Medieval Philosophy: Al Farabi

hello and welcome this is the history of medieval philosophy and I'm Marc Torres be in this video we'll be discussing the early medieval philosophy of an important Islamic philosopher all Farabi so welcome back everyone I hope you guys are doing well I'm not going to be discussing every bit of his philosophy because as you read it you'll quickly discover that it's quite complex in the one of the things that offer ami likes to you is really lay out lots and lots of distinctions so I'm not gonna spend I'm not gonna cover every intricate moment of his arguments but I do hope to do this videos provides you a sort of general overview of his philosophy and then we'll also take a look at one of his texts he had some particularity so you can see how in many ways all Farabi really is sort of the second Aristotle in fact he was known or he would be later referred to as the second teacher the first teacher is Aristotle and in many ways his commentaries were absolutely essential he's not the most well-known of the Islamic philosophers but he's definitely an important one a very very important philosopher he commented on many of Aristotle's works he actually also wrote expositions on Plato he was praised later for his work on logic and political theory it really he contributed to both Muslim and Jewish thought in fact Maimonides who was thinking will be looking at later here Maimonides I'm held al-farabi a very high esteem yeah he was actually known in the Christian world but to a lesser extent even Sina even Russia so what about his philosophical perspective I think the key things that'll be helpful to know is that for Al Farabi there's a century unity between Plato and Aristotle thinking we have a tendency today when we teach or when we talk about Plato and Aristotle to really think of them as almost opposing figures you'll recall and the famous Raphael play or not play a painting of Aristotle parasol's pointing towards the earth and Plato's pleading towards the heavens and this seems to symbolize I was sort of divergent abuse and that's true to some extent but essentially in many ways there does there is a unity and in fact there's later contemporary commentators in Aristotle versus John Wilde makes a very very strong case for the relationship between linear as well John Wall is not a contemporary thinker really he died some years ago but I was introduced to it by a friend of mine and he has a sort of magnificent Club bateria Plato and Aristotle called Plato's theory of medium but in many ways all for Robbie's view here is the planet eronel were very much unified actually so from Aristotle what we'll see is that all probably largely pulls from the logic the natural philosophy the ethics and the metaphysics whereas from Plato he really pulls out the politics so in many ways these thinkers are Al Farabi could think of him perhaps as a synthesis it is own thinking between Plato's politics and in Aristotle's natural philosophy there it was dispute between later thinkers regarding how we ought to really understand all Ferraris work for instance was he actually in the business of harmonizing Islamic doctrines with philosophical teachings or was he primarily a philosopher and you just saw religion at having a largely political sort of role at a political use so there's a question that later medieval figures would have particularly as lava thinkers regarding the nature of his theology and weathered up this is more of a natural philosophy that's been harmonized with his love doctrines or whether or not he's really just an Aristotelian and then religion is sort of a secondary consideration I think for his perspective he probably see he probably would think that be privatised both questions I think but I don't know so what there was a dispute in terms of how he's understood within the later medieval scholarship what we do know is that for off Rabi God has understood as a sort of neo platonic one of Aristotle's divided thought that's thinking itself the unmoved then we're gonna really lay out what his arguments are regarding God and that's gonna be sort of the focus of the philosophical discussion to come but what we will see is that for him of course God is one and you can see that's critical and central to his love of teaching God is knowing God is true God is living of the attributes of God he argues are actually identical of God's essence God is incorporeal in a little spelling error there so God is not a physical object but but God is pure intellect in fact and God is the creator of all things that exist so you could see here this isn't exactly the articulation the Arizona gives regarding his delight essence but in many ways it is it is similar to both Aristotle and Plato but of course you see organized throughout all of the is the sense of his love of teaching as well of course aerosol would argue that it's one as well so do so this is sort of general character term picture framework he can use and we're talking about Al Farabi his philosophy of God now the other thing we're gonna really talk about today is the origin of the world not so much towards in the world but his theory of emanation I mean in here the notion is that God is a being that Qatar plates himself or itself and so God is always actually in the purest sense God is it is an unmoved mover that's purely just being a thinking thing that's thinking itself so God's contemplating itself but from that contemplation offer all the argues that God's intellect arises and this just once notice the first-in-the-nation and we're gonna we're gonna talk a lot about that's there's a little bit here there's actually nine levels of emanations and the final elimination is the emanation of the agent intellect so we're gonna talk about that today so all Ferrari thinks that God has contemplated itself in is perfect is the unity but that from that as it were there's emanations of God's being which allow for other men of reality and ultimately this is the source for the origin of the world