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Chapter 1

The Nation in Plato and Aristotle: An Obstacle to Virtuous Rule

I have suggested that most political philosophers apart from Alfarabi did not take the nation very seriously. This does not mean that they ignored it completely, or that it would not be worth our while to examine the reasons for their relative neglect. Since Alfarabi presents himself above all as a disciple of Plato and Aristotle, and frequently comments, directly or indirectly, on their works, an examination of the significance of the nation for these two Greek philosophers may serve as a useful segue into Alfarabi. We will begin by discussing Plato’s Republic, followed by Alfarabi’s interpretation of this dialogue, and then do the same with Aristotle’s Politics. It will become clear that neither Plato nor Aristotle was as indifferent to the significance of nations as is sometimes believed, but that Alfarabi’s interest in the Umma extends farther.

A comparison of Alfarabi and Plato ought to begin with a surprisingly difficult question: did Alfarabi in fact have knowledge of Plato’s works? Since Alfarabi mentions most of the Platonic dialogues in the Philosophy of Plato, it is tempting to take his knowledge of Plato for granted. But an examination of the existing scholarship on the question reveals how little we know for certain about Alfarabi’s actual exposure to Greek texts and Arabic translations of them. However dry and scholarly the issue of Alfarabi’s access to Plato may appear to outsiders, it has spawned a number of polemics, especially with regard to Plato’s Laws, on which Alfarabi wrote a commentary. Since I am not considering the Laws in any detail here, I wish to take the liberty of consigning this particular debate to the footnotes.¹ Yet I can hardly evade the question of Alfarabi’s knowledge of the Republic, and of Plato in general.

The biggest obstacle to demonstrating Alfarabi’s knowledge of Plato is that we do not know of any extant medieval Arabic translations of the dialogues, as Franz Rosenthal and other scholars had long noted (F. Rosenthal 1940, 390–93, 410–11). Yet the late David Reisman made a careful review of the available material in light of his recent discovery of a tenth-century Arabic translation of an important passage of the Republic, and came to the conclusion that “there was more of Plato’s Republic circulating among medieval Arabic authors than the synopsis of Galen” (Reisman, 270–71). I have not undertaken the thorough study of the manuscripts that would be necessary to settle this debate: on that score I defer to the source that I have just mentioned. Yet I wish to take issue with the suggestion that the true source might be a lost summary by Galen. This claim ignores a manifest feature of Alfarabi’s own writings, namely, his repeated expressions of contempt for Galen (Mahdi 1961, 6). In the Book of Rhetoric and the Didascalia, Alfarabi flatly accuses Galen of abusing rhetorical methods in allegedly scientific studies, making particular reference to a book on the “opinions of Hippocrates and Plato” (BRh 71.8–73.2; DA 193). In the Great Book of Music, Alfarabi describes Galen as a “physician,” often used as a term of dismissal among the medieval philosophers (BM 63.8; cf. Maimonides 1987, 552.5–8). Averroes, in his Commentary on the “Republic,” also criticizes Galen for his misunderstanding of Plato and ignorance of logic (Averroes 1974, 36.8, 46.7, 56.23–26, 105.1–2), making it highly unlikely that Averroes based his commentary on a summary by Galen.

I also wish to question the common assumption among scholars that Alfarabi did not know Greek (F. Rosenthal 1940, 410; Menn, 69). Many of Alfarabi’s references to Greek words and titles, especially in the Philosophy of Plato, may seem strange, but not all are completely erroneous: for example, he correctly understands the meaning of the verb menein (PP 5.13). Unlike his successors Avicenna and Averroes, Alfarabi lived in a city whose Christian inhabitants often still knew Greek.² This fact alone should mean that the question of Alfarabi’s knowledge of Greek is far from settled. His project of recovering the genuine thought of Plato and Aristotle, which he believed to have been blurred over time (AH 47.4–9, Ar. 97.65), would have given him every incentive to learn at least some Greek. If he had studied Greek with certain heterodox Christian friends and associates, especially in the enemy kingdom of Byzantium,³ he might have wished to conceal the company he kept, and therefore his linguistic knowledge, from his predominantly Muslim audience. Errors in the interpretation of Greek words, well attested in modern scholarship (Rudolph, 372–73), might indeed have been due to ignorance, but an alternative explanation would be that they were meant to hide his knowledge. On one occasion, however, Alfarabi appears to let down his guard. A frequently overlooked passage in the Great Book of Music reads as follows: “It is possible to learn about the circumstances [of Greece and Byzantium] because they are neighbors, and because of the abundance of immigrants from the lands of Greece and Byzantium to the lands of the kingdom of the Arabs, who bring us reports about them, as well as from the books that the ancient Greeks wrote on the subject of musical theory” (BM 110). To be sure, musical theory cannot be equated with language, but this statement should demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that Alfarabi attempted to learn as much as he could from ancient Greek works and Byzantine migrants on a wide variety of subjects. Unfortunately, just how much he was able to learn from them may always remain in doubt.

The simple fact is that as long as we have not discovered any tenth-century Arabic translations of Plato, or proof of Alfarabi’s knowledge of Greek, we will never be able to determine with any exactitude what texts of Plato Alfarabi actually read. Due caution is therefore required. And yet I find myself strongly inclined to the view that Alfarabi must have had access to something closely resembling the original texts of the Republic, and probably several other Platonic dialogues. Alfarabi’s summary of the Republic in the Philosophy of Plato, although extremely terse, contains most of the essential elements of the dialogue: the investigation of justice, the foundation of the city, the rule of the philosophers, and the description of other kinds of city (PP 19.14–20.14). But the strongest evidence in favor of this supposition is simply Alfarabi’s own claim: why would he pretend to know Plato’s Republic, as well as the thirty-odd other dialogues summarized in the Philosophy of Plato, if he in fact had no access to them? The same question applies to Averroes and his knowledge of the Republic, on which he wrote a full-blown commentary. But some might reply that these philosophers either lied or were deceived about their access to the original Plato. Let me examine each of these possibilities in turn.

Alfarabi and Averroes might have considered lying on certain occasions, but they would need to have a plausible reason for doing so. Feigning knowledge of Plato while writing purported commentaries on him would simply have exposed them to the ridicule of future generations, and risked discrediting their own philosophic project of reviving certain aspects of Plato’s thought. If they really had so little access to Plato, and were fully aware of this fact, then why couldn’t they simply have relied more heavily on Aristotle? Now Alfarabi and Averroes, like everyone else, were also capable of error. Yet there is plenty of evidence, especially in the Book of Letters,⁴ that Alfarabi was sensitive to problems of translation, which makes it highly implausible that he would have reproduced, or even relied on, any Arabic translations or summaries without due reflection. Such reflection would presumably have cautioned him against mistaking the summaries of Galen the doctor and rhetorician for the dialogues of the philosopher Plato. Indeed, Alfarabi and Averroes would not have regarded Plato as a philosopher equal to Aristotle unless they themselves had read a version of Plato’s writings that was complete enough to convey a convincingly philosophic teaching. It is hard to identify any Hellenistic or Roman commentator who could have produced such a work. In the absence of any reason for thinking that these philosophers lied or were deceived about their knowledge of Plato, we ought to take them at their word. The texts that they possessed may not have been identical to our texts, but they must have been adequate enough to convince them that Plato was a philosopher of the highest rank on whose works they could compose reliable commentaries.

I hope to strengthen my supposition by showing that the comments on Plato contained in Alfarabi’s own writings display profound insight into him, especially with regard to the theme of this book. Proving that Alfarabi understood what Plato had to say about the nation does not establish that Alfarabi had access to every word that Plato wrote, but it does suggest, as we will soon see, that he must have had a considerable portion of the Republic at his disposal.

Is the City of the Republic Greek?

The most famous Platonic dialogue focuses on the founding of a new city, as Alfarabi clearly recognizes (PP 19.13–20.14, 21.1–2).⁵ But Plato says nothing in the Republic about the founding of a new nation. This does not mean that he avoids the nation entirely. Plato needs to consider whether the new city will assume any existing ethnic identity, and if not, he must explain how it will define itself vis-à-vis the nations of the earth.

