Chapter 1. A Word of Encouragement

Home - Welcome
Forum *(new)*
Lectures
1	A Word of Encouragement
2	Dar al-Hikma
3	Proclus' Elements
4	Reversion in the Corporeal
5	Mathematical Recursion
6	Episodic Memory
7	Mortality
7s	Classical Mortality Arguments
8	Personal Identity 1 2 3 4
9	Existential Passage 1 2 3
10	Precedent at Dar al-Hikma
10s	Images of Dar al-Hikma
11	Passage Types
12	A Metaphysical Grammar
13	Merger Probability
14	Ex Nihilo Probability
15	Noetic Reduction
16	Summary of Mathematical Results
17	Application to Other Species 1 2 3 4
18	Potential Benefits
19	A Dedication
Appendices
Works Cited
E-mail the author. E-mail the webmaster.
.

Chapter 1
A Word of Encouragement

Medieval Arabs knew the Persian philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi

as the "Second Master" — second only to Aristotle.[1] In the passage below al-Farabi cheers his students, giving them hope of acquiring philosophical wisdom:

[As regards] those who seek the right path. When one of them rejects anything as false, he will be lifted towards a better symbol which is nearer to the truth and is not open to that objection; and if he is satisfied with it, he will be left where he is. When that better symbol is also rejected by him as false, he will be lifted to another rank, and if he is then satisfied with it, he will be left where he is.

Whenever a symbol of a given standard is rejected by him as false, he will be lifted to a higher rank, but when he rejects all the symbols as false and has the strength and gift to understand the truth, he will be made to know the truth and will be placed into the class of those who take the philosophers as their authorities.

If he is not yet satisfied with that and desires to acquire philosophical wisdom and has himself the strength and gift for it, he will be made to know it.[2]

Those words have encouraged students for over a thousand years. No doubt they will continue to do so a thousand years hence. We should pocket al-Farabi's encouragement and carry it with us as we hike through philosophies old and new in the chapters ahead.

We enter the next chapter beside the sunny writing desk of one of al-Farabi's students.[3] This gentleman is, as we will soon see, a man for whom a philosophy has proved decidedly unsatisfactory.

next Chapter 2: Dar al-Hikma

Chapter 1 Endnotes

[1] Ian Richard Netton, Al-Farabi and His School (London: Routledge, 1992) 1. See also: Encyclopaedia Britannica articles on al-Farabi and the analogy of religion and philosophy.

[2] Richard Walzer, trans., Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) 282-83.

[3] See Chapter 2, note 6, for some details of al-Farabi's posthumous influence.