

In the subsequently published article, Gutas nowhere alluded to his earlier exchange with Parens. However, the last footnote did repeat the penultimate sentence of a harsh, ad hominem attack on Parens that appeared in the guise of a book review a year after the article.17 In the review, Gutas not only referred to the exchange; he also scolded Parens like a schoolboy for rejecting his arguments. But he never addressed the reasons set forth by Parens for doing so. Moreover, eschewing consideration of the detailed textual analysis set forth by Parens, he focused solely on the impossibility that Alfarabi might have had access to Plato’s Laws. On the few occasions he did note in passing particular aspects of the interpretation presented by Parens, he revealed patent misunderstanding of Parens’s particular goal and how it related to Plato’s and Alfarabi’s philosophical inquiries. Indeed, at the beginning of the review, he simply asserted that the mainstream opinion about Plato as set forth by Charles Kahn and Glenn Morrow—namely, that for Plato all politics and morals rest on metaphysics—is the only valid opinion.18

Thus, although the discussion centered on Alfarabi’s merit as an interpreter of Plato and Aristotle continues unabated, a sharper and more discordant tone has now been introduced. Absent Steven Harvey and his salutary efforts to reconcile the warring parties, that might mark the end of the story and, therewith, intelligent, courteous, scholarly exchange. With clear reasoning and gentle speech, he has reexamined the arguments of Gutas and Parens by focusing on the third manuscript Druart used for her edition—Kabul, Library of the Ministry of Information, no. 217. Variant readings found in it corroborate the claims by Druart and Parens that Leiden and Escurial are derived from an early version of the same text, Alfarabi’s Summary, and invalidate the efforts by Gutas to view the latter as an abridgment of Galen’s Synopsis. Yet, as Harvey readily acknowledges, such variants raise an important question whose solution might strengthen Gutas’s position, namely, the need to explain what accounts for the variants in the Leiden and Kabul versions as contrasted with those in the Escurial version. In effect, both approaches are conjectural. While the discovery of yet another manuscript might well give new life to the objections and presumptions raised by Gutas, it could also have the opposite result. By chance, Harvey was able to point to a Hebrew text that bears witness to just such a manuscript.19

As the title of his article suggests, this was not Harvey’s main point. Rather, based on anomalies he found in the Summary—Alfarabi’s failure to indicate that Plato’s text is a dialogue between three individuals, the constant use of “he” as though the text were a treatise by Plato, and the overwhelming occurrence of the particle “then” (thumma) followed by a third-person singular verb—he concluded that Alfarabi was most likely not commenting on Plato’s Laws. It is a judgment Harvey arrived at hesitantly and with apparent trepidation, for he quickly noted that it “does not mean that Alfarabi’s Summary cannot help us to understand Plato’s Laws.” Rather, its import for Harvey is “that we must exercise great caution before making or accepting any arguments from silence or other such arguments (just as we ought not to dismiss them too readily).” In this sense, “the importance of the Summary as a guide to the Laws does not wholly depend on whether Alfarabi read the Laws or a good summary or paraphrase of it.”20 Harvey then proceeded in a subsequent article to show how one can read Alfarabi’s Summary with profit—learning from it about Plato’s Laws, as well as about different emphases Alfarabi brings to Plato’s text, but refusing to conjecture about what Plato says that Alfarabi passes over in silence.21

Commendable as these two articles are and instructive as Harvey’s example about how to read Alfarabi’s Summary may be, his reasons for deciding against Alfarabi having read Plato’s Laws are not unproblematic. In none of Alfarabi’s discussions of Plato now extant does he speak about the dialectical character of Platonic dialogues. Likewise, in his commentary on the Republic, Averroes explicitly ignores its dialectical arguments in order to focus on what he calls its scientific statements.22 Moreover, he also uses the pronoun “he” or speaks as though the text being discussed is a treatise by Plato. Finally, in both the Philosophy of Plato and the Philosophy of Aristotle, Alfarabi uses the particle “then” (thumma) followed by a third-person singular verb (referring to Plato in the first instance and Aristotle in the second) to signal the different steps in his own exposition. Our ignorance about Alfarabi’s awareness of Platonic dialogues notwithstanding, we do know he had direct access to Aristotle’s treatises. So this stylistic idiosyncrasy cannot be viewed as indicative of Alfarabi’s uncertainty about a particular text. In short, the anomalies adduced by Harvey are not all that conclusive.

Still, the twists and turns of the debate show clearly that we simply do not know whether Alfarabi’s Summary is based on the text of Plato’s Laws, as he claims, or an abridged version of it. What we cannot fail to note, however, are the remarkable insights Alfarabi provides to this difficult text. Nor can we ignore the most unusual manner in which he approaches Plato’s Laws, just as he explains he will do in the introduction. Such awareness must guide us as we strive to make sense of what he says about law and the way it comes to be as well as what that reveals about his understanding and interpretation of what Plato has to say about the same topics. Given that there are grounds to wonder how good a version of Plato’s Laws Alfarabi might have had before him, it will be prudent to follow Harvey’s advice here and focus on what Alfarabi actually says about Plato’s statements while remaining circumspect about his silence concerning this or that passage in the text. To adopt such an approach for the purposes of this introduction is in no way to impugn the quality—indeed, the brilliance—of Joshua Parens’s interpretation. It provides a consummate illustration of how to pursue the deep philosophical questions raised in a text as complex as Plato’s Laws through recourse to another text such as Alfarabi’s Summary that examines many of those questions even while raising others.

Alfarabi’s Approach to Plato’s Laws

Alfarabi opens his Summary of Plato’s Laws by distinguishing human beings as the species able to determine what is useful and pursue it. They do so, he asserts, by considering how particular incidents point to something more general. It is an observation that privileges inductive reasoning. Reflecting about discrete occurrences so as to infer rules of conduct, rather than striving first to discern the workings of the universe and then deducing what is good and useful, thus becomes primarily important. This does not mean that Alfarabi jettisons the paradigms set forth in the Political Regime, Virtuous City, Attainment of Happiness, Book of Religion, and similar writings, which all point to good rulership as centering on philosophers or kings imbued with philosophic wisdom, but that the focus here on actual political life takes precedence. Consonant with this different emphasis, he draws attention throughout the treatise to the solidly human character of lawgivers and the shortcomings of those receiving their laws. He thus appears especially intent on identifying the components of a good, rather than a best, regime. Given Plato’s—or at least the Athenian Stranger’s, but Alfarabi pays scant heed to the dramatic features of the dialogue—declaration that the regime aimed at in the Laws is a lesser one, perhaps one that can be achieved, such an objective is not surprising.23

Nor does it imply a criticism of lawgiving generally or the divinely inspired lawgiver in particular. After all, as attested by several Quranic verses, imperfect political order stems from divine intention.24 In the Summary, Alfarabi refers not once to the Quran, Islam, prophetic missions, or Muhammad. Much as that silence prompts the perspicacious reader to wonder how revelation does affect lawgiving or what distinguishes divinely inspired lawgiving from that which is not, those topics are not addressed.

Rather, Alfarabi’s discussion of the way human beings reason culminates in elucidation of Plato’s unusual writing style. The reader is not to presume that what Plato does occasionally is what he does always, or even what he does in the Laws. Such at least is the lesson to be derived from the tale of the pious ascetic who spoke truth while pretending to do the opposite and thereby escaped imprisonment, maybe even death, at the hands of an unjust ruler. Yet, if insight into reading Plato is derived from discerning what human error allowed the ascetic to escape, that awareness is equally important for learning to distinguish what is useful from what is useless and what is most imminent from what is less so. Reflection on the three topics raised in the opening sentences of the Summary—seizing on the useful as distinctly human, the need for experience, and greater experience increasing one’s excellence—is made more salient by the intriguing tale of the ascetic, provided one apprehends that its point is the need to distinguish clearly and not the benefit of tricking people. A thoughtful human intent on wisdom must be ever alert to what leads to error. In addition to experience, he must discover how to reason correctly about the link between disparate events.