Any attempt to understand the significance of the nation for Plato must take into account the fact that Greek lacks a single, definite term that can be translated as “nation.” Plato uses the terms ethnos and genos in a surprising variety of contexts.⁶ In the absence of any distinct term for “nation,” the issues surrounding ethnic identity are often raised in the more concrete form of the Greek-barbarian distinction, which occurs frequently enough in the Republic to serve as the starting point of our investigation. An obvious question emerges: is the city founded in the dialogue Greek, barbarian, both, or neither? I wish to analyze the Republic with this question in mind.

The ethnic character of the city in Republic appears at first glance to be established in Book V, where the city is declared Greek (470e4–6). But upon closer examination this declaration belongs entirely to Glaucon. Socrates does no more than ask the question, “Won’t the city that you are founding be Greek?” (470e4–6), while it is Glaucon who replies in the affirmative. One may wonder why Socrates needs to raise this question at all. Isn’t the Greek identity of the city self-evident from the start? Who could imagine Glaucon, Adeimantus, or even Socrates founding a city that wasn’t Greek? The very fact that Socrates poses the question implies that something unusual may be afoot. Let us review the earlier portions of the dialogue for evidence that the city is indeed Greek.

The opening discussions about justice in the first book contain no reference to any particular people: a satisfactory definition of justice as such must be universal. But one would expect Socrates to address the question of ethnic identity when he undertakes the founding of a city, which must come into being in some particular place and among some particular people if it is to exist at all. Although Socrates may encourage his interlocutors to think that the city is Greek, several aspects of his presentation seem to evade the question. Most notably, Socrates never calls the city Greek. The scene in which the city first comes into being describes the general human needs that give rise to cities, but says little about the circumstances surrounding this particular city’s founding. Socrates gives the impression that the first inhabitants are aboriginals who form a settlement of their own accord for the sake of mutual help (369c1–4). But are they Greek aboriginals? Socrates acknowledges that the city will be founded “in a place of some sort” (toiouton topon; 370e5–7), but since the qualities of this place remain completely indefinite, so does the stock of its first inhabitants. The vagueness with which the location of the city is described in the Republic stands in contrast to the precision with which it is described in the Laws (704c ff.).

The material description of the luxurious city, which includes couches, rhapsodes, actors, and choruses (Republic 372e ff.), is indeed evocative of Greece. Given the cultural background of the interlocutors in the dialogue, it would make no sense for Socrates to fill the city with unknown Persian delicacies. Thus the question remains: in assuming that the city is Greek, does Socrates speak with a view to his still-inexperienced interlocutors, or to his own understanding of the character of the city?

The same uncertainty prevails in the account of the guardians’ education. It is based on the reform of Greek music and poetry (376d ff.), but neither Glaucon nor even Socrates could be expected to hold a discussion on any other kind of song or rhyme. Moreover, many of the traditional Greek models are introduced only to be roundly rejected. One counts some instances where Homer, considered by many to be the “teacher of Greece” (606e1–3), is cited as a model (389e4, 390d1–5, 404b11–c9), but others where he is presented as a potential corrupter of the young guardians (377d5, 383a7, 387b1, 393b1). Socrates continues to cite Greek sources, although hardly as models, in highly unconventional accounts of music, gymnastic, and medicine (398d ff.). But Socrates identifies the noble lie, a centerpiece of the city’s education, with the Phoenicians, a barbarian people (414c4); the interlocutors probably refer this designation to the Greek myth of Cadmus, the Phoenician founder of Thebes, but Socrates’s intention remains murky. Neither the word “Greek” nor any of its cognates appears in the first three books.

The discussion of the city’s stance toward foreign relations and war in Book IV yields similarly inconclusive results. Socrates proposes to Adeimantus that the city take an equally suspicious view of all foreign cities and encourage faction among them, noting that this policy should be applied to cities inhabited by both Greeks and barbarians alike (423a8–b1). The very first mention of the Greek-barbarian distinction in the dialogue suggests that the city should ignore it, at least with regard to fateful questions of war and peace.

The next reference to ethnic differences comes in the well-known passage on the spiritedness of the Thracians and Scythians who live in the north, the greed of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, and the love of learning of the people who live in the “place around us” (435e3–436a3). Yet Socrates refrains both from mentioning Greece by name and from classifying non-Greek peoples as barbarian. Love of learning is not ascribed explicitly to Greece, but rather to the highly equivocal “place around us” (ton par’ hēmin … topon; 435e6–436a1). Assuming that “us” refers to the participants in the dialogue, one could define the land surrounding them in various ways, from the Piraeus to the entire Mediterranean region. It would be hasty to assume, as many interpreters as well as the interlocutors probably do,⁷ that this phrase refers to Greece, as it could easily signify a region either much larger or much smaller than it. We may also ask whether the city, whose location at this point in the dialogue remains indeterminate, is founded in the “place around us.” If not, then this passage reveals nothing about the city’s ethnic identity.

It is not until the discussion of women and the family that the Greeks are even mentioned for the second time. Although Socrates praises them for allowing men to exercise naked, a practice still deemed shameful among the barbarians, he admits that they would still be unable to tolerate naked women performing the same activities, as ought to occur in the new city (452a7 ff.).⁸ The subsequent proposals for the equality of women and men, not to mention the dissolution of the family, remove the city still farther from prevailing Greek custom and precedent. The current institutions of the family are “against nature,” but at present they prevail everywhere (456c1–3), that is to say, among both Greeks and barbarians.

The discussion of the ethnicity of the city thus far has been largely inconclusive. Socrates probably expects his interlocutors to consider the city Greek, despite its evident eccentricities. But Socrates never calls it Greek, and its frequent divergence from most Greek norms ought to give the reader of the dialogue pause. Until the discussion of war in Book V, the potentially explosive issue of the city’s ethnic identity is effectively avoided. In this discussion, however, it comes to the fore. Let us take a closer look.

Socrates begins by asking whether Greeks should reduce Greek cities to slavery (469b8–c4). This question is posed well before anyone has confirmed that the city is Greek (cf. 470e4), which at this point is simply presumed. Moreover, the broader relevance of this issue for the city is difficult to discern, owing to the relative lack of evidence for the presence of slaves of any ethnicity in the city.⁹ But Socrates’ purpose soon becomes clear enough: he aims to put Glaucon into a philhellenic mood. He argues that Greeks should spare Greeks from enslavement precisely in order to avoid enslavement of the entire Greek genos at the hands of barbarians. Glaucon promptly agrees (469c5–6): he is clearly delighted to listen to any opinion (doxa) asserting the solidarity of Greeks against barbarians (470a8). Socrates takes advantage of Glaucon’s eagerness to introduce a more sweeping argument on the natural affinity of Greeks and their natural hostility to barbarians (470b4 ff.). This allows him to present warfare between Greek cities as a kind of civil strife. Glaucon does not show the slightest sign of opposition. Glaucon’s answer to the question “Won’t the city that you are founding be Greek?” is thus entirely predictable.

The question about the Greek identity of the city turns out to be part of a sequence of queries specifically designed to induce an affirmative answer. However, the use of the singular pronoun “you” in posing the question allows Socrates to evade full responsibility for this answer. The shift from “we” to “you” had already begun to take place earlier, with Socrates surrendering possession of the city’s soldiers just before he imposes on them the task of ending faction in Greece, replacing hēmin in 469b5 with soi in 470a6. The switch to “you” gives the impression that Glaucon’s answers might apply only to a city founded of his own accord, without the careful guidance of Socrates. Glaucon’s city may be Greek, but Socrates’s is never identified as such.

