نادیا مفتونی

Rationality or relativity? In which one does Farabi believe? How does it relate to imagination and the permanent, if at all? For Farabi, people come to grasp rational truths mostly through the use of their imagination. Furthermore, the arousal of people’s feelings and emotions often originates in their imagination via imagery forms. The ultimate utopian goal is to drive the public to achieve rational happiness. Since the public, based on their nature and general habits, in effect cannot perceive the rational truths, the path to rational happiness must be represented via their imagination. Moreover, their imaginary concepts and forms should be made the permanent. So bringing rational happiness to people's minds through their imagination, the media of each society should represent rational truths through the sensory and imagery forms familiar to that society. The Farabian theory of cognition shares aspects of relativity as well as rationality. To Farabi, rational truth and rational happiness is fixed and one, having only one denotation, while its connotations, say, images and imagery forms are various and sundry. That being the case, different communities can have different ways to perceive the same truth, working toward the same goal.