the physical world now whoops I'm sorry another thing here is that each of these emanations has a celestial sphere so it seems to be what all frogs today is a theory of emanations that ultimately extends and this is unified with his view of cosmology which largely seems to come from Aristotle so there's nine emanations and there's nine emanations and those nine celestial spheres right so the first eight spheres are a turtle right and this is the sphere the fixed stars Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun the Sun Venus Mercury and the moon but then there's also the sub nooner celestial sphere which is the one that we're existed it's or underneath the mood and this is where generation were the generation and corruptions of things occur now of course it's clear if you study astronomy that there's problems with this theory right from the get-go we have to realize that all four always working with what he has right they don't so far as I know they don't have sophisticated telescopes to recognize that that for instance there's dirt on the Luthor's there's things there's clouds of Venus etc right so but his view here is largely comes from aerosols of a geocentric model for the YouTube for his cosmology and the idea is that there's the sublunar and then outside of those are these other celestial spheres and as these spheres move and rotate it is in a cyclical fashion which is an eternal formation that's why we're seeing stars and said all these different things move in our skies but the his view is that these out of spheres are eternal and the sub leaders view where things we have generation in corruption now notice this is a really alien perspective I think for most of us particularly because today we have a conception of contemporary or modern physics or Newtonian physics or you could go beyond that but our assumption is that all of these physical properties know should or everywhere else no matter the galaxy no matter the planet and so there's a severe very sort of different thing here in many ways I think that all froggies philosophical considerations for the his theory of emanation is what is is really the guideline in terms of the cosmology rather than the observation or you know rather than a sort of astronomical kill so it really isn't philosophical you know and one that I think is largely defunct today at least in the literal sense now I'll probably have what we're also going to talk a little bit about his doctrine of the intellect and this was the way in which he sought to improve Aristotle's own account there's actually four census of Italy there's the Faculty of the human soul and this is sort of thinking in potentiality it's your ability to potentially think and then the second sort of sets of the intellect his intellectual abstraction and this he refers to as the intellect in terms of its actuality and then through those thinking the intelligible would fit it so this is about thinking about the things which are intelligible and thinking and this is the acquired intellect for him and then finally there's the agent intellect sets of a chain election this is the efficient cause of thinking so you can notice here if you're not familiar again with era strong I encourage you to go take a look at my V on Aristotle's metaphysics here and his physics because in many ways that you can see that he's utilizing the notion of potentiality and actuality he's utilizing the notion of the age of intellect here so you have a sense of which he is very conception of the intellect itself is informed it is consistent and systematized with his broader with his with the broader account of Aristotle and he thinks that heat by articulating the intellect to these various senses we can get more mileage if you will out of Aristotelian framework there is of course that came out of prophecy that Al Farabi gives it I sort of highlights her three different sort of passages just to sort of give you to says right the profit is not merely somewhat arbitrarily selected by God for his prophetic office but some of who's possessed of all human perfections by the way this is coming from the preface the editor of the book we're using of oratory this we're using again the Hackett anthology of medieval philosophy so you can take a look at that I discussed it in the very first video so if you need to review where this is at but this is just an opening introduction to all four ami so so here the idea is that the prophet is someone who's actually perfect right it goes up not not only was the Prophet possess a healthy Constitution that world virtues intellectual perfection so forth but he must also have a well-developed active imagination now once these perfections have been attained the Prophet assumes a 2-fold role as a philosopher is acquired intellect will be in contact with the ancient intellect from which it receives a kind of illumination right remember the aging leg is the final layer of validation it's coming from God's being and the way you can really think about in this you could see the residents here with even with Plato is that he thinks of God is like the son doing its own thing that light comes and has effects of things and that's these sort of layers of emanations the final age of intellect so first thing is that the prophet of course if he's trying to the Prophet he of course is talking about Muhammad from the Prophet Muhammad it's obviously CSO so that there there's this philosophical notion right it all probably insist he goes on that the prophetic intellect will never become identical with the age of your legs so that means that the product doesn't become God so the perfections there there's always a divide but at the same time he does admit that the agent you're like there's a kind of form for the acquired intellect of the Prophet but besides Peter comes floss with a prop that is also a statesman and so there you have this sort of interesting critical link both between the philosophical side of the Prophet and the political side here it's important