The change in pronoun is linked to a strong disagreement between Socrates and Glaucon, which gradually emerges in the course of the discussion. While the questions posed by Socrates tend to encourage Glaucon’s strong philhellenic sentiments, and corresponding dislike of barbarians, some of Socrates’s own statements and demurrals point in a different direction. While Socrates argues that Greeks should spare other Greeks in order to defend themselves collectively against the barbarians, Glaucon responds by proclaiming that Greeks should launch an offensive against barbarians (469c6–7). Rather than sanction so aggressive a policy, which was in no way implied in his question, Socrates promptly changes the subject to smaller matters of battlefield conduct (469c8 ff.). One might retort that Socrates’s subsequent argument on the kinship of Greeks and the foreignness of barbarians, in which he resumes using the pronoun “we” in calling warring barbarians and Greeks “enemies by nature” (470c5–7), does justify a war against barbarians.¹⁰ Yet whether we ought to go to war with our enemies by nature, or merely stay away from them, remains unclear. Furthermore, it is remarkable how quickly Socrates loses interest in barbarians after this point. He stops mentioning them altogether after 470c5, and turns once again to the evils of certain types of warfare, such as the burning of land and destruction of houses, when practiced among fellow Greeks (470d5–8). He proceeds to redirect the energies of the city away from attacking barbarians and toward reprimanding quarrelsome Greeks (471a6–7). Glaucon makes one more effort to reintroduce barbarians into the discussion, wishing that the cruel acts frequently perpetrated by Greeks against Greeks could somehow be directed against the barbarians (471b7–8).¹¹ But Socrates again refuses to take the bait, calmly concluding that the guardians of the city shouldn’t engage in ravaging the property of any enemy under any circumstance, thus dropping the distinction between Greeks and barbarians altogether (471c1–2; cf. 469c8 ff.).¹² Impatient to learn about the possibility of the city, and perhaps dissatisfied by his failure to instigate a war against the barbarians, Glaucon promptly changes the subject (471c3 ff.).¹³

The disagreement between Socrates and Glaucon about the urgency of fighting barbarians strengthens our suspicion that they may disagree about the Greek identity of the city as well. Socrates will later announce that the city is most likely to come into being among remote barbarians (499c7–d1). If this constitutes Socrates’s definitive statement on the matter, then why does he deceive Glaucon into believing that the city is Greek? To answer this question, we need to integrate the argument into Socrates’s overarching aims.

Panhellenism, Kinship, and the City’s Gentler Foreign Policy

Socrates’s success in persuading Glaucon that the city is Greek, along with his invocation of Greek unity, may not represent his last word on these subjects, but it serves an important function in the dialogue. It both restates the foreign policy of the city and deepens Glaucon’s understanding of kinship.

The earlier discussion of foreign affairs between Socrates and Adeimantus in Book IV presented every other city, Greek and barbarian, as a potential enemy (423a8–b1). According to that account, all such enemies are to be dealt with in the same way: the city must foment faction within them by inciting the poor against the rich and promising them their property (422e6–423a5). This extremely dour account of international politics assumes that the only thing that matters for the city is its own self-defense, and the only thing that matters for factions in foreign cities is power and material gain. By adopting a policy of bribe, divide, and conquer, the city would not even offer its guardians much of an opportunity to display their vaunted courage and valor (cf. 422a8–c9 with 422e4–423b7).¹⁴ The new depiction of international politics, on the other hand, does not attempt to reduce them to money or power, but appeals to the broader and loftier sentiment of Greek kinship.¹⁵ Faced with the aggressive, anti-barbarian statements of Glaucon, which expose the dangerous side of this sentiment, Socrates takes care to endow the Greeks with unqualified goodness and gentleness (470e7, 471c1–2).¹⁶ He ceases to speak about the allegedly “hostile” barbarians, but encourages the city to put its energy into chastising errant and fractious Greeks (471a6–7). The formerly isolated, self-absorbed city has managed to appoint itself the arbiter of Greece.¹⁷ It might be worth asking whether the other Greeks would allow so peculiar a city, whose customs on matters as diverse as poetry and the role of women share so little in common with their own, to become the policeman of Greek unity. But what exactly do the Greeks share in common? Does Socrates present a satisfactory definition of Greek identity in the discussion?

Alfarabi will begin his account of the Umma with a positive definition of it, but it is much harder to find such a definition in Plato. Socrates’s appeal to Greek identity in the Republic is deliberately vague, and unaccompanied by a satisfactory definition of it. Language is cited as a cause of the distinctiveness of the Greeks in the Menexenus (242a1–2), but not necessarily in the Republic.¹⁸ The same Socrates who told the Phoenician “noble lie” makes no attempt to argue for the common ancestry of the Greeks.¹⁹ The sharpest distinction made by Socrates between Greeks and barbarians concerns the sacred things, which the Greeks are supposed to share in common (470e10). But does the city of the Republic share in the Greek deities? Its most important god ranks as “the ancestral interpreter of such [sacred] things for all humankind” (427c2–4). Although this god is linked to the famous oracle of Apollo at Delphi (427b2–3), his broad audience does not suggest any particular interest in, or concern for, Greece. If the god were to enjoin the guardians to disregard Panhellenic sentiment and present captured Greek weapons as offerings at temples, they would be required to obey (469e7–470a3). Meanwhile, the Homeric description of the gods has been mostly rejected by the city (377d3 ff.). Although the poets and gods certainly help define Greek identity in the Republic, they do not seem to suit the city established in it. We shall soon see that the clearest definition of Greek identity in the Republic occurs only in Book X, after Socrates has ceased to talk of the city.

Despite these difficulties, Socrates argues that by nature the Greeks are akin and friendly with one another, while the barbarians are foreign and hostile to Greeks (470c1–d1). The meaning of all these terms is somewhat vague, but Glaucon accepts them without asking for any clarification (470c4, 470d2): he seems deeply wedded to the notion of Greek unity and kinship without being able to articulate why. The significance of the words oikeios and allotrios²⁰ can be traced back to an earlier part of the dialogue, since they have already appeared in the description of the philosopher-dogs who were adduced as a model for the guardians. These marvelous creatures “define the oikeios by their acquaintance with it and the allotrios by their ignorance of it” (376b5–6): it follows that they are gentle toward the former and harsh toward the latter. Could these terms thus understood really apply to relations among Greeks? Spartan ways were often familiar to other Greeks only insofar as they were detested, while Cretans regarded even Homer as “foreign poetry” (see Laws 680c1–5). Massalia and Miletus were separated by hundreds of miles of ocean, and each might have had closer ties and familiarity with neighboring barbarian peoples than with one another. While Plato displays great awareness of such difficulties in the Laws, Socrates in the Republic does not even try to grapple with any intra-Hellenic distinctions. He barely touches upon the important division between Dorian and Ionian Greeks, and only in his discussion of musical modes (398e10–399a4).

It would nevertheless be wrong to assume that Socrates is deluded by a romantic brand of Panhellenism that bears no relation to fact. His invocations of Greek unity represent a deliberate attempt to broaden Glaucon’s horizons. The notion that knowledge, philosophy, and sound political sense among humans can be equated with the instinctive awareness of dogs is, of course, a joke.²¹ Its naïveté is corrected to some extent by the appeal to Panhellenism, the effectiveness of which shows that humans in general, and Glaucon in particular, have attachments that extend beyond the crudely familiar. Socrates never even mentions Athens, which would have been truly oikeios to Glaucon. In this respect, the Panhellenic argument in the Republic differs dramatically from its counterpart in the Menexenus, which places Athens unabashedly at the head of Greece (Menexenus 245c6–d7). In the discussion of dogs, guardians, and philosophers, Socrates employs several different terms corresponding to different kinds of knowing, each broader and deeper than its predecessor. He begins with the word gnorimos, a basic term for “acquaintance,” but substitutes philomathos, or “love of learning,” and, finally, philosophos (375e3, 376b5–c2). In the final, “bold” statement, philosophers and lovers of learning are again said to be gentle toward those whom they know, but harshness toward strangers is omitted (376b11–c2). This same pattern is repeated in the discussion of Panhellenism leading up to the introduction of philosophy. Glaucon’s horizons are expanded by the successive introduction of three words, each connoting a wider attachment than its predecessor: philopolis, philellēn, and, finally, philosophos (470d7, 470e9, 473c11 ff.).²² Socrates manages to equate love of the city with love of civilized (hēmeros) Greece (470e7–9), before finally proceeding to philosophy, or love of all wisdom as such. This expansion of the sphere of Glaucon’s interest and the attempt to soften his martial inclinations open the way for the introduction of philosophy, whose love of knowledge of all things transcends, and ultimately breaks down, the distinction between familiar and unfamiliar (475c6–8).²³ If the people of the “place around us” who love learning can be identified with the philosophers (435e7; cf. 376b9–c2), they might not belong to any particular geographical community.