In using the story to explain how to read Plato, Alfarabi underlines Plato’s reputation for recourse to symbols and riddles as well as his reticence about expressing his opinions in his own voice in the Laws and other dialogues, then focuses on the art or science of legislation discussed in the Laws and vows to extract such hints from it as will help both the one who wants to learn more and the one not able to study and reflect. This affords him an astute way of alluding to the indirect character of his own writing. As he notes early on in the Summary, an adept teacher can use even such apparently useless pastimes as play to instill habits ultimately of use to the one who wants to learn.25

Reflection on the laws that can benefit promising citizens or oneself leads to tangible results only insofar as one excels in applying “the faculty by which” a human being “distinguishes among the causes and objects he deals with and observes.” In other words, one must pay attention both to the way things come to be and to the reason for their being. Just as Plato’s Laws opens with the query of whom to credit with laying down the laws by which old cities are governed, so does Alfarabi’s Summary note the importance of determining causality in such matters. For the Athenian Stranger, who plays such a central role in the Laws, that query quickly gives way to the more important one of what purpose different lawgivers sought to achieve by means of their legislation. Alfarabi also moves from the question of who made laws to the purpose they serve, passing over in silence that both are aspects of causality.26

The remarks of Avicenna cited above confirm that he believed the study of laws and lawgiving to be best approached in such a manner. Alfarabi’s Summary reveals how assiduously he pursues the question posed by Plato’s spokesman in this treatise, namely, discovering the best laws for ruling human beings. One sign of this is his identifying the laws set down by Zeus and Apollo as both nawāmīs and sharā’i‘. The names accorded them matter less to him than the link uniting them in what they aim to establish. Consequently, he goes on to use the terms interchangeably in his Summary and hesitates not the least to term nomos and traditional law “divine.”27 Achieving clarity about a city such as actually to arise requires awareness of the laws good for particular humans living in determinate times and places. Such an inquiry, set forth in the Summary, is distinct from one that searches for the general ends pursued in different kinds of polities or in a city that may exist only in speech—namely, one resembling the inquiry recorded in Plato’s Republic or in the Political Regime and other writings of Alfarabi. Part of what distinguishes the Summary from the Political Regime is Alfarabi’s insistence in the latter on identifying law only as sharī‘a or sunna. His more inclusive approach in the Summary better serves his stated goal of presenting what Plato “intended to explain” in the Laws about laws, lawgiving, and the purposes of both.28

At the beginning of all but the first and third treatises of the Summary, Alfarabi provides a synopsis of the discussion to follow. The seventh treatise stands out as the only one lacking discernible links between its sections and the corresponding book in Plato’s Laws. Treatise 9 opens with the observation that the exposition of the prior eight treatises has centered on the roots of the laws, a term Alfarabi then equates with regulations. Its subject is not, however, the roots of the laws or regulations in any sense, but the things that adorn the laws—a task to be carried out by the virtuous legists. Anomalies notwithstanding, nothing in the accounts of these treatises links them more tightly or evokes a separate teaching.

Alfarabi opens treatise 1 by commenting on how laws are caused, namely, by a lawgiver. He does so, not in his own name, but as an account of what is said in the Laws. This practice he follows throughout the Summary. When he does voice a comment, appreciation, or explanation of his own, it is almost in passing—such that his observations and remarks appear to be mere reports of matters discussed in the Laws. Here, then, he explains that the Greeks hold Zeus, whom they deem the father of mankind, to be the cause of their laws. It appears that all peoples consider their laws to have a divine origin. Yet, as Alfarabi notes immediately afterward, they do so less to identify who set down which set of laws or how that person determined what laws to set down than to denote their uniqueness. Thoughtful citizens will go beyond civic pride so evinced to investigate the purpose of the laws in question.

The Arabic terms translated as “lawgiver” in what follows are wāḍi‘ al-nāmūs and wāḍi‘ al-nawāmīs, while wāḍi‘ū al-nawāmīs is translated as “lawgivers”; the term wāḍi‘ū al-nāmūs does not occur in the Summary, nor do the terms wāḍi‘ al-sharī‘a or wāḍi‘ al-sharā’i‘ occur. (Whether it would be reasonable to speak of either in the plural—that is, of wāḍi‘ū al-sharī‘a or wāḍi‘ū al-sharā’i‘—the terms do not occur.) The Arabic terms rendered as “legislator” are ṣāḥib al-nāmūs and ṣāḥib al-nawāmīs, while the plural is either aṣḥāb al-nāmūs or aṣḥāb al-nawāmīs. For “legists,” the Arabic term is ahl al-nāmūs; but the term ahl al-nawāmīs is never used. Only once does the Arabic term ḥurrās al-nawāmīs wa al-siyāsāt occur; translated as “custodians of the laws and regimes,” it comprises judges, preachers, governors, and advisers.29 The term sharī‘a, either as a singular or plural, is not to be found in conjunction with ṣāḥib or aṣḥāb. Simply put, Alfarabi refers no more to someone setting down a sharī‘a than legislating one. As already mentioned, he does not shy away from identifying the body of law set down by Zeus and Apollo as both a nomos (nāmūs) and a sharī‘a.30 That—given his silence about Islam, prophetic missions, and Muhammad—raises the questions of why some nomoi are denoted as sharā’i‘ (that is, some laws as Laws), while others are spoken of as only one or the other, and what the distinction signifies.

The opinion among Greeks that Zeus and Apollo are gods who set down laws must be what prompts Alfarabi to call their nomoi sharā’i‘. But that is not sufficient to justify calling the law imposed by a conquering king or traditional laws set down by legislators—as distinct from lawgivers—divine and terming what legislators bring forth as sharā’i‘.31 It requires attention to the purpose of the law. Taking the reference to Cypress trees as a Platonic ploy to probe more deeply into the laws “generally known in his time,” Alfarabi transforms the inquiry that first arises, wars and the need to prepare for them, into one about the way such preparation promotes moral virtue among the citizens and even for the lawgiver. He says nothing about the shade offered by these trees, even though this was explicitly mentioned in Plato’s dialogue; nor does he make any reference to the obscurity that accompanies shade and thus, by implication, the discussion that work presents.