to recognize the way was the problem of it also was a political figure so you can see there is an interesting account of prophecy that goes in here they did the text or at least into Al Farabi down the other thing is let's talk a little bit about Al Farabi it is politics so man is a political animal by nature so that's where it comes from but I guess Plato and Aristotle happiness is attained within the state so the way which one gains happiness is by living in a certain sort of political Constitution now what is the ideal state the idea of state concerns the orderly arrangement of its citizens remember in Plato Plato divides in the Republic he divides the city into really sort of to a few two classes and out of that second class comes the philosopher king or if you will three classes but really this is comes right out of played over I have the one hand you have the masses of the artists another hand you have the guardians of the elite now ultimately for all Farabi the classes he just devises the elite of the masses of the elite were able to understand by intellectual demonstrations worth the masses understand through persuasion and I thought that particularly interesting because it certainly seems to me that this is maybe a way which we can look at our own political order it does seem to be that for instance American politics really focuses on a type of persuasion of the masses and then while we don't really see is an intellectual demonstration regarded policy arguments or things like that so that's sort of interesting to think about in it seems to be there's cub is coming from Plato but there seems to be something true there the idea of state though requires a singular ruler he thinks in a sense that there's a singular God so this who is the singular ruler will do the profit there's a philosopher though the legislature they're the above the Imam here just means leader this context so you could see here the Prophet Mohammed of course fits the ideal state ruler in the Platonic sense so here we see is that at the end of the data for all foggy it appears that philosophy contains the final truth whereas religion contains the image of the truth so this is something where you can see you can start to understand how other thinkers other later theological fingers would criticize all Fraga it sort of asked what is he up to here because it appears that if there's a logical priority between philosophy and theology I should say theology the philosophy and religion philosophy has the logical priority and why would that be the case well remember if the final emanation of God is the age of intellect and that is the efficient cause of our ability to think the end of philosophy is simultaneously an intellectual endeavor in a highly abstract sense so that means that philosophy through through intellect allows one to attain or to recognize or articulate the sort of final truth of things but whereas we the religion and think here about the way in which religious texts tell stories for instance to paint pictures there's a way and then here you not just religion in the sense of the text of a religion which of course within his law is holy that kuratas of course there are other holy texts for his love as well as with other religious right so we're not just talk about the text but also the way which people live with through the religion the religion contains the image ultimately of the final truth and notice that this is a platonic notion as well right that ultimately the philosopher king or the prophet is the person who ultimately can actually gain the true wisdom and that the society is organized and images are crafted in order to help the masses so not everyone is going to be able to get to the philosophical truth of things and in that sense what we have is for the masses and I think for the lead religion is for both but you can see philosophy does is not necessarily for both now it's quick on his biography it became as you can tell I'm not an expert at all for Robbie but I hope this is right so I'm still learning this myself as well so I'll just sort of put that out there but he was boarded 817 feralas Turkestan he studied in Korea as well as in Baghdad in name 9:42 he accepted an invitation to the court of say II thought awawa and he actually spent most of his life in Aleppo so of course it's contemporary Syria today um he actually lived a fairly aesthetic life not aesthetic I'm sorry ascetic life so he lived a minimalist lifestyle I mean he was inclined towards religious mysticism he died in 950 so that's a very very brief biography of course you can learn more about Al Farabi because there's an enormous amount of literature on this philosopher give it his impact now the text we're gonna be taking a look at we're going to be looking at some of the excerpts and some of the discussions that are laid out it all fabi's the principles of existing things now to be clear he wrote actually many many books is he has a huge CV if you will so boards gonna take a look at this the principal is gonna see things and we're gonna see that really what he's after about articulate here is a question about ultimately the theory of emanation its relationship to ourselves and to God that's gonna be kind of the focus of the rest of our discussion today so let's sort of start here with part 1 of that text it sort of part one of our lecture as well and the principles of existing things now let's start start here just talk about what a principle is so all probably does it defy what principle as he suspects you already know but I think it might be helpful in the video introduction here talk about what will he mean by all we talk about something being a principle right so first of the general sets a principle you could think of as essentially a rule [Music] that guides something it'll actually or guide something in some way so for instance if but but doesn't thing here is our there principle give cannot be proven within the science that uses that principle this comes from Aristotle so