Socrates’s creation of the smoke screen of the city’s Greek identity is admittedly risky and double-edged. He hopes that the city’s newfound sense of community with its immediate neighbors can be used to broaden Glaucon’s attachments and forestall disruptive wars without resorting to the cunning machinations required by his earlier discussion with Adeimantus. Yet Glaucon, not one to be satisfied by a city that eschews war (372b9 ff.), is inclined to view Greek unity as a pretext to initiate a still larger war against the barbarians. Socrates hopes that he can counteract this tendency by joining the city to a Greek nation deemed gentle rather than savage. But does Socrates ever fully purge Glaucon of his aggressive, Panhellenic longings? I do not think that the dialogue ever provides any conclusive proof. When Socrates announces that the rule of the philosophers is most likely to come into being “in some barbarian place, far outside our range of vision” (499c9–d1), it is Adeimantus who consents, but at least Glaucon does not interrupt.²⁴

The Untraceable Origin of the City

The introduction of the theme of Greek kinship serves several distinct purposes. It softens the attitudes of the city, reconciles its citizens to their fractious neighbors, and helps prepare Glaucon for the introduction of philosophy. Yet it does not succeed in integrating the city into any ethnic community, or in shedding light on its origins.

Socrates’s attribution of the city to a remote barbarian place (499c9) dislocates the city from Greece, without locating it in Phoenicia, Egypt, Thrace, or any other known barbarian region. The basic problem inherent in the founding scene is never resolved: where is the city located, and who are its first inhabitants? To the best of my knowledge, there is but one passage in the Republic that gives an account of their origins. It is, of course, the notorious “noble lie” (414d ff., cf. 369c1–4, 470d8–9). This tale is literally no more true than it purports to be, but its shameless mendacity points to the heart of the problem: we know nothing whatsoever about the origins of this city and its people. They might just as well have sprung from the earth.

Socrates’s refusal to elucidate the origins of the city’s first inhabitants serves the convenient purpose of avoiding all the thorny problems associated with settling actual cities. The location of the city and the origins of the first inhabitants become from the very beginning a major obstacle to the legislative project of the Laws (704c ff.), but there is no comparable discussion in the Republic. The appearance of the philosopher-kings, who are ostensibly introduced to render the city possible (471c6 ff.), reorients the discussion away from the founding of a new city, and toward explaining how philosophers might emerge and come to power in existing cities. The new-found emphasis on existing cities pushes the question of the new city and its origins into the background.

Adeimantus senses that the prolonged discussion of philosophy and its travails in existing cities has somehow shifted the terrain. He asks Socrates whether any of the current regimes is worthy of philosophy (497a9–10). Socrates replies that none are, but that the best regime would be (497b1–c3). However, Socrates no longer identifies the best regime with the one that has been elaborated in the dialogue, since he anticipates the question of “what this [best] regime is” (497c4). Somewhat confused, Adeimantus responds by asking Socrates whether the best regime and the city founded by the interlocutors in the dialogue are indeed the same (497c5–6). Socrates seems to answer in the affirmative, but with a major qualification: the philosophers could rule in any city possessing the same logos that was embodied in Adeimantus’s lawgiving (497c7–d2). Socrates also substitutes the second person singular “you” for Adeimantus’s “we” (cf. 497c6, 497d2), as if to suggest that he has again ceased to take part in this lawgiving. Furthermore, the use of the imperfect tense of the verb tithēmi to signify Adeimantus’s lawgiving seems to relegate it to the past. Whatever one might make of this surprising exchange,²⁵ this much is clear: in the ensuing discussion the city that dominated the first half of the dialogue plays a diminished role. Socrates drops the phrases “this city” and “our city” in explaining how an indefinite “city” can take up philosophy without being destroyed (497d8). The word “city” without an article recurs multiple times as Socrates explores the possibility of the rule of philosophers (499b2, 499c7, 501a2, 502b4). Socrates’s attention has shifted away from the city founded in the first half of dialogue toward whatever existing city might be amenable to the rule of philosophers. He now speaks of the sons of kings or other current rulers acquiring a passion for philosophy, which would indeed seem a much quicker and less risky route to philosopher-kings than establishing a new city from scratch (499b7–c1, 502a5–6). It allows Socrates to evade the unresolved question of the city’s ethnic identity. And yet this new proposal will soon meet opposition from the ethnos as well.

In the subsequent discussion, Socrates does reintroduce “the laws and practices that we have gone through” in the first half of the dialogue (502b6–7). But the absence of the city for which these laws were initially intended means that they have been detached from their original context and integrated into a program of legislative reform for a preexisting city that has been rendered obedient to philosopher rulers (502b4–5). The old approach was based on “beholding a city coming to be in speech” (369a5–6), while the new approach is based on philosophers designing a divine model and striving to implement it in existing cities (500e1–3). It now seems that the city was never meant to be founded in deed, but rather elaborated in speech, so that it may serve as a model for the drastic reforms that philosophers will impose once they have taken over existing cities. When Socrates and Glaucon return as founders, their primary task is no longer to design legislation for a new city, but rather to compel the philosophers to concern themselves with government in general (519c8ff.).

The philosopher kings, once they have been compelled to rule, would not be content with existing norms. They would have to purify the city and the ways of its inhabitants, like a tablet that an eraser has returned to a state of pristine blankness. Only then can they initiate the desired reforms (501a2–c2). The precise meaning of this purification appears in graphic terms at the end of Book VII, with its ludicrous proposal for the expulsion of all the inhabitants over ten years of age, once “the true philosophers, either one or many, come to power in a city” (540d3–4, italics mine). The sweeping expulsion of the parents followed by the sound education of the children along the lines elaborated in the first half of the dialogue is the only way a city in any nation (ethnos) could become truly happy (541a5–6). Socrates’s rare mention of the ethnos here is highly significant. By noting that such an expulsion would be equally necessary in any ethnos, Socrates indicates how completely the customs of every nation are likely to resist the establishment of his city. The notion that a city rooted in parricide and the destruction of ancestral customs could somehow “profit the nation in which it arises” (541a6–7) is absurd: it recalls and generalizes Socrates’s earlier assertion that the city that had just abolished the family and introduced women into the army could reconcile warring Greeks (471a6–7). The broadening of the dialogue’s concern from a city to the nation to which the city belongs serves to reiterate the practical impossibility of the city. Glaucon was induced to call the city Greek; Socrates eventually consigned it to some remote barbarian place; now it has become equally anathema to the ways of every nation on earth. Socrates eventually confirms that this city is a model existing only in heaven and in the minds of the humans who contemplate it (592a10–b4). Since no founder of an earthly city would have the luxury of flouting the ways of the nation in which the city comes to be (cf. 541a6–7), it is only as a founder of a heavenly city that Socrates can afford to abstract from merely “ethnic” considerations.²⁶

Back to the Nation: Poetry and the Myth of Er

The conclusion that the city of the Republic does not bear any ethnic stamp seems to have brought our discussion of ethnicity in the Republic to an end. But the dialogue does not end with an elaboration of the city. In Book X, Socrates once again discusses poetry, a subject more closely linked to Greek national character than the city that has dominated much of the dialogue.

Socrates’s purpose is ostensibly to justify his earlier policy of restricting poetry within the city (595a3–6). Yet if the city, as Glaucon has proclaimed, does not exist anywhere on earth, how can poetry be censored in it? Socrates later implies that the real question might be the relationship between poetry and soul, or else between poetry and the regime within the soul (595a7–b1, 605b7–8, 608b1). The issue is no longer whether poetry is good for the city, but whether it is good for the individual soul. In treating this question, Socrates attempts to steer Glaucon and the other interlocutors away from their attachment to traditional Greek poetry. We recall our earlier uncertainty about whether Socrates has managed to dissuade Glaucon from his excessive attachment to Greece, and consequent desire to wage a war against barbarians. Perhaps the gentle Greek city, which eventually turns out to be a remote barbarian city and finally a city in heaven, is insufficient for attaining that goal. In addition to the city, a more direct and personal confrontation with Greek poetry and civilization is required.

