Who was Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi lived from around 870 AD to 950 AD (I prefer AD and BC to CE BCE, but that is a separate debate). Al-Farabi was an early Muslim philosopher and one of the first significant philosophers who kickstarted much of Islamic philosophical thought, taking it beyond the strict and literal interpretations of the Holy Quran.

The Thousand-Year Jump

Aristotle died in 322 BC. Between Aristotle and Al-Farabi, there are 1100 years. Some of the personalities we will get to later on will be Cicero who died in 43 BC, Ptolemy who died in 170 AD, Marcus Aurelius who died in 180 AD, and Plotinus who died in 270 AD. This is to say that the period between Aristotle and Al-Farabi did have significant people, but few philosophers with surviving works. There were only a few revolutionary ideas from the world of philosophy between Aristotle and Al-Farabi. Instead, religion and politics dominated this era. We have the birth of two of the largest religions of the world, Christianity (which started around 30 AD) and Islam (which began in 610 AD), and the birth of the Roman Empire from the Roman Republic in 27 BC. The Roman Empire that still exists to this day but has been decentralized into the Modern Western Civilization.
However, since this is a philosophy course, we will sidestep events dominated by religion or politics.

The Revival of Greek Thought

We attribute our access to Greek philosophy to the fact that the early Muslim philosophers took an interest in the Greek works, translated them, and built on top of them. The golden age of Islam brought these works from antiquity back to Europe for Christian philosophy to build on top of that later by people such as Thomas Aquinas. Al-Farabi gained the honorific “Second Teacher” as the second most important figure in philosophy after Aristotle, who held the honorific “First Teacher”. Muslim philosophers expanded the Greek Logic, which is likely their most significant achievement in philosophy (This is because metaphysical and epistemological claims of early Muslims are not the foundations of modern philosophy but their works on Logic remain foundational). However, Logic is not a part of this course so we will not go into detail.

Summary of Islam’s Metaphysics

This passage is tricky to write. If you are unfamiliar with Islam’s fundamental beliefs, here is the functional summary. Islam builds on top of Judaism and Christianity, believing them to be from the true God. Islam accepts their prophets as genuine and their original teachings as divine guidance. However, over time, people have corrupted the holy books. Therefore, God has once again sent the last Prophet, from the same lineage as Abraham, to provide God’s word to the people, and this time God himself through his miracle, has ensured the protection of the written word of the Holy Quran. God, Allah, is the sole Creator of the Universe; He always was and always will be. There was a time when there was only Allah, and then Allah created the Universe in a flash of light. It took 7 days for Earth to form. There is a Heaven, a Hell, and the Earth we live on. He created all things for a purpose and set them in order. He sent prophets to inform people of their purpose and the rewards and punishments that would follow in the afterlife. Finally, one day, the Earth, the physical world will be seized, and all beings, dead and alive, will be called to court on the Day of Judgment. Both animals and humans will have their lives and actions judged and punished or rewarded based on the balance between their good and bad deeds.

Similarities with Christianity

Islam considers the early prophets of Judaism and Christianity part of the canon but sometimes with different names. Jesus (Isa) claims the spot of the second most important figure after the Prophet Muhammad. Moses (Musa), Abraham (Ibrahim), Ishmael (Ismael), Noah (Nooh), Adam, Eve (Hawwa), Solomon (Suleiman), Archangel Gabriel (Jibrael), Archangel Michael (Mikael) and many other named people, prophets, angels and demons play the same role in the mythology. The overall eschatological aspects of the two religions are almost identical as well. The main gripe between the two religions is that Islam maintains that Isa was a prophet and rejects the concept of Trinity, and Muhammad was the next prophet in the line of prophets as well as being the last one.

When Faith is not Enough

Early Muslim philosophers had to decide what to take as the foundation for all knowledge. They can take either Plato’s rationalism or Aristotle’s Empiricism or consider the Quran the foundation. To this day, Muslim philosophers exist in these various camps between these extreme positions. Orthodox understanding of Islam requires that the Quran is the foundation for all knowledge. It is literal, divine, and sufficient. However, many philosophers found it difficult to ignore the works of the old masters. Al-Farabi was one of those who read and understood Greek thought and saw that it was helpful and capable of furthering the knowledge of the Quran. The Quran talks about God as the eternal being of the universe and Aristotle one thousand years ago posited through logic alone the existence of such a necessary being as the First Cause. Muslim philosophers had access to Greek thought and logic (because of their rapid expansion). Islamic Caliphates accepted and set up educational institutes like the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad dedicated to all types of knowledge. The primary purpose of these institutes was to solidify the Islamic canon and help flesh out the authoritarian principles of Islam, trying to apply them to each action and decision in a person’s life. However, they created the opportunity for debates that delved into the metaphysical claims about the universe and epistemological claims about knowledge that created conclusions going against the literal interpretation of Islam.