for instance if take for instance the principle of cause and effect of causality but we don't normally think of causalities of principle but think about it for in terms of physics right physics is the study of how things move through time you see I have my gas a cup so gas is all about physics physics requires motion and there's an effect between one type of those should its effect what other things right so cause that cause and effect relationships is is sort of part and parcel to our whole experience of the world but we could say is that it sir away cause and effect is a principle for physics it's a principle because physics requires the axiom that there is such a thing as cause and effect you can't prove cause and effect by looking at physical things right and for instance famously David Hume a modern philosopher not contemporary but a modern philosophers right he says for instance how do you know that there's cause and effect relationships in the world the answer is you see so for instance I this is moving and then that I hit it and I may not hear a sound for instance I have a cause but of it effect but notice here is that I can watch very closely one of it and then another event occur but what I never really see is the necessary relationship between event a and B I only know that there is a cause and effect relationship because it happens over and over and over but what does that mean it means it the strict observation of the emotion or the or of a causative that cause it effect event a strict observation will not allow us to observe cause it affects right cause and effect is rather something that we recognize within the state of existing and cause effects that means that causing effect is like a principal so now let's move away because we're not talking about common effect in this view what we can say is that what a each one of these causes is a principal for some other set some other relationship and so this is why it's so you can see here there's six types of principles the first principle is the first cause of all things and of course this is in the Aristotelian sense it's the unmoved mover but of course here it's also an unmoved mover but yeah it moves it so what we're gonna see here is the first cause is what it's a singular unity and then from this first cause these other principles emerge such as secondary causes third is the active intellect you have to fourth the soul and then finally five and six you have to form and matter which are both essential for Aristotle's physics now you'll notice here that you'll start to recognize if you're familiar with Aristotle but all froggie is utilizing and thinking about all the things that Aristotle is but in a slightly different way so the first thing is when we talk about the principles of things these principles get divided into these six levels the first cause of singular it's one whereas all the others are plural or there are many on the other hand all probably says that the first three causes are not bodies nor are they in bodies so that means that the first three principles are really just intellectual principles they're not principles that exist in space they're not they're not bodies themselves so you can't observe them and or are they in the bodies so you can't find them or deduce them four bodies that for those rather the last three principles four five and six the soul form in matter these are in bodies but they're not bodies as such and this is important because you're thinking we'll wait a second is it matter doesn't matter have extension its base but remember here's that matter in it of itself if it has no form does it exist because everything anything that's matter put this way so how a coffee cup here the coffee cup both 4-bit matter its matter is it's ceramic ceramic stuff that's made of and its form as the fact it's in this type of shape but notice here this that the only way I could ever recognize a form is if there's matter and the only way I could ever have matter is if it's at a shape so that means that they're in the bodies but they're not the bodies themselves it also you can think of the soul here as being distinct for the body and an important sense okay so there's six generative bodies so when we talk about bodies what types of bodies are there in the world it here you might think what type of things are there in the world in the most substantial says well there's celestial bodies so you have a sudden you have the mood etc there are also rational animals that's humans right you also have three non rational animals so for instance you can't see it from a cat I see right next to me so there are non Rash whales but I can't does it have reason I'm sorry about to tell tell them that I've never for those plants you have vegetative types of life there were five you have minerals which are not living as such and then within the minerals that you have what Al Farabi says are the four elements here he's talking about the four elements that are articulated in the antiquity right earth air fire and water right each of which has a pre-socratic philosopher associated with it in air in Aristotle also discussed the four elements now today we know that there are not four elements but we do have an elemental theory of things now for us the elements are not the things that we label as elements of the periodic table of elements things like oxygen etcetera but the elements for us or rather something like atoms or if we go smaller still we might say that they're quarks or smaller still theoretically maybe the elements are actually strings and you have string theory so in many ways the question of what the elements are has not been resolved today but we still essentially think that everything must be made of some sort of so in many ways even if this is no longer accurate physicalist picture of the world he does resemble in many ways a rational organization of things that's consistent with our own and he thinks that did you have these sort of different types of bodies now earlier we talked