Group: civilization

Abū Nasr Muhammad ibn al-Farakh al-Fārābi[1] (Nastaliq: أبو نصر محمد الفارابي‎) or Abū Nasr al-Fārābi (in some sources, known as Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzlagh al-Farabi أبو نصر محمد بن محمد بن أوزلغ الفارابي [2]), also known in the West as Alpharabius, Alfarabi, Al-Farabi, Farabi, and Abunaser (c. 872[2] – between 14 December 950 and 12 January 951) was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest scientists and philosophers of Persia and the Islamic world in his time. He was also a cosmologist, logician, musician, psychologist and sociologist.

As a philosopher, Al-Farabi was a founder of his own school of early Islamic philosophy known as "Farabism" or "Alfarabism", though it was later overshadowed by Avicennism. Al-Farabi's school of philosophy "breaks with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle [... and ...] moves from metaphysics to methodology, a move that anticipates modernity", and "at the level of philosophy, Alfarabi unites theory and practice [... and] in the sphere of the political he liberates practice from theory". His Neoplatonic theology is also more than just metaphysics as rhetoric. In his attempt to think through the nature of a First Cause, Alfarabi discovers the limits of human knowledge".[19]

Al-Farabi had great influence on science and philosophy for several centuries, and was widely regarded to be second only to Aristotle in knowledge (alluded to by his title of "the Second Teacher") in his time. His work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and Sufism, paved the way for the work of Ibn Sina (Avicenna).[20]

Al-Farabi also wrote a rich commentary on Aristotle's work, and one of his most notable works is Al-Madina al-Fadila where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato's The Republic.[21] Al-Farabi represented religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. Influenced by the writings of Aristotle, in The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City and other books, he advanced the view that philosophy and revelation are two different modes of approaching the same truth.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfarabi