The Political Writings

"Political Regime" and "Summary of Plato's Laws"

Alfarabi, Charles E. Butterworth

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780801456312
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filósofos

Butterworth richly deserves to be congratulated for providing advanced students and scholars with authoritative, reliable, and readable translations of Alfarabi's important political writings. ? Choice

Alfarabi (ca. 870–950) founded the great tradition of Aristotelian/Platonic political philosophy in medieval Islamic and Arabic culture. In this second volume of political writings, Charles E. Butterworth presents translations of Alfarabi's Political Regime and Summary of Plato's Laws, accompanied by introductions that discuss the background for each work and explore its teaching.

In addition, the texts are carefully annotated to aid the reader in following Alfarabi's argument. An Arabic-English/English-Arabic glossary allows interested readers to verify the way particular words are translated. Throughout, Butterworth's method is to translate consistently the same Arabic word by the same English word, rendering Alfarabi's style in an unusually faithful and yet approachable manner.

Political Regime, Nicknamed Principles of the Existents

Introduction

The Translation

This translation is based on Fauzi Najjar’s excellent edition of the Arabic text.¹ Although he indicates the page numbers of the older Hyderabad version² in the margins of his text, his edition is so much more reliable and readable that it renders the former one obsolete. For that reason, I indicate the pages of his edition within square brackets in this translation. While I usually follow Najjar’s division of the text into major paragraphs or sections, there are occasions when I depart from it. The numbering of the sections is my own, as is their further division into unnumbered paragraphs. Moreover, while accepting Najjar’s division of the text into two major parts, I have further divided it into subparts and divisions of subparts—placing them between square brackets—in an attempt to make sense of Alfarabi’s larger exposition. To provide an overview of these different divisions of the text, I have placed a summary outline of it before the translation.

In my quest to make sense of this often recondite text and render it into readable English, I have been fortunate to have access to two unpublished working translations—namely, that of the whole work by Thérèse-Anne Druart and also the one Miriam Galston did of part 1—as well as to Najjar’s published translation of part 2.³ Generally speaking, the present translation falls between that of Druart on the one hand and those of Galston and Najjar on the other. That is, it seeks to steer a middle course between the literalness of Druart—one that sometimes makes it difficult to seize the sense of the text—and the more readable, but at times less accurate, renderings of Galston and Najjar. By no means is such a description of these three translations to be taken as a criticism. On the contrary, in the course of seeking to find my own way through this text, I have repeatedly marveled at the wisdom and depth of understanding shown by my predecessors. If I have succeeded in any measure, it is because I have had such excellent guides.

The 2007 translation of Political Regime, part 1 by Jon McGinnis and David Reisman⁴—of which I learned only after having finished my own translation—reads more smoothly than the versions of Druart and Galston, but is nowhere near as helpful or trustworthy. In part, that is due to McGinnis and Reisman allowing their sense of how the text should read to guide the way they present what it actually does say. Thus, their lack of interest in the practical—or ethical and political—aspect of Alfarabi’s teaching (what they call “value theory”⁵) and predilection for considering Alfarabi as primarily a thinker interested in physics and metaphysics lead them to ignore central terms in Alfarabi’s vocabulary. When Alfarabi speaks of the fair or beautiful with respect to human action—what is generally understood as “noble” (Arabic, jamīl; Greek, kalos)—McGinnis and Reisman translate that as “virtuous.” They then translate the term Alfarabi uses for “virtue” (faḍīla) as “excellence” and thereby obscure how his use of such terminology allows him to bring his own thinking into line with that of Plato and Aristotle precisely with respect to these issues concerning human action.

Moreover, they render technical terms inconsistently and flout grammatical rules. For example, the title by which the work has been traditionally known—Political Regime—is transformed by them into Governance of Cities. They arrive at that formulation by translating a single noun modified by a corresponding adjective (siyāsa modified by madaniyya) as though it were a single noun in a genitive construction with a plural noun, that is, as though the title were siyāsat al-mudun, and by misconstruing the familiar term siyāsa as a synonym for tadbīr. Similarly, without explanation of any sort, they present the subtitle of this work as its title, while making the title appear to be the subtitle. While this highlights what they deem to be the basic characteristic of Alfarabi’s text, it does so by distorting the way the text has been traditionally known and cited.⁶ Additional examples could be adduced, but these suffice to indicate that their translation—smoothness notwithstanding—is unreliable.

An excellent way to apprehend the differences between the version of the text they offer and the one I set forth here is to compare our respective translations of sections 4 and 55, below (secs. 4–7 and 57 of their text, pp. 82–83 and 101). In both instances, it is patent that McGinnis and Reisman are more intent on providing an image of what they think Alfarabi should be saying than on putting into English the equivalent of what he has actually said in Arabic. Explanation of what an author says, even interpretation of it, is important and highly desirable as a means of approaching a particular text. But it is not the same as a translation of what the author has composed, for it does not allow the author to express himself in his own voice—difficult as it may be for a translator to decipher that voice at times.

Their procedure apparently stems from conviction that they understand Alfarabi better than he understood himself—an opinion linked to a questionable interpretation of the history of ideas—and that what he actually has to say is not all that important. That disposition likewise guides their introduction to the collection and casts doubt on what might otherwise have proved to be a helpful, lucid summary account of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines familiar to Alfarabi and other authors in the medieval Arabic-Islamic tradition. It is highly regrettable that blemishes such as these detract from their undertaking, for the texts they present could offer interested readers a fine overview of the writings characterizing philosophy within that general tradition.