This discussion contains what appears to be the clearest statement about Greek identity in the Republic. Socrates remarks that many people call Homer “the educator of Greece” (606e2–3), and wish to lead their life according to his precepts. The implication is that Greece might be defined as a civilization that learned its way of life from Homer and his poetry (606e1–607a1). In linking national Greek identity to the poetry of Homer, Plato gestures toward a theme that will become the basis of Alfarabi’s presentation of the Umma as a civilization rooted in language, national legends, and poetry. Socrates, however, does not appear entirely convinced by this view. He admits that he himself has been fond of Homer since childhood and is therefore ashamed to criticize him (595b9–10), but manages to overcome this shame. Homer, he insists, did not educate anybody, in either medicine, generalship, governance, artisanship, or way of life (599b9–600e2). Yet as many commentators have noted, there is a certain amount of irony in this passage (Rosen, 370; Republic, trans. Bloom, 429–30). The eccentric, pre-Socratic philosopher Pythagoras, not to mention the sophists Protagoras and Prodicus, are adduced as genuine educators, while the criticisms cast upon Homer for his lack of political, military, and artisanal success might easily apply to Socrates himself. Furthermore, Socrates’s acknowledgment that many of the best and brightest Greeks strive to model their life after Homer’s poems (606e1–607a2) appears to contradict his claim that Homer was truly ineffectual as an educator. One could say that while Homer was hardly the sole educator of Greece, he ranks along with Solon, Lycurgus, and Thales as one of its major educators. Civilized human beings are a complex and variable composite of what generations of poets, legislators, scientists, and philosophers have made them. What Homer may lack in specific, direct impact on a particular place or art, he makes up for by his broad appeal. While Lycurgus gave laws only to the Spartans, and Thales inspired a small group of philosophers, Homer alone produced poems that influenced almost all the Greeks.²⁷ Only Homer, therefore, ever received the title “educator of Greece.” It is also possible that Homer’s influence was deeper. Even when speaking to sophisticated young Athenians, Socrates displays far more interest in Homer than in Solon or other great Athenians, as if the former is a greater rival for his interlocutor’s souls.²⁸ The regime in the soul is more likely to be disturbed by the pleasure of poetry than by the severity of the law (607a6–8, 608b1–2).

Socrates’s final response to the challenge of Homer is to construct a story on his own, namely, the myth of Er. Yet even Socratic mythmaking fails to escape entirely from Homer’s shadow. Rather than invent his own characters from scratch, Socrates chooses to rewrite the Alcinous section of the Odyssey, which chronicles Odysseus’s ascent into Hades (614b2–3; Rosen 382). The new version of the myth recasts many of the greatest Homeric heroes in an unflattering way. Basing his account of these heroes on characteristics given to them by Homer himself, Socrates shows how their love of glory eventually leads to pain and misanthropy; most suffer so greatly as men that they choose to assume an animal form in the next life (619e6 ff.). Ajax, who remembers his humiliating failure to attain Achilles’ arms, prefers the form of a lion (620b1–3; Odyssey 11.620 ff.), while Agamemnon, who hates humankind because of his untimely death at the hands of his wife, prefers to become an eagle (620b3–5; Odyssey 11.460 ff.). The implication is that these mighty Homeric heroes, if properly understood, are more reminiscent of spirited, predatory beasts than human beings. It is perhaps only here that Socrates finally succeeds in calming Glaucon’s own passions for Greek heroism and war. Myth, or the recasting thereof, steps in where philosophy fails (Rosen, 387–88). But the recasting of myth must begin with the poetry of a particular nation: it follows that grappling with the stories of the nation emerges as a necessary complement, even in speech, to the project of founding a city shorn of all ethnic qualities. At the end of the great, otherworldly adventure of the Republic, the philosopher Socrates has not entirely ceased to be a Greek speaking to Greeks.

The nation in the Republic does indeed form one of the many obstacles to the imposition of the rule of the philosophers and the establishment of the heavenly city on earth, but it also plays a crucial role in both political and cultural education. It introduces a political attachment that stretches beyond the interlocutors’ immediate clan, city, and surroundings, and tells stories about human beings and the cosmos that continue to form the basis of their understanding of the world, even after the tale of the heavenly city has run its course. These are matters to keep in mind when we turn to Alfarabi. While his account of the Umma is more elaborate than Plato’s, it never strays far from these essential themes.

The Elusive Other Umma of Alfarabi’s Plato

I have suggested that a useful way to approach the question of Alfarabi’s knowledge of Plato would be to examine Alfarabi’s interpretation of him, and see how it compares to our own. Alfarabi sets down much of this interpretation in a work titled Philosophy of Plato, which purports to describe the parts of Plato’s philosophy from beginning to end (PP 3.1). This memorable treatise gives a summary of most of the extant dialogues. Both the summary of the Republic and the subject of the Umma play an important role in it. By interpreting this work with these two themes in mind, I hope to shed light on Alfarabi’s view of Plato, as well as foreshadow some of his own investigations.²⁹

Plato begins his search for knowledge by investigating a number of generally accepted arts and ways of life in existing human communities. These investigations take place in both the Ummas³⁰ and the cities (PP 6.9, 16.12). However, there are certain important passages in which Alfarabi has Plato speak of one kind of community but not the other. The first such passage occurs during Plato’s investigation of language, whose meanings are ascribed to the multitude of a given Umma. Plato thus recognizes the connection between the Umma and language (7.1–8). The investigations of poetry and rhetoric that follow (7.9–8.5) are not ascribed explicitly to the Umma or the city. However, Alfarabi indicates in the Book of Letters that these arts are closely linked to a particular language and Umma (BL 142.6 ff., #129 ff.).³¹ Alfarabi’s Plato also acknowledges that both poetry and rhetoric have something to contribute to his quest for wisdom and virtue (7.18–19, 8.4–5). While failing to provide the certain knowledge that Plato seeks, they are clearly worthy subjects of investigation. Poetry in particular has a great influence on human character and way of life (7.14–17). Insofar as the Umma is linked to language and poetry, it plays an important part in the philosopher’s investigations.

While the section of the Philosophy of Plato that treats the linguistic arts mentions only the Umma, certain other sections mention only the city (PP 3.7, 13.12–20). These passages relate to politics: the first speaks of ruling “over a city or group,” while the second treats moderation and courage, both political virtues defined in Book IV of the Republic. Alfarabi recognizes that in the domain of politics, Plato gives strong priority to cities. The city and Umma are further distinguished near the end of the Philosophy of Plato, where the Umma is associated with ways of life, and the city is associated with laws (22.18–23.1). Alfarabi’s Plato perceives a strong link between language, poetry, ways of life, and the Umma on the one hand, and political virtues, ruling, and cities on the other.³²

There are also prominent passages that ignore both the city and the Umma. When Alfarabi’s Plato turns from moderation and courage to friendship and love, he drops the city without reintroducing the Umma (PP 14.1–3). Friendship and love lead in turn to a discussion of reveling, seduction, and related qualities, both human and divine, and how they must be practiced by the philosopher (14.4–15.17). This section, too, is notable for its omission of both the city and the Umma, as well as any other particular human community. By making Plato speak anachronistically of the praiseworthy, divine madness that is cultivated in both “mosques and temples” (14.18), Alfarabi implies that his discussion of these themes pertains equally to civilizations as disparate as classical Greece and medieval Islam. Not only philosophy, but also a set of private human qualities that lead up to it, seem to transcend all particular communities. Particular Ummas may establish human language and literary tradition, while particular cities bind their inhabitants with laws. Yet the power of love (14.1 ff.; cf. 22.5), along with the various qualities associated with it, cannot be so easily tamed. With regard to friendship, this point is not difficult to understand: friendships based on love, piety, and philosophy have all been known to survive the most savage wars and political disputes. Most perplexing, however, is the inclusion of statesmanship and royal authority among these same, transnational qualities, since they too occur in passages that contain no reference to either Ummas or cities (13.4–11, 14.5, 15.16).³³ It is only a very peculiar kind of statesman or king³⁴ who does not deal with particular communities: he is far removed from the ordinary ruler examined at the beginning of Plato’s investigation, who governs a well-defined city or group (3.7). Since this figure is identified repeatedly with the philosopher (13.7, 14.5, 15.15–16), one may infer that his aversion to particular communities and their norms follows from his uncompromising devotion to wisdom and virtue. Alfarabi soon reintroduces Ummas and cities, but only in order to emphasize that the philosopher-king is too busy reveling in his acts and own peculiar craft to pay much attention to the generally accepted opinions of Ummas and cities, so that he cannot make use of his abilities in any of the Ummas and cities existing in Plato’s time (16.11–16).

