Alfarabi, The Political Writings Literary Elements

Philosophy

Around 900 AD, somewhere in the Middle East

The narrator of these nonfiction works is Alfarabi himself, an Islamic philosopher from the first millennium AD.

Instructive, straightforward, contemplative

As this is a set of nonfiction works, there is no protagonist or antagonist, save for Alfarabi himself fighting against the forces of intellectual darkness in the minds of his readers.

Like most philosophers, Alfarabi is focused on discovering and relating the nature of life and the universe, as well as the end of human life and the path to happiness and fulfillment. This is, understandably, a difficult task, but Alfarabi pursues it admirably.

Alfarabi finishes "The Political Regime" by bringing his analogy of the virtuous city to bear on the nature of the correct balance of the human soul, just like Plato does in his "Republic."

The introduction of the "Selected Aphorisms," wherein Alfarabi precludes his aphorisms with a statement saying that they are summarizations of the philosophy of the Ancients, foreshadows his appropriation of passages from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

"The soul has health and sickness just as the body has health and sickness." (Aphorism 1)

In works such as "The Harmonization of the Two Opinions of the Two Sages: Plato the Divine and Aristotle" and "Summary of Plato's Laws," Alfarabi directly alludes to works by the great Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle. More subtle allusions are also made in works like "Selected Aphorisms" and "The Political Regime."

In "Selected Aphorisms," Alfarabi uses the imagery of a physician and the health of the body as an analogue to the role of a statesman and the health of the soul. In order to convey a sense of the responsibilities of the statesman and the nature of soul health, he uses lots of imagery in the medical field, such as medical books, the imbalance of chemicals, and various injuries that correspond to illnesses of the soul.

As Alfarabi notes in his "Selected Aphorisms," the man who restrains himself from doing morally wrong things is not a virtuous man, despite his intentions. This restraint is actually what prevents him from being truly virtuous, as a virtuous man does not have to restrain himself from bad things, instead actively pursuing what is good because he truly desires it.

The illustration Alfarabi uses of the virtuous city in "The Political Regime" as an example proving what is virtuous for the soul directly parallels the example of Plato's just city in the Republic, to which Alfarabi is clearly alluding in this work.

"Indeed, the statesman by means of the political art and the king by means of the art of kingship determine where it ought to be done..." (Aphorism 4)

"The more appropriate way to speak about8 the nutritive is that it is what simmers the blood, reaching each and every member until it becomes similar to that member." (Aphorism 7)