The French translations of the Political Regime by Philippe Vallat and Amor Cherni have proved useful for making sense of some of the more recondite passages in the text. Solid grounding in the writings of Aristotle, evident in the annotations of both, permits them to identify and propose persuasive solutions to elusive problems. However, Vallat’s conjectures about Alfarabi and his teaching, as well as about the text itself, tend to distract more than they help. By contrast, Rafael Guerrero’s Spanish translation is commendable and appealing because of its directness even though it has not influenced my own reading of Alfarabi’s text.⁷

Part 1 of the Political Regime is especially difficult to put into clear English, because it is so laden with terminology evoking a Neoplatonic metaphysical perspective used by Alfarabi to demonstrate its limits, even while presenting a detailed and apparently sympathetic exposition of it. In part 2, he speaks more directly and much more simply about things familiar to most readers. Yet he prefaces that exposition by following the earlier Neoplatonic presentation through to its consequences in human action and thus preserves the unfamiliar terminology of part 1. Moreover, throughout the work as a whole, Alfarabi unduly tries the patience of his reader by using pronouns whose antecedents fade into the mists. Though these antecedents can usually be located, one must wonder why he refers to them by pronouns rather than by their proper names. Still, so as not to prejudge Alfarabi’s explanation, I refrain—insofar as is possible in keeping with clear English usage—from replacing the pronouns by their antecedents. For the same reason, I have not capitalized terms like “the first,” “the first cause,” or “the active intellect.” After much hesitation, I also decided to let the text at times read in as stilted and artificial a manner in English as it does in Arabic: while desiring to do nothing that would keep a dedicated reader from following Alfarabi’s argument, I also wish in no way to lull that reader into thinking the text is somehow patently clear and simple. The larger goal of this translation, then, is to reflect, as accurately as possible, both Alfarabi’s terminology and his repetitive use of it as he painstakingly explains the parameters of the physical and even metaphysical setting in which human associations are formed.

As with the other texts presented in this series of translations, the overriding goal here is to render Alfarabi’s prose faithfully in intelligible and readable English. Thus, to the extent possible, a single English word is used to render a single Arabic word. Yet because this text is so opaque, and because Alfarabi frequently uses terms in multiple senses, it has at times been necessary to render a single Arabic term by different English terms. When it seemed important to alert the reader to this change in terminology, that has been done via the notes. Moreover, readers are warmly encouraged to consult the Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossaries at the end of the volume for particular questions about Alfarabi’s vocabulary and how it is rendered here.

The Teaching of the Text

The Political Regime begins abruptly with a detailed account of the universe from something like a Neoplatonic perspective. There is no introduction, nor any attempt to explain what the book is about. The detailed account of the universe reveals it to be thoroughly ordered, with everything that occurs in it forming part of the larger order. There follows an explanation of how human beings fit into that order, of the way political life allows them to fulfill their purpose, and a taxonomy of imperfect cities. Cities are imperfect because their inhabitants misapprehend that order and turn away from conduct that would allow them to achieve human perfection and thus be in accord with the order so thoroughly detailed in the earlier parts of the treatise.

Yet simple reflection reveals that no regime adheres to that order. If all existing political regimes are thus flawed, what can be done to transform them into something admirable? Or, as the subtitle⁸ suggests, is the work better understood as a treatise on metaphysics rather than on politics?

Major Themes

The treatise clearly consists of two parts. One focuses on nature and natural existing things as well as the principles beyond nature that guide the existing things. Of concern in the other are human beings, their development and fulfillment or ultimate happiness, and their forms of political association. There are no formal divisions in any of the manuscripts that have come down to us—not even of these two major parts. Thus, the division of the text into two parts, each part into sixty-three sections, and the sections into paragraphs and sentences is my doing. It should be noted, nonetheless, that there are roughly as many pages devoted to the exposition of what is termed here part 1 as to that of part 2. Moreover, almost half of the second part of the text (sections 64–91) continues to elaborate the Neoplatonic perspective that characterizes the discussion in the first part. In the second part, the exposition centers on human beings and their place in the larger cosmic whole, as well as on how a proper organization of human life in political association provides the conditions whereby human beings might achieve their purpose. Only in what is roughly the last fourth of the text does Alfarabi consider political life as it usually is, this perhaps as an indirect indication of why so few human beings attain the ultimate perfection that is their purpose or end.

the world around us

Six sorts of principles, ranked so that each has precedence over the next, account for the bodies and accidents constituting the world. The first three—namely, the first principle or first cause, the secondary causes (the spiritual existing things that bring about the heavens and the planets), and the active intellect—are in no way corporeal. They are neither bodies nor in bodies. Although the latter three—that is, soul, form, and material—are in bodies, they are not bodies. Not only are there six sorts of principles that comprise six rankings, but there are also six kinds of bodies: heavenly, rational animal, nonrational animal, plant, mineral, and elemental (earth, water, fire, and air).⁹

Such is the world—the cosmos or the universe, the whole. But is it always such? That is, does the world always exist with all of these principles, rankings, and bodies? Or do some come into existence after others, some having been derived from others? If not, are bodies alone subject to temporal constraints? And what about the whole itself? Has it always been such? Questions such as these are not addressed directly in our text, but the numerous allusions to them suggest that coming into existence does not apply to the world—that it has always been as it is described here. Occasional exceptions to this generalization—references to the way things are “from the outset,” to the passage from potential to actual existence, or to forms being created—underline its tenuous character.¹⁰

What we can infer from this description is that these sorts of principles, these rankings, and these bodies account for all that exists, starting from the most remote cause and coming dow...