Acknowledgment that not all the topics addressed here were actually raised by Plato signals Alfarabi’s innovative procedure. The legal command to wage war is thus said to serve the goal of seeking peace and to promote camaraderie as well as self-control, while the focus of the lawgivers and legislators on educating the citizens in moral virtue and good conduct appears to exclude intellectual virtue, justice, and courage. Although the actions cited here as exemplary of moral virtue limit it at first to moderation, the purview is subsequently broadened. Still, more emphasis is accorded the earlier, limited portrayal of moral virtue than the broader one. Throughout, Alfarabi presents Plato as emphasizing that the law exhorts, rather than prescribes or compels, citizens to aim at what makes them better. Specific statutes encourage them to aim at what makes them better, that is, at moral well-being. Because human virtue—not divine virtue or piety—is the goal, acquaintance with the vices is one path to it. Another is guidance proffered by an agreeable judge who, by means of gentle rather than harsh means, provides for the immediate economic needs of all citizens. To be sure, the possibility of arriving at divine virtue through practice of human virtue is acknowledged. But no explanation of how that might occur is presented. Moreover, even though most of the human virtues are identified and discussed, nothing is said about the divine ones.32

That silence suggests they are not the concern of the law. Though the divine virtues are honored in speech, the sufficiency of properly ordered human virtues makes it unnecessary for them to be pursued. For this reason, it behooves the true legislator—as distinct, it seems, from just any legislator—to ensure the laws are so directed. The good of the political community as a whole, not the achievement of individual excellence, is the goal. A possible indication of just how important it is to pursue such a task is the occurrence of the term “causes” in the two sections immediately following this declaration.33

Two points appear clearly here. First, while the law is for the sake of humans obtaining the virtues, the ones aimed at are the moral virtue conducing to political harmony. Second, this is to be accomplished indirectly. Citizens are to be inculcated in actions that promote virtue rather than subjected to moral rules. Accordingly, lawgivers establish the principles whose application is ensured by the legislators. The causes identified help attain moderation above all, but also foster liberality, courage, gentleness, and asceticism—the latter serving to rein in the passions, nothing more.34

Moral virtue is pursued not for its own sake, but for health of the soul. Its relation to the soul is like that of gymnastics to the body. That said, no fuller image is presented here of a healthy soul than of a healthy body. There is no account of gymnastics for the one or a system of education for the other; and apart from a brief assertion of the need for intellectual acumen, nothing is said about the intellectual virtues or the development of the intellect.35 The focus, instead, is on the moral virtues.

That the habits leading to the moral virtues often resemble their excesses and deficiencies complicates the quest for them. It thus becomes necessary to understand what is appropriate and permissible for each circumstance. Differently stated, the ends pursued do not permit employing just any means. Still, as noted above, to acquire moral virtue intelligently, one must have some awareness of moral vice. The excesses engaged in by others may be observed so as to learn why such actions are blameworthy, as long as the looking-on goes no further. After allowing for such vicarious titillation, Alfarabi immediately returns to the key point: virtue can be acquired only by a person first “driving away the vice that is opposed to it.” The breech of strict moral conduct does, nonetheless, include a passing reference to the benefits disciplined wine drinking can provide.36

Justice must be the premier or most important moral virtue, for Alfarabi insists that none of the others is complete without it. All the same, it is not to justice but to affection or amicability and freedom that the legislator is urged to devote utmost attention. When they are achieved, it is easier for the other laws to be brought about. Although compulsion must sometimes be used in place of education and upbringing or domination have temporary sway, those are exceptions. For “goodness and happiness” to be achieved, rule must be “based on fundamental affection, thorough upbringing, and perfect intellect.” These three are so central to rulership as to provide the sole exception to the precedence usually accorded the city. Indeed, they are as applicable to the household and individual as to the city, an intimation that legislation must consider the particular as much as the general and politics not neglect the individual. Moreover, whereas justice inevitably entails punishments and other consequences that are not noble, nothing of the sort attaches to these three. All the same, a caveat is in order: these three pertain to the rulers, not to the citizen body as a whole. For the citizens, as noted, something less is quite acceptable.37

Properly construed, the law serves not only to improve the citizens but also to keep them in such a reformed condition. It sets the standards for praiseworthy conduct and enforces actions that maintain it. For standards to have any effect, the citizens must be so habituated to them that acting in accordance with them comes to be almost natural. Songs, praise, and blame serve to instill and reinforce the attitudes that promote these standards. The legislator orders all activity in the city with a view to how it affects the moral upbringing of the citizens, the goal being to teach respect for good conduct and scorn for any action that falls short of it.38

In addition to working out the details of the law set down by the lawgiver, the legislator sees to its application and forms the citizens so that they abide by it. Attention to these tasks requires legislators to act somewhat as lawgivers. The habits or traditions the former establish among the citizens so closely resemble those the latter set down that the distinction between the one and the other becomes blurred. Acknowledging, albeit cursorily, that legislators may alter the laws to make them more effective, Alfarabi pointedly emphasizes that awareness of what lawgiving or legislating entails and the skill requisite for becoming adept in either make them akin to practical arts. The point is evident. Less so is his contention that merit or skill alone counts, not actually exercising the art. His passing assertion of divine sanction needed for someone to be a true lawgiver is equally obscure.39

Such questions, tantalizing as they are—especially that of how one can be skilled in an art yet unable to exercise it—must give way to permit the larger one implied by them to be grasped—namely, that lawgivers or legislators do not arise spontaneously. Not only must they have practiced the laws they would prescribe, they must also possess insight into how the citizens will be affected by them. To discern what constitutes lawgiving or legislating, the aura surrounding the lawgiver and legislator must be pierced and the considerations evoking this or that law, tradition, and habit identified. That must be done discretely, perhaps by a preposterous allusion such as to distract the casual reader from the problem of how the lawgiver or legislator comes to know what laws are needed. The education, training, and upbringing prescribed for those who will be formed by the laws must also be considered with a view to how the lawgiver and legislator apprehend what is needed so as to rule their fellows.40 In sum, the blurring of the distinction between lawgiver and legislator makes Alfarabi appear to be intimating that the latter has the same kind of knowledge as the former, that he fathoms the lawgiver’s goals.

That is, indeed, what he contends. It allows him to point to the mystery surrounding how the lawgiver comes to have those goals as well as the knowledge of how to train people in pursuing them. Answers to those questions are to be found no more in the Summary than in any of his other writings, for that is not what Alfarabi is intent on. His quest, rather, is the goals laws aim at and the particular statutes leading to their realization. The stipulation that it must be guided by reason, presented here as merely an assertion made by Plato, is key to Alfarabi’s procedure in this treatise and reinforced by reference to the training or education legislators must receive in political matters from childhood on. Important as it is to identify these ends, Alfarabi says nothing precise about them. Instead, he introduces moral virtue as something like moderation or even self-control. Because political life is so fluid, a lawgiver or legislator must be able to face all eventualities with rational equanimity.

Constant in human life is the pull of the passions. To lead a life in accordance with reason, the one best for humans, that pull must be resisted. Training is needed to help the citizens approximate such conduct. Hence, whatever toils are exacted of them must be mixed with pleasures that encourage such effort. A division of labor between the lawgiver and legislator occurs here as well: the lawgiver investigates the natural origins of moral habits, whereas the legislator seeks the laws that induce citizens to acquire them. Alfarabi buttresses these recommendations and observations with assurances that they are merely lessons set forth by Plato in his presentation, then notes their usefulness and attractiveness to indicate his own approval.41 The education, training, and encouragement in the kind of moral conduct such as to strengthen the soul’s discerning power comes from sound laws. They, explains Alfarabi, speaking now in his own name, come about through the power of discernment a few citizens acquire on their own or “the truth” that most others receive “from their lawgivers, those who follow in their path, those who speak the truth about their laws, those who are good, and those who are righteous.”