about the difference between species and genus right in the last video now this means that we're talking about bodies of genus of bodies that means that that there's two desert if you will the categories or the types of bodies which are possible now if you take all six of these together for all Farabi that is the universe so that that comprises everything in the universe that we think of as being in the universe at least that's how he defines it now of course God is in the universe but God is not a body and so when we talk about things and cosmologically in terms of the universe we're talking about the embodied part of the universe if you will and so that's sort of a very important point and it doesn't thing here is that of course al farabi would would agree that God can be known through revelation because God reveals himself to the Prophet as well as to Abraham but all probably also things right along with Aaron saw that the ultimately the philosophical truth of the nature of God is given through the intellect and it's given through reason here now the causes so when we talk about the causes now in philosophy there's lots of different causes discussed the first cause of course is the divine cause that's the cause of all things it's first of the most pure sin so we're gonna talk about that here a minute the secondary causes though these are the things which are the causes of the universe right these are the things that actually enable is and create the physical bodies of the universe so you have the highest level which is the is to entails the existence of the first heaven and all the way to the lowest level which entails the existence of the orbits containing the moods in between or other causes so you have the highest other super this where you have the secondary causes within the secondary causes you have a hierarchy of ordering of those causes the highest is the closest to the divide to the first heaven whereas the lowest is closest to us and there's the whole range of secondary causes in between in each of these in tales of spheres so I put up here a little model that pulled from the internet here sort of what the cosmology looked like in an Aristotelian world you can sort of see here that I should say that this this image does not come from all four obby nor should would I nor do I think it's actually depict eat-off froggies model but I want to put the zero just so you get a sense of what we're talking about here right so we're down here that you've got the mood is this sort of first layer celestial there you've got Mercury Venus Mars and so on and so forth you can see where the Sud is right and their idea was that these things would just goes in circles and so they're a turtle etc so that's the gives a bit of a sense of what these secondary causes are they're obviously linked to each of these spheres these categorical spheres of the celestial bodies now the function of the activity lurks we're gonna see the activity like this tub is really really critical level than the nation for Alfa Romeo and so I pulled this quote from his text where he says to watch that the active intellect watches over the Rasch whatever animal it endeavours to have you reach the highest level of perfection that man can reach namely ultimate happiness which is for man to arrive at the level of active intellect so so we're gonna see here that for him God is one but that God has these layers of divination in the at the bottom here you have the active it elect the active intellect is ultimately what is relating to us as human beings in the in the active a life is seeking to allow us through our reasoning to attain perfection or the type of perfection is possible for us as the type of beings we are but once we this is the act the ultimate happiness laughter now the active intellect itself is singular right but it accommodates quote whatever part of the rational animal is freed from matter and attains happiness you can see there's there's a sense of the ascetic nature of all fur all these life here right I'll probably to believe he as an ascetic he didn't accumulate lots of material goods and try to become wealthy etc right rather right you could see why he didn't at least in his view is because ultimately to attain happiness is to engage in the intellect and ultimately to reach towards the active intellect which is sort of political idiots which is sort of trying to if you will gods try to please handy how to pull us up as it will but this is an intellectual activity and this is why first it's probably most of the masses are only persuaded by a persuasion rather than actually reason maybe because they're - they're are freed from matter right so the active intellect is a sort of protective spirit actually and sorry I apologize I keep see like errors of the copy I did years of so my apologies for that but the activity is a sort of protective spirit he actually calls it the holy spirit so that's the spirit in which God's God works with human beings now at the level of the soul right so we've talked about the soul there are many principles why are there baby prisms because there's different types of salts there's animal souls and there's rational Souls right and this of course you can see directly is related to Aristotle's own conception of the soul where there's three different types of soul the rational being the highest so there are many principles of the soul and you can see here as the first hints appears within the rapture available the various principles we recognize or reason of course it's the critical and we've got appetite Duff so for instance as I give you this discussion here I've occasionally getting thirsty there's let me say that there's a part of my soul there's a part of the being that I am it's just pushing me towards my desire so you have appetite you'll stop imagination so it here to be clear imagination is emitted much more literal sense that it's likely that most of us think of the imagination most of us think of the imagination is the part of us