Alfarabi’s Plato eventually concludes that the existing cities and Ummas are woefully inadequate: “another city and another Umma,” where the best humans can attain their perfection, will have to be considered (PP 19.12–13). This new, particular community might succeed in persuading the philosopher-kings to participate in it, by elevating them to the highest rank within the city (20.9–10, 22.9–14).³⁵ In the subsequent summary of the Republic, Plato immediately sets out to describe the other city, but seems to forget about the other Umma (19.13 ff.).³⁶ The ensuing investigation concerns only the city (19.14 ff.), and the next several sections mention the city repeatedly, but never the Umma. The Umma therefore appears to be absent from the Republic and the several other Platonic dialogues that deal with the other city (19.14–21.14).³⁷ While Alfarabi’s Plato investigates the possibility of a legislator founding a new city in speech and then in deed (20.15, 21.12–13), he never speaks of any legislator or founder of a new Umma. His silence on this point is echoed by Alfarabi himself, who never refers to the founders of Ummas in the works that have come down to us.

The Umma’s status in the Republic, however, remains ambiguous. Alfarabi normally concludes each section by naming the dialogue to which it belongs. In the passage situated between the naming of the Phaedo (PP 18.2–3) and the naming of the Republic (20.14), no other dialogue is cited. It therefore seems that Alfarabi ascribes this entire passage to the Republic, even though his summary of what is conventionally known as the Republic begins only with the investigation of justice in 19.15. The implication is that the various subjects discussed between 18.3 and 19.15 were very much on Plato’s mind when he wrote the Republic, even if they do not find direct expression in Alfarabi’s summary of the dialogue proper. The need for another Umma occurs last among these subjects, and its connection with the investigation of the other city is indicated by the the use of the word “therefore” (19.13–14). The shadow of the “other Umma” hangs over the Republic, with lingering effects on the argument of the dialogue. This hint of Alfarabi’s is borne out, I believe, in my analysis of the Republic. Socrates neither founds a new nation nor succeeds in integrating his city into any of the nations of the earth. The problem as Alfarabi sees it is that even if a new Umma is as dearly needed as a new city for attaining human happiness, it cannot be implemented in deed or even expounded in speech. The language and ways of life on which the Umma is based grew up over many generations, and cannot be produced anew by a mere legislator. The absence of a new Umma may well hinder the establishment of a new city. What is this city’s relationship to the existing Ummas? Alfarabi passes over the matter in silence, which might well indicate a quiet agreement with Plato: the new city in speech would not be accepted by any of the Ummas of the earth. When Alfarabi finally turns to the legislator who establishes the city in deed, he investigates him but does not explain how or whether he accomplishes his aim (21.11–14). At this juncture, Alfarabi’s Plato drops the new city entirely, and returns again to “the education of the inhabitants of cities and Ummas,” that is to say, the existing communities whose unjust opinions and ways of life his philosophic reveling had once so roundly rejected (21.15–17; cf. 16.11–17.1, 19.6–14).

Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato follows the structure of the Republic in one crucial respect: the elaboration of the perfect city in speech precedes the conclusion of the work. The supplement in the Republic is the discussion of Greek poetry and the myth of Er, which appears to be omitted from Alfarabi’s summary of the Republic (PP 20.13–14). But Alfarabi does hint at some awareness of the contents of Book X. He mentions Plato’s concern with the power of poetry to shape human ways of life (7.14–16; cf. Republic 606e1–607a2), as well as his dissatisfaction with the conventional poetic method (7.19–20). In Alfarabi’s prelude to the Republic, he describes Plato’s interest in the metamorphosis of humans into animals (18.3–19.3), a prominent theme of the myth of Er (Republic 619e6–620d5). Furthermore, Alfarabi’s successor Averroes refuses to treat Book X in his much longer summary of the Republic, even while admitting that he had access to it (Averroes 1974, 105.13–26). For reasons that I will examine in Chapter 5, the Muslim successors to Plato did not invent poetic myths in the manner of their Greek teachers. These considerations lead me to suspect that Alfarabi did have access to the final book, but was loath to discuss its subject matter. If Alfarabi’s Plato avoided any direct confrontation with poetic notions of virtue and the afterlife, what alternative course did he pursue?

Alfarabi’s Plato concludes by turning away from the establishment of the other city and back toward proposals for instruction and gradual reform among existing peoples. Since philosopher-kingship as such is impossible, not the least because it ignores particular communities, the philosopher eventually realizes that he needs to act within the conventional framework of cities and Ummas. He tries to reform the laws and ways of life of his own people, the Athenians (PP 23.4). Although we might expect Alfarabi’s Plato to call Athens a city, he prefers to designate his native country a qawm, a more generic term for “group.” By suggesting that both its laws and ways of life need to be reformed (23.4–5), Alfarabi’s Plato implies that the Athenian qawm contains elements of both a city and an Umma (22.18–23.1), such as the laws of Athens and the language and ways of life of the Greeks. The term qawm is employed quite sparingly by Alfarabi, and on only one other occasion in the Philosophy of Plato: Socrates tried to establish scientific investigation within his qawm and impress upon them the ignorance in which they were plunged (22.1–2). But while Plato’s teacher, Socrates, had so vehemently and publicly protested against Athens, and as a result died by its hand (18.2, 19.5), Plato employs all the discretion entailed by private letters, presumably written to prominent individuals (22.18).³⁸ The philosopher can thereby incrementally improve the customs of his people, without exposing himself to any public backlash (see Strauss 1945, 383–84).

This approach seems similar in spirit, if not in substance, to Book X of the Republic. Alfarabi’s Plato, no less than Socrates in the Republic, supplements the account of the other city with education, an alternative to direct political action. Gradual, discrete reform of the existing peoples by means of instruction of their elite emerges as a more practicable project than trying to found a city anew, just as the reform of existing Greek poetry among a few interlocutors emerges in the Republic as an easier alternative to the construction of a city in speech.

The foregoing discussion has uncovered some intriguing parallels between the role of the nation in Plato’s Republic and Alfarabi’s account of it. In both cases, the deeply ingrained customs of the nation emerge not only as an incontrovertible obstacle to the establishment of the good city, but also as a stimulus for education. Alfarabi was not the first political philosopher to investigate the nation, and does not claim that distinction for himself, but takes the investigation many steps farther. The various hints about the nation already present in Plato’s Republic, and picked up by Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato, are developed in great detail in Alfarabi’s own work. The Umma constituted a more formidable presence in medieval Islam than the ethnos or genos ever did in classical Greece, and thus requires a firmer, more comprehensive treatment. Yet its basic contours remain the same: a community staunchly devoted to ancestral languages and ways of life that have established themselves inexorably over many generations, whose authority the philosopher can ill afford to ignore.

Nation and City in Aristotle and Alfarabi

The political thought of Aristotle is perhaps even more closely associated than the thought of Plato with the polis. This follows from the title of Aristotle’s most important political work, as well as its manifest focus on Greek cities. And yet this focus is not exclusive, since Aristotle also treats the ethnos on several occasions. In addition, some of the passages that deal with the ethnos seem to have had some influence on Alfarabi. The same old question inevitably arises: did Alfarabi have knowledge of Aristotle’s Politics? This issue has not engendered as much controversy as that of Alfarabi’s knowledge of Plato, but it may be no less enigmatic.

It has been universally accepted since the nineteenth century that most of Aristotle’s works, including the Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics, along with a number of shorter works, were translated into medieval Arabic.³⁹ Alfarabi and Averroes both wrote numerous commentaries on them. The same cannot be said, however, of Aristotle’s Politics. No medieval translation of this work is known to have circulated, and Alfarabi never clearly refers to it.

