Al-Farabi and Cultural Policy-Making
M. Omid
Abstract
If until now Farabi has been considered the founder of Islamic philosophy, then he can also be called the founder of a special subjectivity in philosophical thought of the Islamic world. Some philosophers of the world, as well as contemporary Iranian philosophical thought, in general, have acknowledged ...
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If until now Farabi has been considered the founder of Islamic philosophy, then he can also be called the founder of a special subjectivity in philosophical thought of the Islamic world. Some philosophers of the world, as well as contemporary Iranian philosophical thought, in general, have acknowledged the possibility of dialogue between classical and modern philosophical thinking. But this dialogue has double importance for Iranian classical philosophers, because such a discourse is one of the conditions for the possibility of being present in the new philosophical horizon and conversing (and not necessarily agreeing) with it. So far, this type of discourse has been more or less based on philosophical arguments such as existence, nature, causality, motion, goal, knowledge, etc. The suggestion of this article is that it is possible and even necessary to continue this dialogue by raising another basic issue and opening another path. The basic problem proposed is the question of the subjectivity of Farabi's philosophy. Farabi's philosophy involves a certain epistemology which, more or less, includes a theory or a description about the subject. Now the question is: what is the implied subjectivity in Farabi's discussion of knowledge? This question is worthy of consideration because the foundation of modernity is subjectivity. This article tries to follow the same approach based on Farabi's texts, inspired by Cartesian methodology in extracting philosophical subjectivity. As a result, Farabi can be introduced as the founder of Islamic subjectivity.
