نادیا مفتونی

Does it sound plausible to obtain a strategy for global peace in Farabi’s political philosophy? Put another way, could we procure a common language leading to peace among all cultures and religions, according to Farabi? Farabi’s utopia (al-madīnat al-fāḍila), literally meaning ‘the excellent state’, consists of five levels. On the first level stands the philosopher (fīlsūf) or the prophet (nabī). The second level includes poets (shuʿarā), music composers (mulaḥḥinūn), writers (kuttāb) and the likes. Farabi strongly believes in the power of imagination (khīyāl) and that most people are under the influence of their imaginative faculty (al-quwwat al-mutakhayyila). This faculty has an important outcome which influences his view on religion (milla), prophet, and their relation with the public (jumhūr): imagination, in his view, is the most powerful tool of influencing the public. Regarding this principle, it could be concluded that there is a shared function between the poet and the prophet. Farabian theory of peace may well be identified, based on the shared function between the poet and the prophet. In other words, for Farabi rational truth and rational happiness is fixed and one, having only one denotation, while its connotations, that is, sensory images and imagery forms are more than one—possibly many more. That being the case, various and sundry cultures and religions might well have different ways to pursue the same knowledge, truth, and contentment.

Maintaining strong flavor of Aristotelian theory of perception, Farabi as well as Avicenna have appended new phases to the theory. Depicting imaginary perception with its crucial jobs, Farabi explains these three activities: storing sensory forms, composing and decomposing sensory forms, as well as imagery. What Farabi names the imaginary faculties, is conceptualized as three inner perceptions, i.e., imagination, estimative and memory faculties in Avicenna’s works. Evolving existing theories of perception, Avicenna delivers an account of five inner perceptions. Beforehand Farabi did not consider any difference between imaginary perception and motekhayelah. However, he mentioned one faculty doing both activities and was usually calling it motekhayelah and sometimes imaginary perception. Conceptualizing imaginary perception with its functions, Farabi deals with three primary activities: storing sensory forms, composing and decomposing sensory forms, and imagery. In other words, Avicenna defines what Farabi calls the imaginary faculties as three inner perceptions, i.e., imagination, estimative and memory faculties.

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.

Developing the empirical method based on observation and experiment, Alhazen is considered the greatest Muslim physicist and the most significant figure in the history of optics between antiquity and the seventeenth century. Inventing a camera obscura, Alhazen rebuilt our conception of eyesight. His theory of vision was enormously prominent and much of our understanding of optics and light is based upon his groundbreaking discoveries. He began his criticism of emission by describing what happens when people are exposed to bright lights. No matter what the light source, the effect of bright lights was always the same. What this indicates to Alhazen is that light entering into the eye from an external source had some serious function in eyesight. Respecting observation, experiment and empirical method, Suhrawardi, the father of Illumination School, argues all theories of vision and rejects them just by mere reasoning. Suhrawardi validates his own Illuminationist method by scientists’ empirical method. So, I will argue, he is not to deny empirical aspect of Alhazen’s theory of vision. In an allegory, I will use the camera, representing the whole process of a human vision, while I use “beyond camera” for the embodiment that allows for the unfolding of a human soul’s position in the process of vision. What Alhazen is speaking of, we might call the process within the camera; while what Suhrawardi is speaking of, we could name the process behind the camera.

Ibn Ṭufayl and Kierkegaard share existentialist elements around nature. Ibn Ṭufayl believes in nature as the best teacher of philosophy and philosophical reasoning. For Kierkegaard, being human means being dependent on and embedded in nature. This makes Kierkegaard a highly relevant interlocutor for contemporary Eco philosophy and ecocriticism. Ibn Ṭufayl’s opinion on the subject is discernible in his novel called Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān. Pursuing the truth of life, Ḥayy, the main personage of Ibn Ṭufayl’s novel, finds his way through four travels of mind. Nature is the context of his travels, so determined to protect nature, Ḥayy takes considerable care of fauna and flora as he steps into the highest levels in his ascent. In the first travel, Ḥayy begins from nature from which is created and in which is raised by a roe mother. In the second travel, he figures out all of natural affairs insofar as becoming a leading scientist. In the third travel resulted in the former travel, Ḥayy becomes successful in philosophical analysis. In the fourth travel, Ḥayy goes forward with philosophical analysis and reaches mystical level. The mystical experiences go on so that through all natural beings and events Ḥayy conveys to God. In this last pace, Ḥayy returns to nature and becomes a nature protectionist. At the end of story, Ḥayy faces a religious stranger showed up from another island. Ḥayy finds his beliefs thoroughly in accordance with his own opinions.