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Fārābī’s knowledge of Plato’sLaws

Joshua Parens,Metaphysics as Rhetoric. Alfarabi’s Summary of Plato’s “Laws” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), xxxviii + 195 pp.

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References

  1. Alfarabius,Compendium Legum Platonis [Plato Arabus III], London: Warburg Institute, 1952, repr. Nendeln: Kraus, 1973.

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  2. For a list of books and articles on theLaws that appeared since the second edition (1979) of Trevor Saunders'sBibliography on Plato's Laws 1920–1970 (New York: Arno Press), see the end of Kahn's “Foreword” to Morrow,Plato's Cretan City (see above, p. 405), pp. xxvii–xxviii. None of these works is consulted, let alone engaged, in Parens's discussion. Particularly distressing is the absence of A.B.Hentschke'sPolitik und Philosophie bei Plato und Aristoteles, Frankfurter wissenschaftliche Beiträge. Kulturwissenschaftliche Reihe 13 (Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1971), a book that addresses squarely the very question Parens is treating from a point of view that Parens would have found interesting, as well as F.L. Lisi'sEinheit und Vielheit des platonischen Nomosbegriffes, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 167 (Meisenheim: Anton, Hein, 1985). But Parens doe not read German; he consults M. Meyerhof's “Von Alexandrien nach Baghdad” in “an unpublished translation by Anton Heinen supplied by Muhsin Mahdi in 1992” (p. 185), and he thinks that “Unveränderter Nachdruck” is the name of a publishing house (p. 157, line 4).

  3. “How Fārābī Read Plato'sLaws,” in:Mélanges Louis Massignon, vol. III, Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1957, p. 319; repr. in: L. Strauss,What is Political Philosophy?, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959, pp. 134–154.

  4. E.g., the Homeric citation in theLaws III.681E, summarized in Fārābī's version, p. 185 Gabrieli.

  5. In “Galen'sSynopsis of Plato'sLaws and Fārābī's Taẖlīṣ,”, in: G. Endress and R. Kruk, eds.,the ancint, Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism. Studies on the Transmission of Greek Philosophy and Sciences dedicated to H.J. Drossaart Lulofs on his ninetieth birthday, Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1997, pp. 101-119, from which the following examples are taken; it is to be consulted for all further references.

  6. All translations of Plato's text are by T.J. Saunders (tr.),Plato. The Laws, ser. Penguin Classics, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970; here p. 139.

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  7. See my “Aspects of Literary Form and Genre in Arabic Logical Works,” in:Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts, ed. Charles Burnett, Warburg Institute, Surveys and Texts XXIII, London: The Warburg Institute, 1993, pp. 38-43.

  8. T.L. Pangle (tr.),The Laws of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

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  1. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University, USA

    Dimitri Gutas

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Gutas, D. Fārābī’s knowledge of Plato’sLaws . Int class trad 4, 405–411 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686427

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