Extract
Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi.
Galston has made a solid contribution to Farabian studies in this book. She commences with a chapter on Alfarabi's method of writing, and proceeds on the basis of conclusions reached in the initial chapter to discuss his views concerning "the nature of happiness and perfection ... ; the qualifications of rulers of excellence, in particular the contribution of both theoretical and practical wisdom to the formation of practical judgments; and the kind or kinds of political orders that make possible a political community of excellence" (p. 54). A final chapter discusses the extent to which political science is an autonomous science, not needing a metaphysical foundation upon which to reside.
Galston is extremely well read in the scholarly controversies that have arisen over the last fifty years regarding the way to read and understand Alfarabi. Leo Strauss and others have pointed to a tradition of "multilevel" writing, to which Alfarabi (and other medieval Islamic and Jewish thinkers) were attracted. According to Strauss, this tradition of writing on two different levels, exoteric and esoteric, was primarily polit...See the full content of this document
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