Editor-in-Chief Lecture
Author
Professor of Philosophy, Institute for Cultural, Social and Civilization Studies, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Farabi, an Iranian philosopher of the 3rd century AH/9th century AD, lived in the middle of conflicting intellectual, social, political and economic currents, each of which decorated the claim of power with a raising sword. These currents were not afraid to be openly violent and show a scary and decisive face and remove their opponent from the arena through the sword or with the verdict of apostasy and heresy and make fear a permanent occupation of people, although, Baghdad during the Farabi era, as an exception, hosted numerous scientific, philosophical and theological currents and practiced tolerance.
The Farabi art, at this time and in the city of seventy-two nations, was a witness to these currents and understand the competitive arena on the one hand and offered philosophical suggestions to overcome crises and improve conditions on the other hand. He held discourse tolerantly with different ethnic groups and schools of thought, and did not hesitate to sit in the assembly of a Christian, or to have students from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, or look at religion from the scientific and philosophical perspectives, in order to extract what is appropriate for a society from those readings and conversations. In fact, he was a philosopher of dialogue and tolerance. Farabi looked at religious disputes from a philosophical perspective and tried to understand the position of each one in understanding the purposes of revelation and religion. He also gave a special place to reason in politics and defined the governing rules sensible and desirable for cities. In ethics and aesthetics too, Farabi paid attention to cultural diversity, behavioral rules, and judgments based on wisdom, consensus, and taste, and through these, he opened the way to pluralism, diversity, tolerance, and dialogue.
In general, the method of Farabi in "contemplating" the cultural building blocks together can be a suitable model of cultural thought and policy making in our time. Although in the contemporary era, Farabi's philosophy, due to the great weight of his political thought, has been wrongly reduced to the axis of politics but in reality, Farabi in his own thought process, has had place for each of the intellectual and cultural subjects, including ethics, theology, politics, aesthetics, linguistics, sciences, social relations, family, cultural products, and the like in a certain organic way; the connections that encourage the reader and those inclined to his thoughts to examine each of these and other components and then understand and read them all in relation to each other.
Today, due to massive investments of economy and politics in the cultural arena and as a result of services of academies as well as cultural and non-cultural scientific and research institutions being used in this direction, the cultural realm requires double freedom and liberation; a freedom that is more than the usual and known one in cultural productions and their consumption. More freedom that is necessitated in the field of culture is the freedom from desires and demands of economy, politics and even narrow religion. Although culture has always been and continues to operate in relation to these domains, the logic of cultural activity is to free this realm from adjacent areas and act according to its own particular logic. Cultural production and consumption in the current world is very much caught in the constraints of ideology, politics, economy and closed and minimal readings of religion.
Farabi's approach in presenting a general concept of human relations with himself and with the world as well as the surrounding environment and with theological and metaphysical thoughts and then showing certain abode and destinations in the future can help us in the current chaotic world where those who claim power use technological, political, religious and ideological swords to use the culture field as a tool and change people according to their desires and interests where they think of liberation, freedom, happiness and prosperity; the ones that require dialogue, participation, tolerance and respect for human rights, free from any discrimination and exploitation.
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