Al-Farabi’s First Cause vs Aristotle’s First Cause

Islam’s first claim is that there is one Creator of the universe. Aristotle’s causation-based First Cause is relevant and was relevant at the time of Al-Farabi. Al-Farabi agreed that causation exists, things come from the previous, and since things exist, there must be a finite chain of existent beings until we get to the One Creator, the First Creator, the un-Created, Allah. However, there are differences between these two interpretations of the First Cause. Al-Farabi, bound by Islamic beliefs, could not accept Aristotle’s claim that the First Cause does not know the particulars. For Aristotle, the First Cause initiated the creation of all beings without thought and intent, but if there is no particular knowledge, how can the First Cause judge you for your sins? Al-Farabi claimed that Allah has knowledge of the particulars, but His knowledge is not comparable to human knowledge. He perceives the particulars differently from humans. Specifically, Allah is beyond time. His knowledge is not being updated moment by moment. Instead, Allah has universal, eternal, and unchanging knowledge because Allah knows all the fundamentals of the universe. Causation creates a determined universe, if you know all the causes and how they interact, you can predict infinitely into the future. Allah created the Universe and Causation, which means that even before these things unfold through causation, Allah knew of them. Think of it in terms of a computer simulation where a physicist created all the parameters. While particular things in the simulation (us humans) do not know how things will unfold and our knowledge is limited by time inside the simulation, the physicist (Allah) knows how each part of the simulation will behave because he made the rules. Allah is also beyond time. Our language cannot explain how Allah is beyond time because our language is bound by time. We only understand its consequences that the universe has already happened as far as Allah is concerned. However, this belief is not without its problems. Al-Farabi has to juggle a bunch of different beliefs and thus drops some balls. Here are the things Al-Farabi has to juggle. First, God has to be ‘uncaused’, the ‘unmoved mover’, meaning God cannot change over time, he is eternal and a constant. This comes from Aristotle. God also has to be omnipotent, which comes from Islam. God needs to know the particulars to be able to judge them. Knowledge of the particulars and being the unmoved mover simultaneously is not possible. Imagine that God exists in time and was watching the 2024 US election. Let us concede that God’s knowledge is perfect and He already knows what will happen, nothing can surprise Him as He created causation and the initial conditions. God knew Trump was going to win. However, His knowledge on 4 November was that “The Election hasn’t happened yet, and Trump will win tomorrow”. On 6 November, His knowledge changed to “The Election happened yesterday, and Trump won.” Another way to formulate this is that God’s knowledge of the particular includes an individual’s knowledge. God knows what I know. However, what I know changes over time; hence, God’s knowledge of my knowledge also changes, meaning God changes. To counteract this, people throw God out of time and space. God is not in time and space to experience events one by one, reliant on causation to unfold events. Instead, God knew all things instantly at the first moment of Creation, all things that have happened, and all things that will happen until the end of time. Therefore, God remains eternal and constant. However, putting God outside time creates two inconsistencies with Islamic beliefs. Firstly, Islam has distinctly shown God at different times and moments. There was God before the creation of the Universe. Then there is God creating the creation and interacting with it, God conversed with Adam, the Angels, and Shaitaan (Lucifer), God spoke to Musa at Mount Sinai, God created miracles for Ibrahim, Musa, Yunus (Jonah), God created the Noah’s flood, and God Ascended Muhammad to the heavens during the night of Miraj. Finally, God will wipe away the Creation and bring all the worthy to heaven where they will bask in the glory of God and communicate with Him. Islam has multiple written records of conversations that God will have in the future on the Day of Judgment. For example, God will ask Jesus if he asked his followers to take himself and his mother as deities besides Allah and Jesus will deny it. The Quran has other dialogues from the Day of Judgment about believers, sinners, Shaitaan, and more. You cannot put God outside of time and believe that God has interacted with His creation and will continue to do so. A solution is to break from orthodoxy and stop considering these events as literal. Instead, consider them as metaphors to teach valuable lessons. However, putting God outside of time creates another inconsistency by ending His omnipotence. According to Islamic beliefs, prayers hold power. If there is no rain, (which might be because of God’s anger or disappointment towards a people) the believers can and should pray to God and maybe His Majesty will accept the prayers and grant relief to the people. Putting God outside of time means God now cannot, at will, rip the skies apart and appear to anyone at any time. For God, everything that will happen has already happened and He is, in some sense, late to the scene. Another way to understand is that God created a determined universe. As a physicist, God cannot pause the simulation and do something He had not ordained at the start. For God, the simulation has already happened; we are just living through it. Meaning, that if we believe that God created a determined world, even He is powerless to appear in front of me to stop this sentence mid-way. This means that not only do we have to take Noah’s flood as a metaphor, but we also have to believe God cannot at will make a flood of that sort. To summarize, Islam only had one statement that God created the universe. Aristotle had two statements, the First Cause created the universe and it is the unmoved mover. If we say that God experiences time and the flow of knowledge like us, then all problems clear up but we have to let go of the strict Aristotelian belief that the First Cause has to be eternally constant, it is not able to learn from its creation. (Fun fact, Spinoza’s Pantheism and Hegel’s Absolute Idealism solve the same problem by claiming that all existence is part of the same thing. The First Cause, God, universe, and all humans are extensions of the same thing, Spinoza called it the Substance and Hegel called it the Absolute.) Al-Farabi’s belief that Allah cannot change comes from the Aristotelian concept of potentiality and actuality. The First Cause, Allah, must be purely actual. Everything that Allah is exists all at once, unchanged, since the beginning. If Allah can change, it means that Allah has potentiality. However, something external has to trigger that potentiality into existence. A seed has the potential to be a tree but it needs external triggers to turn that potentiality into actuality. If Allah can learn and change from the environment, then Allah loses His status as the ‘unmoved mover’ because something else moved it. In my opinion, Islam’s metaphysics cannot sufficiently be explained by the causation principles propounded by Al-Farabi and Aristotle. If you accept causation, you must take out many foundational Islamic beliefs to get a consistent system. Ibn Sina took this approach; he went more towards taking things out when he brought Plotinus and the theory of Emanation into Islamic metaphysics. On the other side, Al-Ghazali provided a non-causation solution to solve the problems created by Al-Farabi. We will look into both in later chapters. For now, this was the foundational lecture on Al-Farabi as well as the general Muslim Philosophical Thought.