Rereading and interpreting the ideas of leading Muslim thinkers
Mohammad Hosein Badamchi; Hamid Parsania
Abstract
The principal problem in studying Farabi’s political philosophy is working out the dilemma of his thought, which has adopted three sources: Greek political philosophy, Iranshahri (Persian Polis) pre-Islamic political thoughts, and Islamic courses; who doesn’t accommodate properly in orientalist’s ...
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The principal problem in studying Farabi’s political philosophy is working out the dilemma of his thought, which has adopted three sources: Greek political philosophy, Iranshahri (Persian Polis) pre-Islamic political thoughts, and Islamic courses; who doesn’t accommodate properly in orientalist’s trinary category: Greek Political Philosophy/ Fighi Shari’at-Name/ Iranian Siasat-Name. This article dividing the overall framework of presented readings of Farabi (offers by multiple Western or Iranian orientalists) into three main positions: Describing Status (source discovering questions)/ Interpretation Status (identity discovering questions)/ Inference Status (Civilization questions); assuming the great importance of the second status, claims the principal issue in interpretation and identity discovering of Farabi’s Thought is the question of “the way of gathering Reason-Revelation or Islam-Greek philosophy together” and Farabi’s special answer to it. Therefore, criticizing some typologies presented to categorize the multiple interpretations, the authors hold the fourfold category (non-Muslim philosopher/ non-philosopher theologian, non-Muslim Nationalist/ founder of Islamic Philosophy) in which three former ones have established on philosophical refusal of making Rationality compatible with Religion, and the latter last one stands on possibility of making philosophy compatible with Islam. Ultimately evaluating Seyed Javad Tabatabaee’s treatises with this framework, reveals that we meet more than one Farabi in his works. By and large Tabatabaee, depending on the content and context of the debates, has introduced one of the first three Farabi types, evolving three contradictory inferences about Farabi’s intellectual role in Islamic civilization: (leading to) temporary appearance of Islamic Humanistic Age/ gradually deterioration of political thought in Iran/ resistance and preserving Iran-state against Ideological pan-Arabism). Three contradictory interpretations and inferences which eventually degrades the academic credit of Tabatabaee’s works and leads to diverging the unity of his reading of Farabi.