I am aware of three important scholarly treatments of this subject. Taken together, they succeed admirably in bringing the principal questions surrounding it into focus. In 1975, Shlomo Pines examined the works of Alfarabi along with those of his less famous contemporary al-ʿĀmirī, finding a number of quotations reminiscent of Aristotle’s Politics; in one of them Alfarabi even mentions an Aristotelian “book on political science” (Pines, 154; BL 91.13–15). Yet these citations are highly imprecise, and all appear to come from Book I of the Politics. Another author from the same period, Miskawayh, states that either one or two books of the Politics are listed in the catalogue of Aristotle’s writings with which he was familiar (Pines, 153, 155). Pines suggests that only the first two books were available, and perhaps not in the form known to us, but rather in a Hellenistic or Roman paraphrase (155, 160). Pines also raises the possibility that Alfarabi could have altered Aristotle for his own purposes, especially in the Political Regime (156–59).

In an article written in 1993, Rémi Brague comes to a conclusion similar to that of Pines, although he adopts a somewhat more strident tone. Brague also calls our attention to some new pieces of evidence, most notably a couple of quotations from Averroes (Brague 1993, 428–30). According to the first, Aristotle’s Politics “did not fall into our hands” (Averroes 1974, 22.4–6). Whomever “our” may refer to, it evidently does not include Alfarabi, since a second passage, cited by Brague in Latin, suggests that in Averroes’s view Alfarabi did possess this work (Brague 1993, 429). But how could Averroes in twelfth-century Andalūs know what books Alfarabi would have possessed in tenth-century Baghdad? Averroes’s claim appears especially problematic given that Alfarabi has left us no explicit references to the Politics, even in his treatise titled the Philosophy of Aristotle.⁴⁰ Brague shows, with painstaking philological analysis, that the passage in which Alfarabi invokes an Aristotelian work on political science in fact refers to the Ethics (430–32). He concludes by echoing and even citing Pines: the medieval Muslims had at best unreliable quotations and summaries of the Politics (432).

None of this circumstantial evidence ever convinced Muhsin Mahdi that Alfarabi was unfamiliar with the Politics (Mahdi 2001, 34–36). Mahdi observes that Alfarabi does not explicitly declare his unfamiliarity with the work, and silence does not prove ignorance (35). Yet doesn’t Averroes declare his unfamiliarity? True, but he never declares Alfarabi’s (cf. Brague 1993, 429). Furthermore, the context of Averroes’s claim is suspicious. He states that the presence of Plato’s Republic compensates for the absence of the Politics, since both contain the practical part of political science. But if Averroes was truly unfamiliar with the contents of the Politics, on what grounds could he claim that it contains the practical part of political science, or that Plato’s Republic represents an adequate substitute for it (Mahdi 2001, 35)? Finally, Mahdi doubts that a book which had simply been absent from the Muslim world could resurface so quickly and easily in medieval Europe (34). Mahdi accounts for the absence of the Politics by supposing that the philosophers concealed it deliberately, because they regarded the political philosophy of Plato as more suitable for their project of reviving philosophy in the Islamic world. In particular, Aristotle’s arguments for the self-sufficiency of practical wisdom would have seemed preposterous in a world dominated by divine law (35–36). Mahdi’s conjecture about Alfarabi pretending not to know the Politics resembles my earlier conjecture about Alfarabi pretending not to know Greek: he wished to conceal from his contemporaries his familiarity with something many of them would have viewed with suspicion. Such guesses are plausible and intriguing in both cases, but they hardly amount to certainty.

I regard Alfarabi’s knowledge of Aristotle’s Politics as more doubtful than his knowledge of Plato. As far as Plato is concerned, we should be inclined to take Alfarabi at this word, but in the case of Aristotle’s Politics, there is no such word, since Alfarabi neither betrays nor claims thorough knowledge of the work. Alfarabi certainly could have appreciated Aristotle’s stature as a philosopher, and even as a political philosopher, on the basis of his other works, including the Ethics (cf. Mahdi 2001, 35). I therefore remain somewhat skeptical about Alfarabi’s knowledge of the Politics, and do not attempt to show that he interprets its teachings in any detail. Nevertheless, the passages of Alfarabi that seem most reminiscent of Aristotle, leading both Pines and Brague to think that he must have had access to some summary of Book I (Brague 1993, 432; Pines, 157), can still be profitably compared and contrasted with Aristotle. This will at the very least shed light on the substantial difference between the politics and political philosophy of ancient Greece and medieval Islam, thus helping to explain why the Politics never gained much currency in the medieval Islamic world in the first place.

One of the passages adduced by Pines as having left some echoes in medieval Islam occurs in the very first chapter of the Politics. Pines makes a useful and sensible comparison between this passage and some parallel passages in Alfarabi (Pines 156–59), and I wish to build on his example. Aristotle famously claims that “man is a political animal” (Politics 1253b7–8), and a version of this statement recurs in Alfarabi, in both the Virtuous City and Political Regime (VC 228.1–8; PR 60.64, Ar. 69.16–17). Yet the terms used by each philosopher diverge already at this point. Aristotle speaks of humans as politikon, an adjective whose root is linked to the Greek polis, and takes care to distinguish the ethnē unfavorably from the developed polis (Politics 1252b19–20). Alfarabi speaks of humans as attaining perfection only in an ijtimā‘, or association, which in Arabic signifies a cooperative political community of undefined size: it could describe a household, city, nation, many nations, or even the entire inhabited world (PR 60.64, Ar. 69.17–19, VC 228.10–230.2). This points to a possible difference between the two philosophers: while Aristotle privileges the polis, in this chapter in particular and throughout the Politics in general, it is by no means clear that Alfarabi follows him on this point. Scholarly discussion of this question has been largely inconclusive. Let us take a closer look.

The passages most often cited in favor of the city occur in the Political Regime and the Virtuous City. In the former, Alfarabi says that “The city is the first in the rankings of perfections” (PR 60.64, Ar. 69.20). In the latter, Alfarabi says that “The noblest good and the furthest perfection are obtained first of all in a city, not in any association that is more deficient than it” (VC 230.3–4).⁴¹ Fauzi Najjar links this statement to the recently cited passage in Aristotle’s Politics that praises the city (Najjar 1954, 108–9). But Najjar’s assumption seems somewhat hasty. Given how unsure we are about Alfarabi’s knowledge of the Politics, we can hardly suppose that he agreed with it on all points. Besides, Alfarabi distinguishes between the city, Umma, and the multinational association in two major ways: size and capacity for perfection (cf. Naṣṣār 1978, 36–37). The meaning of Alfarabi’s statements therefore depends on the interpretation of “first.” Does it mean first in perfection, as Najjar assumes, or simply smallest in size, among the communities that are equally capable of perfection? The context seems to suggest the latter, since in both passages the city, Umma, and multinational association are listed according to size rather than virtue. These three types of association are all defined as “perfect,” in contrast to households, streets, neighborhoods, and villages, deficient associations that ought to be subordinate to the city (PR 60.64, Ar. 69.19–70.1; VC 228.10–230.1). Thus “first” is more plausibly taken to signify the city’s superiority to these deficient, subpolitical associations, rather than its relation to the Umma. Alfarabi defines the city as the smallest of the associations that are capable of human perfection: on this point he agrees with Aristotle (Politics 1252a27–30). But Alfarabi does not follow Aristotle in proclaiming its superiority to larger associations, as some scholars have already noted (Mahdi 2001, 140; Cité vertueuse, trans. Cherni, 218 n. 4). The smallest might actually mean the weakest, as Naṣṣār assumes, arguing that “the perfection realized in each of these associations differs from the other in degree: the association arising in a city is beneath the association arising in an Umma, and the latter is beneath the association comprising all of humanity” (Naṣṣār 1978, 37). Alfarabi also states that “the unqualifiedly perfect human community is divided into Ummas” (PR 60.64, Ar. 70.5), which Pines plausibly interprets to mean that “bigger communities are more perfect” (Pines, 156).

