Al-Fārābī’s Cave: Aristotle’s Logic and the Ways of Socrates and Thrasymachus

Abstract

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric al-Fārābī harmonizes Plato and Aristotle in terms of philosophic education by ordering Aristotle’s eight logical works onto Plato’s famous image of the cave. He represents the way out of the cave with Aristotle’s four logical works of ascent (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics) and the return into the cave through Aristotle’s four logical works of the descent (Topics, Sophistical Refutations, Rhetoric, and Poetics). Al-Fārābī’s image of ascent and descent also alludes to Socrates’ conception of protreptic education in Book VII of the Republic. In essence, protreptic education consists in the Socratic art that freely turns the soul from the images and political interpretations of things to being itself. In this essay I argue that for al-Fārābī the four logical works of ascent guide the soul to free itself from its habituations so as to contemplate real beings, particularly the good of one’s own soul and the souls of one’s fellow citizens. Yet the ruler needs to use the arts of “descent,” as demonstrated by Thrasymachus, in order to rule the city well. The way of Socrates consists of the logical methods used to come to possess knowledge of being, while the way of Thrasymachus comprises the methods of persuasion to habituate citizens and protect the philosophic quest for the truth. Al-Fārābī, I conclude, combines the way of Socrates and the way of Thrasymachus in order to show that both ways are useful and necessary for good governance.

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the MPSA Annual National Conference, Chicago, IL, USA, 4 April 2008. I would like to thank my wife Beth L’Arrivee, the reviewers, and J. R. Muir for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. Han Baltussen reminds us that Simplicius may have overstated the similarity between Plato and Aristotle to rhetorically present Pagan thought as a unified body of wisdom against the seeming coherence of Christianity. See his Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Commentator (London: Duckworth, 2008), 61–62. Benjamin Gleede offers a fruitful comparison of Simplicius’ attempt to harmonize Plato and Aristotle and al-Fārābī’s similar aim to show that Plato and Aristotle agree on divine causality. Benjamin Gleede, “Creatio Ex Nihilo – A Genuinely Philosophical Insight Derived from Plato and Aristotle? Some Notes on the Treatise on the Harmony between the Two Sages,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 22 (2012): 91–117.

2. See Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).

3. Al-Fārābī, The Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 155. For an insightful analysis of the Theology of Aristotle, see Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle (London: Duckworth, 2002).

4. The Harmonization is found in al-Fārābī, The Political Writings, 115–67.

5. Marwan Rashed has recently argued that al-Fārābī may not be the author of the Harmonization. See Marwan Rashed, “On the Authorship of the Treatise On the Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Sages Attributed to al-Fārābī,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 19 (2009): 43–82. Alternatively, Miriam Galston argues that al-Fārābī exaggerated the doctrinal rapport between Plato and Aristotle for political reasons. Miriam Galston, “A Re-examination of al-Fārābī’s Neoplatonism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 15 (1977): 13–32.

6. J. Langhade and M. Grignashci, eds., Al-Fārābī: Deux Ovrages Inédits sur la Rhétorique (Beyrouth: Dar El-Mashreq, 1971). To my knowledge, the first scholarly discussion of al-Fārābī’s analysis of Plato’s cave in terms of Aristotle’s logical works is found in William F. Boggess, “Alfarabi and the Rhetoric: The Cave Revisited,” Phronesis 15.1 (1970): 86–90. For a recent dissertation on the Didascalia, see Shawn Welnak, “Philosophy and the Cave of Opinion: The Graeco-Arabic Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 2011).

7. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 16.

8. Al-Fārābī, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ed. Thomas L. Pangle, trans. Mushin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 66–67.

9. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 17.

10. Shams Inati and Elsayed Omran, “Literature,” in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (New York: Routledge, 2007), 891.

11. Muhsin S. Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 212.

12. Charles Burnett, “Arabic into Latin: The Reception of Arabic Philosophy into Western Europe,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 375, 380.

13. For a helpful discussion of the summary of the Didascalia and Al-Fārābī’s contribution to the study of rhetoric, see Uwe Vagelpohl, Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commentary Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 185–96.