Though indirect, the hierarchy must not be ignored. Indeed, it explains the absence of physical and intellectual education in Alfarabi’s Summary. That most citizens do not receive training beyond what allows them to resist the pull of the passions fits with the lesser character of the regime provided for here. It is consonant as well with the way Alfarabi limits the upbringing that fosters intellectual development to legislators and rulers. Citizens of this new regime are to follow the laws set down for them, not engage in making such laws themselves. Nor will they attain a level of human perfection such as to free themselves from body or matter and move on to a noncorporeal existence along the lines alluded to in the Political Regime.42

Adaptation to differences in human character is behind the more audacious suggestion—presented, all the same, as Plato’s—that “the good is only relative, not absolute.” This is why laws vary according to the time, place, and temperament of those for whom they are promulgated. In his own name, Alfarabi modifies or corrects Plato’s formulation. It is the path to the good, the things allowing citizens to achieve it, rather than the good itself, that changes with respect to the setting and people. A fixed standard for judging what is good remains intact, namely, what the intelligent person discerns. Moreover, the possibility of arriving at the ultimate good is never abandoned and is linked to the notion of leading citizens to be obedient to the gods. No explanation for this linking is offered, but it follows closely upon a lengthy digression about the necessity to know the whatness, essence, and indeedness of things like laws, arts, and sciences.43

Alfarabi’s lack of precision about these matters meshes well with the way he discusses the actual founding of the city. He depicts Plato as trying to found a perfect city, terming it a “city in truth,” but is silent about the practical considerations of where and how it is to be established. It must, however, meet three conditions or stipulations: observe the traditions of “the regimes,” have a divine governor, and be populated by citizens possessing praiseworthy moral habits. To comply with the first, the city in question must adopt the traditions of sound existing regimes. Yet none is cited as an example; nor is more said about this condition. The second, one unlikely to be realized, is not explained either—an indication that whatever might be meant by the term “city in truth,” Alfarabi sees no need to speak more about it in this treatise. The only other reference to the kind of city Plato may have had in mind occurs in the subsequent treatise where Alfarabi purportedly cites Plato’s affirmation “This, then, is the city whose existence we wanted from the outset.” It is, from the context, one that provides material well-being for all citizens, ensures equitable distribution of goods, and guards against great disparities in personal wealth. Because justice prevails in this city, it is virtuous; and insofar as it is virtuous and just, it is divine. If acquiring virtue is thus tantamount to being divine, the second condition or stipulation is perhaps not as unattainable as first appears.44

Such an account of the good, the conditions requisite for a sound city, and the political sense of divinity are consonant with the way Alfarabi characterizes laws more generally. He evinces no hesitation in citing Plato’s observation that the floods and calamities of the past, though obliterating peoples and memory of their cultures, allow new ones to come into being through time. Precisely because there is no assurance that the same will not occur again, it is necessary to reflect on such incidents. To corroborate the lesson, Alfarabi could draw on parallels from his own history and culture. His silence suggests that he discerns nothing distinguishing human beings in Plato’s time from those in his own such as to affect laws and lawgiving or legislating.45 It is warranted only if, as implied in two passages of the Summary, all laws—even traditional laws (sunan, the plural of sunna) and Laws (sharā’i‘, the plural of sharī‘a)—are to be understood as deriving from humans. Although Alfarabi presents the second text as a Platonic speech, neither one is echoed in Plato’s Laws. He averts the radical inference to which these statements point by another invention, the claim that Plato deemed traditional law to consist of two sorts. One, adopted by legislators for particular instances, changes according to the circumstances; the other, not varying at all, is termed natural. While the first sort alters according to the people, the time, and the setting, the second is universal and inalterable. Alfarabi’s recourse here to nature as a source of traditional law is astute, the limited scope accorded this particular sort of traditional law—interaction with family and those one has benefitted—notwithstanding.46

Still, traditional laws, however they come about—that is, as customs habitually pursued by human beings at all times and places or as practices they are induced to acquire by a gifted leader—are only that, traditional laws. Of more immediate significance are the laws set down to regulate human action. They are not universal, but particular. No body of laws is valid for all peoples, places, and times because—common features and universal traditional laws notwithstanding—there is such great variety among human beings, their settings, and the practices and rules they follow. Even the Law set forth in the Quran testifies to the necessity that particular incidents be addressed, and this is done in a manner that in no way distracts from—and perhaps contributes to—the more universal teaching. Some verses and, on occasion, whole Suras respond to circumstances faced by the Prophet himself or the fledgling community of Muslims as well as to specific questions. Nonetheless, to forge an interpretation of the Law that preserves the principle of it applying to all peoples, one must acknowledge that it—like any law having such a purview—can be fully implemented only after people have first been prepared to live by it. Differently stated, people must first be trained, educated, or brought up so as to be capable of following its precepts. That concern explains the emphasis on upbringing and education present—albeit in general rather than specific terms—throughout Alfarabi’s treatise. Taking a cue from Plato, he notes that when “the people are good and virtuous,” either by nature or due to this upbringing, “they do not need traditional laws or laws at all and are very happy.” In other words, “only those whose moral habits are not valid and upright need laws and traditional laws.”47

The reason for recourse to laws—understood as arising from convention, custom, nature, or divine intervention—is not only that most human beings lack “valid and upright” moral habits. It is also, perhaps primarily, because they fail to fathom that to live together in harmony they must subordinate their own private good to the common good. Cognizant as they are of the need for political community, they neither know how to achieve it nor are inclined to do what that task requires. Even those who do know enough to prefer the common to the personal have difficulty doing so. The penchant for pursuing their own good too often prevents them from recognizing that it is best obtained through communal effort, and this is especially true when such efforts entail some personal sacrifice.48 Were an individual capable of helping humans overcome these proclivities ever to arise, prudence would urge that such a person’s guidance be followed. Absent that, the best course is adherence to the law and the upbringing or education it provides.

Just before the end of the Summary, in commenting on a topic raised by Plato about punishment, Alfarabi avails himself of an unusual exclamation. Indeed, to declare “upon my life,” as he does here is startling language and almost an epithet. Alfarabi has recourse to it on only one other occasion in this treatise, during an earlier discussion where he aligns himself with Plato’s judgment that only those able to anticipate its consequences find the good pleasant. The observation is then dropped and accorded no further attention.49 Here, Alfarabi proceeds to temper the enthusiasm he has just expressed by observing that Plato’s discussion—one he characterizes as “expansive”—will be useful if it can be “truly expounded” or if “a true commentary on it is made.” At issue is whether a person whose natural disposition apparently compels him to commit a crime must be punished either immediately or in the future. The question, fraught with religious implications, is best avoided. Alfarabi does just that. An equally sensitive subject figures prominently in the next book of Plato’s dialogue. Insofar as Alfarabi’s account does not extend that far, he is exempted from having to address it.

By affirming in the conclusion that his account is limited to the material having come to his attention and referring to the “disagreement among people as to the number of treatises in this book,” Alfarabi intimates uncertainty about their exact number. Still, ought awareness of how deftly he sidesteps the topic of future punishment even while drawing attention to it as a problem, plus recollection of the way he utilizes the tale of the pious ascetic to draw lessons about Plato’s art of writing, lessons he reiterates at the beginning of the first treatise, not raise some questions as to why he places emphasis on such indirectness or even a suspicion that he engages in something like it? Modest skill in arithmetic, for example, suffices to notice that the correct number of treatises in Plato’s dialogue falls between the conflicting claims. Through recourse to additional stratagems, Alfarabi obliquely manages to express appreciation for some Platonic arguments and tacitly substitute his own opinions for others.

The care he takes to distinguish what Plato says or thinks about a particular issue from what he has to say or what he thinks has already been noted. Making editorial comments, expressing judgment about the merits of particular arguments, and ascribing his own speech to Plato are yet other ways Alfarabi personalizes what at first appears to be a conventional report on subjects raised in Plato’s dialogue. Solitary and occasional, they by no means constitute a variant interpretation of the Laws as a whole. Rather, they draw the reader’s attention to select issues raised in the dialogue and intimate how they might appear from another perspective. Having prompted the reader to pause and reflect for a moment, Alfarabi returns to his comments on the text.

