A Genealogical Study of Al-Farabi's Theory of Art by Referring to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus

Document Type : Original Article

Author

PhD of Wisdom of Religious Arts.

Abstract

This Article, by an analytic- comparative method, seeks some relevance between Al- Farabi's theory of Art- Beauty, and his ancestors at Pre- Islamic time. According to the famous theory, which is common in Islamic history books, Al-Farabi is the founder of Islamic Philosophy. He is a divine and theological philosopher who steps in the traditional way that some famous thinker- Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus- organized it. But Al-Farabi explains this legacy with Islamic content. In fact, he evaluates this legacy and also tries to mix Greek- philosophical and Divine- Islamic content, and establishes a new philosophy which finally called Islamic philosophy. If we consider his Artistic view, he says that everything in the creature world is a semiotic of its Beautiful Creator, and somebody has a natural talent that can be moved from faculty to act with exercise, and will be effective in creation of beauty and art. In Al-Farabi's theory, art and artist must help their audiences to know their eternal Paradise and motivate toward it.
 

Keywords

Deborah L. Black, (1990), Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics in medieval Arabic philosophy, Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Eldridge, Richard, (2005), An introduction to the philosophy of art, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shukri Abed, (1991), Aristotelian Logic and the Arabic Language in Alfarabi, Albany: SUNY Press.
Volume 1, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
September 2019
Pages 37-66
  • Receive Date: 08 December 2018
  • Revise Date: 14 January 2019
  • Accept Date: 15 January 2019