A further proof that Alfarabi does not regard small size as inherently good is that he makes no attempt, even in his commentaries on Greek works, to limit either the territory or population of the political community to any numerical size. Plato’s restriction of the city of the Laws to 5,040 households (Laws 737e ff.) is still deemed too large by Aristotle (Politics 1265a15–18), but it is omitted entirely from Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s “Laws”, which focuses on the equalization of property without any reference to the number of inhabitants (SL 157, 5.14, Ar. 141; see Parens 1995, 62–67). Averroes’s approach to Plato’s Republic is even more explicit. One passage in the dialogue appears to limit the city to a thousand guardians (Republic 423a9). Averroes praises the view that a community should have a limited size, but adds that its proper bounds vary considerably across space and time, and can be fixed in each case only by political deliberation (Averroes 1974, 46.1–5). Plato’s choice of only one thousand guardians was appropriate for Greece, but in Averroes’s own time the required number would be somewhat larger (46.5–15).

Nevertheless, Mahdi takes a statement that occurs in the Virtuous City to imply a certain preference for the city. “The city whose association intends cooperation concerning the things through which true happiness is attained, is the virtuous city …. The Umma, all of whose cities cooperate to attain happiness, is the virtuous Umma” (VC 230.9–10). In Mahdi’s view, the second phrase indicates that “The virtuous nation [Umma] … presupposes virtuous cities” (Mahdi 2001, 143). This reading would be convincing if the cities of the virtuous Umma were themselves qualified as virtuous. But since they are not so qualified, it remains unclear whether cooperation entails virtue filtering up from the cities to the Umma or down from the Umma to the cities.⁴² Perhaps both are possible, in which case the view of the equal receptivity of cities and Ummas to virtue and happiness still holds. The obscurity of these passages does not end here. Galston has observed that while mere “happiness” is attained in the Umma, “true happiness” is attained only in the city (Galston 1990, 152; VC 230.7–9). It is hard to grasp the meaning of this distinction. Alfarabi sometimes sets “true happiness” in opposition to “what is supposed to be happiness without being such” (BR 101.20–22, Ar. 52.10–12), but does not do so here. As tempting as it may be to regard the mere “happiness” of the Umma as inferior to the “true happiness” of the city, we lack any clear point of reference for interpreting this distinction.⁴³

The ambiguity of these passages remains frustrating. As Galston concludes, “The relationship between cities and nations in Alfarabi’s political thought is ambiguous and needs to be studied further” (Galston 1990, 153). We will have many occasions to study this issue further throughout the rest of this book. Even at this stage of the discussion, it already seems clear that Alfarabi’s ambiguity about the superiority of the city to other political forms contrasts starkly with Aristotle’s forthright declaration of it.

It must be emphasized, however, that Aristotle’s focus on the polis and its uniqueness does not betray any innocence about the significance of the ethnos. It is discussed at some length in the opening chapter of the Politics. According to Aristotle, both the city and the ethnos emerge gradually from the household. But only the former is based on partnership, first of households into villages, then of villages into cities (Politics 1252b15–31). In both cases, the partnership implies a degree of political cooperation that transforms the character of the original community, permitting it to live a full and independent political life for the sake of living well (1252b28–31, 1280b33–35). This seems to involve, among other things, ruling and being ruled in turn (1277a30–33, b8–16). But with regard to the ethnos, Aristotle says nothing about partnership or shared rulership. Instead, the ethnē are ruled by kings, just as households are ruled by patriarchs. The original community of the household becomes bigger in size, first to a village and then to an ethnos, but does not change its patriarchal structure (1252b16–20). There is no clear limit to how large this community can become: kings may equally rule a polis, an ethnos, or many ethnē (1285b33–34). The politeia, however, can flourish only in a small community such as the polis, where everybody knows one another and the assembly or army is not so large as to be unable to hear the voice of orators (1326b2–7). For Alfarabi, political cooperation in its highest sense is possible in a community of any size (VC 230.7–11), while for Aristotle political partnership is limited to the polis. It is important to note the difference in meaning between the Greek koinōneia and its imperfect Arabic translation ta‘āwan: while the former implies a measure of equality and political participation, the latter, usually rendered into English as “cooperation,” could easily describe a strictly hierarchical society where everybody performs his particular function well. This is indeed how Alfarabi proceeds to describe the virtuous city (230.12 ff.).

Despite these differences between Aristotle and Alfarabi on the relative stature of nations and cities, both emphasize the actual prevalence of nations. Aristotle implies that the ethnos ruled by a king, far from being an outlier, is the kind of government and society that initially prevails everywhere. He observes that all humans speak of the gods as being ruled by a king, thus assimilating the gods to themselves (Politics 1252b24–27). “All humans” surely includes the Greeks, since they too were ruled by kings when they first fancied Zeus to be king of the gods. By quoting Homer in this context (1252b22–23), Aristotle indicates that the polis as he knew it was yet to exist in Homeric times. Even among the Greeks of Aristotle’s own time, the polis had not established itself universally. Aristotle speaks explicitly of Greek ethnē, such as the Arcadians, who have never managed to organize themselves into a polis (1261a29–31). He later suggests that the Greeks are divided into ethnē of various qualities, some as wild as the people of Europe and others as docile as the people of Asia (1327b33–36). Among the non-Greeks, the polis hardly seems to exist at all: even nominal cities such as Babylon are large enough to be called ethnē (1276a28–30).

The foregoing analysis suggests that in Aristotle’s view the ethnē comprise the vast majority of humankind, and even a significant portion of the Greeks. The bulk of Aristotle’s work on politics treats a political form that by his own acknowledgment is quite rare. Aristotle evidently thinks that there is something unique and noble about the vibrant, self-sufficient political life of the polis. The ethnos does have a distinct meaning, but a rather negative one: it is a loosely defined community that cannot be governed in the free, political manner of a city (1326b5). The Greek-barbarian distinction becomes less important than the distinction between potentially free cities and unfree ethnē.⁴⁴ Aristotle’s exclusion of the ethnē from the blessings of political life attained only in a few cities could even be said to foreshadow a certain Judaeo-Christian usage of the term, according to which a few faithful believers live surrounded by many, almost anonymous, gentiles.

The elevation of the city vis-à-vis the nation constitutes a central theme of Aristotle’s Politics, but it is absent in Alfarabi. And why would Alfarabi have wanted to elevate the city? While the city was rare enough in Aristotle’s time, and limited mainly to Greece, in Alfarabi’s Babylon and neighboring Byzantium its last vestiges had long been engulfed by a series of vast empires and sweeping claims to revelation. The only kind of government known to Alfarabi and his contemporaries was kingly and imperial: this remained true in the Islamic world well into the twentieth century. Praising or even discussing a political form that no longer existed might have appeared hopelessly anachronistic. The absence of independent cities or popular governments in the thought and practice of the medieval Islamic world might be another major reason why the Politics never gained much currency within it. Unfamiliarity with the contents of the Politics would have discouraged translations, and even if translations were made, philosophers might have been leery of publicizing something that would have seemed so preposterous to much of their audience. The political situation in thirteenth-century Europe, in which the Politics publicly resurfaced, was already quite different: republics had emerged in northern Italy, so that thinkers like Marsilius and even Thomas Aquinas felt free to ask the Aristotelian question of whether kings, aristocracies, or popular assemblies should rule.⁴⁵ The rediscovery of the Politics helped stimulate a centuries-long European debate over which class of people should govern: no comparable debate occurred in the Islamic world until the twentieth century.⁴⁶ I propose this as a plausible answer to the query with which Brague concludes his article: how do we explain the relative lack of interest in the Politics in the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim worlds (Brague 1993, 432)?

Our analysis of Plato and Aristotle has shown that their treatment of nations does not display simple indifference or contempt. On the contrary, they acknowledge the prevalence and importance of nations for much of humankind. These nations constitute a major obstacle to the realization of the best city and regime, and, in the case of Plato, a useful tool for education. Yet neither philosopher attempts to define them in any strict way. We have seen how loosely Plato employs terms such as ethnos and genos, and how negatively Aristotle defines the ethnos. This means that their discussions of nations are often inconclusive and vague. I contend that Alfarabi goes beyond his classical predecessors in providing a working definition of the Umma. Reflecting on this definition and its various applications will distinguish Alfarabi decisively from Plato and Aristotle and help to clarify some of the problems that have emerged in determining the significance of the nation thus far. It is by establishing this definition that we will commence our analysis of Alfarabi and his concept of the Umma.