There are about seven different sorts of editorial comments or remarks. On half a dozen occasions, Alfarabi makes explicit Plato’s purpose or intention while reporting on what Plato had to say about a particular subject—once even deeming it pertinent to speak both of Plato’s purpose and his intention in the same clause.50 A similar number of times, he emphasizes that Plato “explained” a notion or subject and notes how he went about the task, namely, that he “explained another notion suited” to the subject under discussion, “explained a fair notion,” “rushed on to explain,” employed “useful, clear examples,” “resolved to explain,” or “elucidated this notion adequately.”51 Several other comments, almost two dozen, describe the way Plato speaks about one issue or another, albeit in a tone that evinces no judgment about his procedure. Thus, Alfarabi observes that Plato spoke “extensively,” “at length,” “effusively,” “profusely,” or “a great deal.”52 He does not hesitate to offer critical evaluations as well, charging Plato a few times with having “digressed” from the subject at hand and once of having “carried on an unconnected discussion.”53 Likewise, Alfarabi refers at one point to something Plato “mentioned obliquely” and at another to his having expounded a subject “eloquently.”54 Frequently, he praises Plato for having “mentioned a useful subject,” pointed to a “useful notion” or subject of “great usefulness,” or “commanded something useful.”55 In addition to referencing the usefulness of a subject or notion discussed by Plato, Alfarabi draws attention to their subtlety on two different occasions.56

Alfarabi is highly versatile in the way he expresses his own opinions or judgments. Thus, he employs the adjective “skilled” on several occasions. Once it is to explain what Plato expects of those who examine the “science being discussed” in his various dialogues, and at other times it is to recommend how a physician or legislator described in this manner is to act.57 Early on in the Summary, when discussing the way in which the good is said to be relative, Alfarabi declares: “This is a notion the legislator and likewise the poets and all those who write down their sayings ought to pay great attention to so that they will not be misunderstood.” Much later, toward the end of the work, he qualifies the explanation of how virtues and vices unobtrusively take root in the soul as “one of the most important issues that the legislator ought to take care of completely.”58 His use of the exclamation “upon my life” on two occasions has already been mentioned along with his judgment that the discussion prompting his second recourse to the unusual phrase would be “exceedingly useful” were it to be “truly expounded.” Alfarabi also describes Plato as a “sage” at two points in the Summary. Moreover, when discussing the numerous tasks to be assigned citizens so that a city functions properly, he declares the undertaking to be “equitable” or “an equitable law” and explains that this is “because assigning functions is enormously and completely useful.”59

Indicative as are these editorial comments and judgments of Alfarabi’s own thoughts as distinct from those of Plato, he goes further on two different occasions and attributes to him things he did not say. The first occurs in the opening treatise of the Summary. Explaining Plato’s discussion of the qualifications a legislator or lawgiver is to have, Alfarabi introduces one that finds no parallel in Plato’s text, namely, that “a true lawgiver” is “only the one whom God creates and equips for setting down laws.” Immediately thereafter, his account comes back to what is found in the Laws. Further on, toward the middle of the Summary, in the course of discussing the distribution of land and goods needed by the citizens, Alfarabi declares: “Then, finally, he said, ‘This, then, is the city whose existence we wanted from the outset.’ ” Nothing resembling such a declaration is to be found in Plato’s Laws.60

Whatever text Alfarabi had at his disposal—a translation of the Laws, a translation of part of it, or a summary composed by someone else—he clearly studied it most carefully. Indeed, as he affirms in the conclusion to the Summary, he “reflected on it, leafed through it, and extracted those of its notions that dawned on us and that we knew the sage had intended to explain.” Although he admits immediately thereafter that Plato “perhaps entrusted to his sayings from which we extracted these notions subtleties, details, and useful notions that are several times more than what we mentioned,” he is nonetheless confident that “he did intend to explain what we brought forth.” As is evident from a consideration of the several stratagems Alfarabi employed to emphasize one aspect of the text or another and to enhance it on occasion, he accomplished precisely what he sets forth here as his intention.

Alfarabi’s investigations of laws and lawgiving demonstrate why such an inquiry is best begun from Plato’s own discussion of these topics. Although Alfarabi alludes to their importance for revealed religion, especially that of his own day, he goes no farther here or anywhere else. If, to borrow a phrase from Leo Strauss, Alfarabi draws on “Platonic standards for judging, or criticizing, specific Islamic institutions,” he does so only indirectly.61 To be sure, a critique of Islam may be inferred from Alfarabi’s silence about Islam insofar as the city outlined here is distinct from one guided by divine law or by a lawgiver who has received revelation. It is, moreover, less than a virtuous city or even one such that its citizens can aspire to the highest human excellence. Moderation is the highest virtue they can hope to achieve. To envisage the alternative to a city like this, it is necessary to reflect on the best or true city whose contours are presented in the Political Regime. Precisely because such an undertaking entails reflection on Alfarabi’s other political writings, the teaching of this treatise points as much to an indirect defense and explication of the reasoning behind revealed religion as to a criticism of it. That he forces a thoughtful reader to raise such questions and to weigh judiciously the alternatives, even as he allows the inattentive one to ignore the enigmas that give pause, is at the heart of his appeal—something Leo Strauss learned from Averroes and Maimonides, then sought to pass on through his interpretation of Alfarabi. Central to Strauss’s exposition in “Farabi’s Plato,” for example, is an account of how Alfarabi presents philosophy in the Political Regime within a political context much as Plato did in the Republic and Laws.62 Hopefully, the preceding analysis of Alfarabi’s Summary has shown to what extent it is as philosophic as it is political.

The detailed, almost laborious, examination of Alfarabi’s novel use of Plato that Strauss initiated sought to explore both what political philosophy entails and how it has been passed on across boundaries erected by time and culture. That approach is resisted within the academic community as much today as when first presented. There are three reasons for that, all rooted in difference of opinion about how to study philosophy and its history.

Most compelling is reluctance to probe for a philosophical interpretation of Alfarabi’s writing and insistence on searching for thinkers and trends that might have influenced him, not least because it promises greater certainty through what it adds to, or corrects about, the historical record of what is known about the writings or authors accessible to him. Conviction that Alfarabi’s understanding of politics is grounded in a metaphysical teaching he has taken over from Plato or Aristotle is another. A third is the denial that an author intentionally says different things about the same subject, either for political reasons or out of concern about the consequences a particular phrase might have.

Dominic O’Meara and Philippe Vallat best exemplify the first two approaches. Rejection of Alfarabi having anything like an esoteric teaching prompts Vallat first to probe for clues to Alfarabi’s putative sources, then to misrepresent the arguments adduced by Strauss and Mahdi. Denying that Alfarabi had access to Plato’s Laws solely on the authority of Gutas, Vallat derives his political teaching from metaphysical premises stemming from Neoplatonic sources that are based on his logical teaching. For Alfarabi’s Neoplatonism, Vallat notes his indebtedness to O’Meara’s study of its strands permeating the political thought of authors ranging from Plotinus to Alfarabi. O’Meara considers al-Madīna al-Fāḍila, or Virtuous City, to be Alfarabi’s most important writing, but his novel title for the work—Best State—misses both the character of the polity in question and Alfarabi’s evaluation of its quality.63 Cecilia Martini Bonadeo offers a vigorous defense in favor of reading Alfarabi without attention to nuance and insists that any difference in the expression he gives an idea must be due to the sources at his disposal or the way his thought evolved over time, while Charles Genequand grounds his refusal to consider Alfarabi as a philosopher or qualified interpreter of Plato or Aristotle on a dismissal of Strauss’s “Farabi’s Plato” because it has not been appreciated by most scholars. He then demonstrates that he has either not read it carefully or failed to understand its argument; the alternative reading he proposes ignores the subjects Alfarabi raises in the texts addressed in the Philosophy of Plato.64

Neither Massimo Campinini nor Ulrich Rudolph resists Strauss or the attempt to explain Alfarabi’s teaching in quite the manner of their colleagues. In his attempt to identify the contours of a political theology in Alfarabi, Campinini readily acknowledges that his analysis may be flawed. Rudolph’s masterful article on Alfarabi presents an overview of what the sources tell us about the life and works of the “second teacher,” a detailed list of his writings, a summary of the teaching set forth in those writings, and an account of the interpretations proposed by the scholars who have written on them. He elucidates these various positions fairly, while suggesting how he understands their merits given his own reading of Alfarabi, and errs only insofar as he reads Alfarabi too literally. That is, he fails to ask how statements that accord with popular opinions can possibly make intelligent sense and takes too seriously Alfarabi’s provocative, perhaps even fanciful, assertions about theory guiding practice.65

Criticisms notwithstanding, a new era of exchange is dawning. Just as Strauss and Mahdi vigorously opposed the approach of Gabrieli while eschewing ad hominem or other invective, so has such decorum recently been returned to academic discussion about these contested issues.

