Contemporary scholars such as Leo Strauss and Mushin Mahdi...

Contemporary scholars such as Leo Strauss and Mushin Mahdi have emphasized the esoteric nature of al-Fārābī’s writings, seen as critical for understanding much of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. Al-Fārābī’s main interests lay in logic and political theory. He understood that the Organon was just that, a universal instrument for understanding and improving reasoning and logical discourse.

Against the traditional grammarians of Islam, he argued for the value-free and neutral nature of Greek of logic, while against the theologians of Islam, the motakallimun, he emphasized the difference between their dialectical type of discourse and the preferred demonstrative syllogism of the philosophers.

Much of the responsibility for the separation between Islamic theology and philosophy may be attributed to al-Fārābī, who avoided engaging religious dogmas and specifically Muslim beliefs as much as possible. He was able to accommodate belief in prophecy and revelation to a general theory of emanation, though he made no special claims for the prophet of Islam. His general view of Religion was that it was a popular and symbolic representation of philosophical ideas, often designed by philosophers.

The influence of Plato’s Republic in this and other areas of political philosophy is evident, though al-Fārābī’s Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the Best State manages to give an Islamic coloration to Platonic teachings. Al-Fārābī’s metaphysical beliefs are more problematical still, and he was reputed to have disowned his earlier belief in the immortality of the soul. (Audi, 2001) He wrote extensively on logic, and expanded Aristotle’s description of the intellect.

He also exhibits the influence of Neo-Platonism: creation is an emanation and it as the images of the world soul or animamundi that become bodies in space. His work The Virtuous City is a version of Plato’s Republic, a description of the ideal civic society in which all the virtues flourish.

(Blackburn, 2005) Avicenna (Ibn Sina) Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037), Persian (Iranian) philosopher and Physician, regarded as the greatest of the medieval Islamic philosophers, served as court physician for the Sultan of Bukhara. He was deeply influenced by Aristotle and still maintained a Muslim faith.