14. Langhade and Grignaschi, Al-Fārābī: Deux Ovrages Inédits sur la Rhétorique, 213–14. I would like to thank Martin Bloomer for his help with the Latin. Any mistakes are my own.

15. For a detailed treatment of al-Fārābī’s theory of poetics, see Salim Kemal, The Poetics of Alfarabi and Avicenna (Leiden: Brill, 1991).

16. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom, 2d ed. (Ithaca, NY: Basic Books, 1991), 514a.

17. “And, in getting habituated to it, you will see ten thousand times better than the men there, and you’ll know what each of the phantoms is, and of what it is a phantom, because you have seen the truth about fair, just and good things” (520b–d).

18. For a radically different understanding of al-Fārābī’s conception of the cave, see Christopher Colmo, Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder (New York: Lexington Books, 2006), where he argues that al-Fārābī never calls the bottom of the cave “the city” nor does he force the philosopher to descend back into the cave for the sake of educating citizens. Colmo writes, In sharp contrast to Plato, Alfarabi does not make politics dependent upon philosophy. Politics is a closed sphere, sufficient unto itself. As long as the ruler ignorant of revelation pursues only the goods of this world and the happiness of this world, he does not need philosophy. Assuming that one can distinguish between high and low and that philosophy is higher than politics, the low does not depend on the high nor does it need to be seen in the light of the high in order to be properly understood. There is no reason for the philosopher to be forced to return to the cave in order to bring happiness to its denizens (Republic 539e–540b). The denizens of the cave are not by nature in need of philosophy any more than the traditional king. Alfarabi lowers his sights. Those who are ignorant of revelation are to be left to enjoy the goods of the cave. Indeed, Alfarabi never calls the city the cave and he never says that the philosopher should be forced to return to the cave in order to provide for the happiness of those who live there. (94) I believe Colmo sees al-Fārābī’s philosophy as anticipating Machiavelli, who argues that politics is an autonomous human enterprise. Al-Fārābī thus breaks with Athens and lays the proto-groundwork for the modern political project.

19. Quoted in Inati and Omran, “Literature,” 891.

20. Shams Inati, “Logic,” in Nasr and Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy, 817. For an extensive treatment of the relationship between communication and the five kinds of discourses in al-Fārābī’s philosophy, see Fuad Said Haddad, Alfarabi’s Theory of Communication (Beirut: The American University of Beirut, 1989), 89–122.

21. Joep Lameer provides a comprehensive account of al-Fārābī’s theory of syllogistics in Al-Fārābī and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and Islamic Practice (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

22. Al-Fārābī, The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, 15.

23. Quoted in David C. Reisman, “Al-Fārābī and the Philosophical Curriculum,” in Adamson and Taylor, The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 55.

24. “‘In fact,’ said Thrasymachus, ‘you can take this as a resolution approved by all of us, Socrates’.” Plato, Republic, 450a.

25. “Yet the mighty Chalcedonian [Thrasymachus] appears to me to be supreme in the art of making speeches that arouse pity for old age or poverty. He was also fiendishly clever at rousing the crowd to anger and then when they were angry, calming them down again with his incantations, as he said, and he was unbeatable at slandering as well as overcoming slander, regardless of its source.” Plato, The Symposium and the Phaedrus: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues, trans. Willaim S. Cobb (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 267d.

26. Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 35–37.

27. Kennedy, On Rhetoric, 33 n. 23.

28. Kennedy, On Rhetoric, 39.

29. “The greatest and most important of all things in an ability to persuade and give good advice is to grasp an understanding of all forms of constitution [politeia] and to distinguish the customs and legal usages and advantages of each; 2. for all people are persuaded by what is advantageous, and preserving the constitution is advantageous,” Kennedy, On Rhetoric, 76.

30. For an analysis and translation of Al-Fārābī’s Book of Rhetoric, see Lahcen E. Ezzaher, “Alfarabi’s Book of Rhetoric: An-Arabic-English Translation of Alfarabi’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 26.4 (2008): 347–91.

31. Langhade and Grignaschi, Al-Fārābī: Deux Ovrages Inédits sur la Rhétorique, 187–88.

32. Langhade and Grignaschi, Al-Fārābī: Deux Ovrages Inédits sur la Rhétorique, 201.