Helpful as it was to open this analysis of Alfarabi’s Summary by turning to Avicenna, it may be equally salutary to close it by calling on Averroes for the guidance he offers concerning the political significance of laws or, more precisely, Laws. Rising to the defense of the philosophers—Alfarabi and Avicenna in particular—against Alghazali’s attacks on them in his Incoherence of the Incoherence, a lengthy and detailed rebuttal to Alghazali’s accusations set forth in the Incoherence of the Philosophers, Averroes begins by emphasizing that the philosophers deem Laws central to sound political governance. Indeed, they are

of the opinion that the Laws direct to the governance of people by means of which a human being exists insofar as he is human and obtains the happiness particularly characteristic of a human being. That is because the Laws are necessary for the existence of the human moral virtues, theoretical virtues, and practical arts.

Averroes goes on to explain the importance of these three things to the philosophers. To obtain the theoretical virtues and the practical arts, humans have need of moral virtue. It is evident that they require practical arts in order to obtain basic goods. The theoretical virtues allow them to understand what they need for their lives to be full and rich. And it is through the teaching of the Laws and the requirements set down in them that human beings obtain the moral virtues. For all these reasons, Averroes insists that the philosophers are great defenders of the Laws:

In sum, the philosophers are of the opinion that the Laws are the necessary political arts whose principles are taken from the intellect and Legislation, especially those that are common to all the Laws.

Finally, even though the philosophers hold that some individuals are more intelligent and gifted than others, they are aware that the well-being of all citizens is the most important political goal and therefore defend the teaching for all presented in the Laws.66

1. Alfarabius, Compendium Legum Platonis, trans. and ed. Franciscus Gabrieli, Plato Arabus, vol. 3 (London: Warburg Institute, 1952).

2. Muhsin Mahdi, “The Editio Princeps of Farabi’s Compendium Legum,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20, no. 1 (1961): 1–24.

3. “Le sommaire du livre des ‘Lois’ de Platon awāmi‘ Kitāb al-Nawāmīs li-Aflāṭūn) par Abū Nar al-Fārābī,” trans. and ed. Thérèse-Anne Druart, in Bulletin d’Études Orientales 50 (1998): 109–155.

4. See Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, 1st ed. (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 83–94. The introduction has been republished in the new edition of that work, Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 72–73.

5. See Le compendium des Lois de Platon, trans. Stéphane Diebler, intro. Pauline Koetschet, in Al-Fārābī, Philosopher à Baghdad au Xe siécle, ed. Ali Benmakhlouf and Pauline Koetschet (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2007), 130–191.

6. Summary, 1.1 with 1.7 and 1.9.

7. Avicenna adds that by traditional law, the philosophers mean “established and fixed example” as well as “the coming-down of revelation,” then notes that “the Arabs also call the angel that brings down the revelation a nāmūs”; see Fī Aqsām al-‘Ulūm al-‘Aqliyya, in Tis‘ Rasā’il (Cairo, 1908), 108:2–6; English, “On the Division of the Rational Sciences,” trans. Muhsin Mahdi, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 97:21–25 (1st ed.) or 75b:35–76a:5 (2nd ed.).

  Those who agree with Avicenna that nāmūs signifies the messenger who brings revelation often cite a discussion between Muhammad and Waraqa bin Nawfal, the uncle of his wife Khadija. According to Ibn Hisham, Khadija took Muhammad to meet Waraqa, who was then Christian, to inquire about the being who spoke to Muhammad in the Cave of Hira. On hearing his description, Waraqa is reported to have said, “There hath come unto Muhammad the greatest Nāmūs, even he that would come unto Moses.” See Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1983), 44. In an explanatory footnote to the word nāmūs, Lings says: “The Greek Nomos, in the sense of Divine Law or Scripture, here identified with the Angel of Revelation.”

 Indeed, Christian Arabs use nāmūs to refer to the archangel Gabriel and understand the term to mean “the carrier of the secret.” Thus, Cyril Glasse identifies it as “an archaic term, borrowed from the Christians, for Being, or the personal God.” He continues: “It was personified as an Angel who imparted knowledge or brought revelations. This was the Angel, one could say, of intellection, or knowledge obtained through the universal contents of the mind being brought into consciousness in the lightning flash of recognition, a ‘natural’ revelation… . Waraqah … identified the Angel bringing revelations to the Prophet as the Namus” (Glasse’s italics). See Cyril Glasse, article nāmūs, in Concise Encyclopaedia of Islam (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1989).

 Others think the term refers only to the message itself or to the Law revealed to Muhammad. Key for them is that the Quran invariably identifies the one who delivers the message as al-rūḥ al-amīn, rūḥ al-qudus, al-rūḥ, or simply Jibrīl. Alfarabi’s discussion of the active intellect in the Political Regime, above (sec. 3, n. 3), likening it to al-rūḥ al-amīn and rūḥ al-qudus, may be an allusion to that opinion.

8. Aqsām, 108:6–10; “Division,” 97:26–32 or 76a:5–b:7.

9. See Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Gustav Flügel (Beirut: Maktabat Khayyāṭ, 1964), 246.

10. See Alfarabius, Compendium Legum Platonis, ix–xii and xiii, n. 6, with Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 357–393, esp. 363–385 (note Strauss’s explicit digression at 375–377) and 389–393.

11. See Leo Strauss, “How Fārābī Read Plato’s Laws,” in What Is Political Philosophy (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 139–144, 147–150, 150–152; also Mahdi, “Editio Princeps,” 2–10, 10–15, 15–24.

12. Richard Walzer, “Platonism in Islamic Philosophy,” in Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 238, 243–247.

13. Thérèse-Anne Druart, “Un sommaire du sommaire Farabien des Lois de Platon,” in Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 19 (1977): 43–45. The Escurial ms. is from the end of the twelfth century or beginning of the thirteenth CE, while the date found in the Leiden ms. (692 AH) shows it to be from the end of the thirteenth. The Kabul ms. is much later, 999–1000 AH (1590–1592 CE). See also Alfarabi, “Le sommaire,” 116.

14. See Alfarabi, “Le sommaire,” 109, note to title.

15. Dimitri Gutas, “Galen’s Synopsis of Plato’s Laws and Fārābī’s Talkhīṣ,” in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism: Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences, ed. Gerhard Endress and Remke Kruk (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1997), 103, 109–110, 117–119. For Alfarabi’s discussion of the importance of moral virtue, see the translated text below, 5.7 (treatise 5, section 7); his earlier remark about the salience of this issue occurs at 1.16 (with n. 8) and apparently refers to Plato, Laws 1.641b–d.

16. Joshua Parens, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s “Laws” (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), xxxi–xxxiv.

