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SOURCE: Najjar, Fauzi M. “Al-Farabi on Political Science.” Muslim World 48, no. 2 (1958): 94-103.
In the following essay, Najjar explains that, in al-Fārābī's view, political science is another term for practical wisdom and cannot be separated from philosophy and metaphysics.
Al-Fārābī discusses the subject matter as well as the function of political science in Chapter 5 of his Iḥṣā’ al-‘Ulūm, or “Classification of the Sciences”.1 In the same chapter he treats the Islamic religious sciences of fiqh (Jurisprudence) and kalām (Theology). That fiqh and kalām should be treated in a chapter devoted to political science is not accidental, and the significance of this arrangement may be grasped in the light Al-Fārābī's conception of political science and its place among the other sciences.
Philosophy or science, he says, consists of two parts: theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy.2 Theoretical philosophy supplies...
This section contains 5,222 words (approx. 18 pages at 300 words per page) |
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