17. Dimitri Gutas, “Fārābī’s Knowledge of Plato’s Laws,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 4, no. 3 (1998): 405–411.

18. Thoughtful readers interested in the problems besetting textual interpretation, especially concerning philosophical texts of such complexity, will profit greatly from the guidelines Parens sets forth in his introduction about how to read this particular text of Alfarabi; see Metaphysics as Rhetoric, xxvi–xxviii. A more balanced review of the book appeared in Speculum 73, no. 3 (July 1998): 881–883.

19. Steven Harvey, “Did Alfarabi Read Plato’s Laws?” in Medioevo: Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 28 (2003): 54–61, 65–68.

20. Ibid., 64–65.

21. Steven Harvey, “Can a Tenth-Century Islamic Aristotelian Help Us Understand Plato’s Laws?” in Plato’s Laws: From Theory to Practice, ed. S. Scolnicov and L. Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2003), 325–330.

22. Averroes, Averroes on Plato’s “Republic,” trans. Ralph Lerner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 21:3–4.

23. Plato, Laws 5.739a–b and c–e; cf. Summary, 4.1–3, 5.14–15, 6.1, 6.3, and the references to Greek regimes mentioned by Alfarabi’s Plato at 3.11 and 4.6.

24. Quran 5:48, 10:19, 16:93, 42:8.

25. Summary, 1.18, and consider the introduction to the Enumeration of the Sciences presented below in appendix A.

26. See Alfarabi, Attainment of Happiness, sec. 59, in Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); the term translated there as “legislator,” wāḍi‘ al-nawāmīs, seems to be used more precisely in the Summary to signify “lawgiver,” and that is the way it is rendered. In “Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Maïmonide et de Fârâbî,” Revue des Études Juives 197 (1935): 22, Leo Strauss loosely paraphrases Deuteronomy 30:11–14 to illustrate Maimonides’ emphasis on seeking the purpose of the Law, rather than its origin, in Guide of the Perplexed, 2.39–40: “Que la révélation de la Tora soit un miracle ou un fait naturel, que la Tora soit venue du ciel ou non—dès qu’elle est donnée, elle est ‘non pas au ciel’ mais ‘très près de toi, dans ta bouche et dans ton coeur afin que tu la pratiques.’ Non pas le mystère de son origine, dont la recherche conduit ou bien à la théosophie ou bien à l’‘épicuréisme,’ mais sa fin, dont la compréhension garantit l’obéissance à la Tora, est accessible à la raison humaine. Guidé par cette conception, Maïmonide, après avoir exposé que la prophétie de Moïse se distingue en tant que prophétie législatrice de celle des autres prophètes, aborde au chapitre suivant (40) la question fondamentale concernant la fin, la raison de la loi.” Consider also Strauss’s January 20, 1938 letter to Jacob Klein, Leo Strauss Ge-samelte Schriften, Band 3: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften-Briefe, ed. Heinrich Meier and Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2001), 545: “Maimonides wird immer aufregender. Er war ein wirklich freier Geist. Er hat natürlich die Legende von der jüdischen Herkunft der Philosophie nicht geglaubt. Was war dann aber Moses für ihn? Es ist tatsächlich schwer zu sagen. Die cruciale Frage war für ihn nicht Weltschöpfung oder Weltewigkeit (denn er war von der Weltewigkeit überzeugt), sondern, ob der ideale Gesetzgeber Prophet sein muss. Und diese Frage hat er—verneint, wie Farabi vor ihm und Averroës gleichzeitig getan haben. Es ist sehr schwierig, das zu beweisen, da er die Fragen in exegetischer Form diskutiert.” (Emphasis in the original.)

27. See Summary, 1.1, 1.9 (Zeus and Apollo); 1.9, 2.8, 4.13, 7.2 (sharī‘a/sharā’i‘, nāmūs/nawāmīs); 1.7, 1.12, 2.1 (in two places), 3.4 (nāmūs as “divine”); 4.4, 5.1, 5.12, 5.18 (sunna as “divine”). Similarly, in the Book of Letters, he evinces no compunctions about speaking of the laws legislated (sharra‘a) by God as nawāmīs or nomoi; see Alfarabi, Book of Letters, part 1, chap. 17, sec. 106, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (forthcoming); for the Arabic text, see Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-Ḥurūf, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1969). A revised edition of the Arabic, based on new manuscript evidence, will accompany the forthcoming English translation.

28. See Summary, “Conclusion”; also Strauss, “How Fārābī Read Plato’s Laws,” 141; Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), 15.

29. The term “lawgiver” occurs seven times and “lawgivers” twice, with the latter being referred to indirectly once. For “lawgiver,” see Summary, 1.7, 1.14, 1.15 (twice), 2.1, 3.2, 3.13. For “lawgivers,” see 1.2, 1.20; the indirect reference is at 1.12. Dominating the discussion is the term “legislator,” for it occurs in the singular and plural sixty times and is referred to indirectly 3 times: 1.7 (twice), 1.8, 1.19, 1.21, 1,25, 2.1 (five times), 2.2, 2.8, 3.7 (twice), 3.13 (twice), 3.14 (twice), 4.3, 4.13, 4.14, 4.16, 5.3, 5.14, 5.18, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 (three times), 6.6, 6.8, 6.12, 6.14, 6.15, 6.18, 6.20, 7.1, 7.5, 7.7, 7.10, 7.11 (four times), 7.12 (twice), 7.13 (three times), 7.14, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7 (twice), 8.12, 8.13, 9.1, 9.7. The indirect references occur at 2.2, 6.5, 7. 2. The term “legists” occurs only at 6.17 and 9.2; and the term “custodians of the laws and regimes” occurs only at 6.10.

30. Ibid., 1.9.

31. See ibid., 1.1, 1.9, with 3.4, 7.2, 5.18.

32. See ibid., 1.3–4, 1.6–9, 1.22, 2.1, 2.9, 4.2, 5.7–9, 5.18, 6.15, 8.5; and consider especially 2.7, 3.14, 5.14.

33. Ibid., 1.8, 1.9.

34. See ibid., 1.7–8, 1.19, with 6.14. By overestimating the role of formal institutions, Patricia Crone and Dimitri Gutas miss the significance of education in Alfarabi’s political teaching. See “Al-Fārābī’s Imperfect Constitutions” and “The Meaning of madanī in al-Fārābī’s ‘Political’ Philosophy,” in Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, 57 (2004), The Greek Strand in Islamic Political Thought: Proceedings of the Conference held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 16–27 June 2003, ed. Emma Gannagé, Patricia Crone, Maroun Aouad, Dimitri Gutas, and Eckart Schütrumpf, 191–228 and 259–282, respectively.

35. See Summary, 1.21 with 2.8, end; also 2.7. The importance of excellent discernment is explained in Al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-Tanbīh ‘alā Sabīl al-Sa‘āda, ed. Ja‘far Āl Yāsīn, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Manāhil li-al-Ṭibā‘a wa al-Nashr wa al-Tawzī‘, 1987), 77:4–78:14; for an English translation, see Directing Attention to the Way to Happiness, trans. Jon McGinnis and David C. Reisman, in Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), 117, secs. 31–32.

36. Summary, 1.24; also 1.22–23.

37. See ibid., 3.13–15, 4.4–6, 9.9, with 9.2–3, 6, 8. In Selected Aphorisms, aphs. 61–62, 63–65, Alfarabi links affection (or love, the Arabic term is maḥabba) with justice; see Alfarabi, The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Arabic text, Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Fuṣūl Muntaza‘a, ed. Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1971).

38. See Summary, 4.2, 4.16, 5.18, 8.7, 9.7.

39. Ibid., 1.14, 6.14, with 2.7. Aristotle’s observation that knowing and understanding are more important to the practice of an art than experience, because they provide awareness of why a thing is and experience only that it is (Metaphysics 1.1, 981a23–30, 981a30–b9, 981b30–982a2; 5.1, 1013a25–b3; 6.1, 1026a18), should be considered here. See also Alfarabi, Book of Letters, part 2, chap. 19, secs. 112–113.

40. See Summary, 1.15–16, 18–19, 25.

41. See ibid., 1.20–24, 2.1, 3.7–12.

42. See above, Political Regime, sec. 81, and introduction, 17–18. Appropriately, nothing is said about the goal aspired to by the pious ascetic mentioned in the opening lines of the Summary.

43. See Summary, 2.2–4, 7, 9. For the term “indeedness,” see ibid., 2.7, n. 18.

44. See ibid., 4.1, 5.15, with 5.13–14; see also 4.7, 5.18. The term “divine” occurs twenty-five times in Alfarabi’s Summary: 1.7 (six times), 1.12, 2.1 (three times), 3.4, 3.11, 4.1, 4.4, 4.7 (twice), 5.1 (three times), 5.9, 5.12 (twice), 5.18 (twice), and conclusion.

45. See ibid., 3.1–2. In the Quran, Sura Noah (Sura 71) relates Noah’s failed attempt to save his people from the flood; and there are numerous other references to the story. See Quran 7:59–64, 10:71–73, 11:25–49, 19:58–63, 21:76–77, 23:23–32 and 33–41, 25:35–40, 26:105–122 and 123–140, 29:14–22, 37:75–82, 46:21–26, 51:46, 54:9–15, 57:26–27. The disasters befalling the people of Pharaoh and Lot are also enumerated, as are those that occurred to the people of Ād and Thamūd. Alfarabi’s mention of “the original work on which this book [the Laws] is based,” at Summary 3.2, may refer to Plato’s Timaeus (22b–23c) or Critias (109d–e, 111e–112a). When he discusses these dialogues in the Philosophy of Plato (secs. 33–35), he is silent about the issue; see Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.

46. See Summary, 5.18, 7.2, 7.14. See also Montesquieu, On the Spirit of the Laws, bk. 26, chap. 2; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, bk. 2, chap. 12, end.

47. Summary, 9.7; see also ibid., 8.6–8. In Kitāb al-Tanbīh ‘alā Sabīl al-Sa‘āda, Alfarabi notes that the science of politics (‘ilm al-siyāsa) thoroughly investigates how citizens can be led to develop virtuous moral habits either through an education that helps them perform noble actions and avoid base ones or by means of punishment; see 70:2–72:14, 72:14–73:2; English trans., 114–115, secs. 22–26. See also Muhsin S. Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundations of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 136–137 and 138–139. Cf. Quran, Suras 8–9, 24, 30, 33, 48, 49, 58, 59, 63, 80, 105; also 1 Timothy 1:8–11; Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, bk. 1, chap. 3; Abraham Lincoln, first inaugural address, March 4, 1861: “No organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions.”

48. For Alfarabi, speaking in his own name, providing for common needs and levying taxes are “among the most important considerations of the city,” whereas understanding how the virtues and vices “creep stealthily into the soul” is “one of the most important issues that the legislator ought to take care of completely”; see Summary, 6.17, 8.6.

49. See ibid., 9.9, 2.3.

50. For “purpose,” see ibid., 1.3, 2.8, 9.9; for “intention,” 1.3, 5.14, 8.13.

51. See ibid., 2.9, 3.7, 3.15, 5.4, 6.1, 6.9.

52. For “extensively,” see ibid., 2.6, 3.13, 5.4, 5.9, 5.18 (in two places), 6.3, 6.13, 6.19, 7.1, 7.10, 8.8, 9.8; for “effusively,” 2.8, 4.10, 6.3c, 7.11, 7.14, 8.5, 9.9; for “at length,” “profusely,” and “a great deal,” each mentioned only once, see 2.8, 6.19, 8.5.

53. Plato is said to have “digressed” at ibid., 6.12, 6.17, 7.7, 8.10, while the singular reference to his carrying on “an unconnected discussion” is at 9.9.

54. For the first, see ibid., 1.9; and 5.12 for the second.

55. References to Plato having “mentioned a useful subject” occur at ibid., 1.23, 2.8, 4.10, 5.4, 5.12, 6.8, 6.10, 6.12, 9.9 (twice), and conclusion; to him speaking of “a useful notion” at 3.14, 5.12, 6.8, 9.9 (twice); references to a subject of “great usefulness” and to Plato having “commanded something useful” are at 4.10 and 6.12, respectively.

56. See ibid., 6.7, 8.1. The discussion immediately following the latter comment is, itself, also subtle.

57. See ibid., introduction 2, 2.1 (twice), 4.3, 6.5, 8.8.

58. See ibid., 2.2, 8.6.

59. For the references to Plato as a “sage,” see ibid., 5.18 and conclusion. The judgment concerning the assigning of functions occurs at 6.10.

60. See ibid., 1.14, 5.15.

61. See Strauss, “How Fārābī Read Plato’s Laws,” 144: “The Laws is not a book of whose content one can merely take cognizance without undergoing a change, or which one can merely use for inspiring himself with noble feelings. The Laws contains a teaching which claims to be true, i.e. valid for all times. Every serious reader of the Laws has to face this claim. Every Muslim reader in the Middle Ages did face it. He could do this in at least three different ways. He could reject Plato’s claim by contending that Plato lacked completely the guidance supplied by Revelation. He could use the Platonic standards for judging, or criticizing, specific Islamic institutions, if not for rejecting Islam altogether. He could contend that Islam, and Islam alone, lives up to the true standards set forth by Plato, and on this basis elaborate a purely rational justification of both the content and the origin of Islam.”

62. See Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 358–359.

63. See Philippe Vallat, Farabi et l’école d’Alexandrie: Des prémisses de la connaissance à la philosophie politique (Paris: Vrin, 2005), 60, 85–152, 370–371, esp. 151, n. 4; Dominic J. O’Meara, Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), 185–197.

64. See Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, ed. and trans., al-Fārābī: L’armonia delle opinioni dei due sapienti, il divino Platone e Aristotele (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2008), 21–23; Charles Genequand, “Le Platon d’al-Fārābī,” in Lire les dialogues, mais lesquels et dans quel ordre: Définitions du corpus et interprétations de Platon, ed. Anne Balansard and Isabelle Koch (Bonn: Academia Verlag Sankt Augustin, 2013), 105–106.

65. See Massimo Campinini, “Alfarabi and the Foundation of Political Theology in Islam,” in Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, ed. Asma Afasaruddin (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011), 35–52; and Ulrich Rudolph, “Abū Nasr al-Fârâbî,” in Die Philosophie in der islamischen Welt, Band I: 8.—10. Jahrhundert, ed. Ulrich Rudolph, with Renate Würsch (Basel: Schwabe, 2012), 363–457, esp. 446–447.

66. These passages are from Averroès, Tahafot al-Tahafot (L’Incohérence de L’Incohérence), 3rd ed., ed. Maurice Bouyges (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1992), 580:2–5 and 11–13. The translation of them, as well as of the larger passage in which they occur—the concluding pages of Averroes’s Tahāfut or Incoherence—is taken, with minor alterations, from Averroës, The Book of the Decisive Treatise: Determining the Connection between the Law and Wisdom, and Epistle Dedicatory, trans., with introduction and notes, by Charles E. Butterworth (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2001), 43–46; see appendix B, below, “Averroes’s Defense of the Philosophers as Believing in Happiness and Misery in the Hereafter.” See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphs. 30 and 40.

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