that allows us to be creative and come up with you know different ideas and that's kind of true but the imagination here is really focused on the idea that imaging right so we have the ability to image the world so for instance as that records video I'm looking at the screen which means that I have there's a principle within me that allows my leg to articulate images and then to use those images to you know to give the lecture whatever into it find my way around the world and then finally I also have a principle of sensory perception so I can touch things the first is you can tell it that this copy comes a little warm so that's given to me through my sensory perception so and there still could be other parts though those are the ones he lists out in this text but it seems to be the week there's probably other principles we could articulate now reasons the critical law here because ultimately what we want to understand is the relationship between the rational soul is the activate alert okay so there's two parts of the soul the rash of reasoning you have theoretical faculties and you have practical faculties so for instance the practical faculties it's pretty clear refer to our sort of ability to deliberate about how to do things in a practical sense it also is vocational for him so there's sort of things that we do in our vocation is a utilization of our practical reasoning and by that we also have our theoretical faculties which is the sort of highest for abstract form of reasoning the thing we're doing in philosophy here right in fact here's the other faculties we can lay out so we've got theoretical faculties which gain knowledge of anything that that you don't that we don't act upon it anyway we have practical faculties where we gain knowledge of things that are acted upon by our volition we have vocational faculties which allow us to acquire crafts Sciences a vocation so think about your faculty thinks that enables you to become you know for instance a chef and to be able to cut vegetables and cook and do all that sort of same at the same time requires a sort of Faculty of reasoning that allows that you also have delivered of the faculties which allow for thinking and reflection appetite as we mentioned yeah you have appetite faculties with the appetites to seek out or to flee so there are an appetizer to something you desire something you desire not to have you have the imagination which is where you store your impressions of objects and the senses they finally you have these sensory perceptions which is you've got your five senses so I can notice here that all frog is linking up a whole range of different things all the way from the physics up into the metaphysics the ethics of the politics so you have a sort of systematic parroted paradigmatic view now the first cause let's go there so the first cause is the is God is the divine in it of itself right and the first cause is actually in selecting itself so the first cause of river doesn't have a body indoors that in a body but it actually has an election and what what is the first cause thinking about it the first class is thinking about the first cause the first cause of God is thinking of God God is contemplating godness right in fact they in this case what we're gonna see is that for the first cause the act of it a lot of thinking and the object of thinking are one of the same right so there's a fundamental unity in God as the first cause now the active intellect is the sort of next layer in which the intellect of the where the activate elect is thinking about the first cause as well as the other causes so take a look at this passage for this text he writes the active it elect is what makes them actual intelligent bulls it makes some of them actual it elects by raising them from their level of the sisters to a higher to a level higher than what given them by nature so the act so with nature were given an intellect but the active intellect tolls us into a higher level of existence for example he says the rational faculty by virtue of which man is man is not in its substance an actual intellect and was not given by nature to be an actual it looks instead the active intellect causes it to become an actual intellect it makes everything else an actual intelligible for the rational faculty so you can see here is that his all probably's metaphysical thinking is tightly interwoven into his epistemology because namely what does that really gain knowledge at least not of higher things unless it's through the emanation of the active intellect so let's go here to the next great so what exactly is the relationship between the active intellect in hue ba t so how am I supposed to understand this relationship and he says it's as I mentioned earlier it's the way in which the Sun is related to our vision so when you go outside the Sun is out there it's up there doing its thing your respect to the beautiful bright the Sun is not concerned with you but out of the Sun comes light and it's with that light that I'm able to see things with it a field of experience if I'm outside of course and even if you say well what about the light bulbs of this sort of thing well all that's energy that's coming from the Sun so now the Sun is the source of the light which enables us to see so we're the cedars right but without the light there's nothing to be seen so that same way the active intellect provides if you will the medium by which were able to have an election by which were able to gain knowledge through our thinking he says the Sun gives light to vision and by the light acquired for the Sun vision actually sees when before and it only had the potential to see but that my vision sees the Sun itself which is the cause of its actual seeing and furthermore it actually sees the colors that previously were only potentially the objects of vision the vision that was potentially terrified because actual and it's a manner the act of the intellect provides man was something that it imprints in his rational faculty and the relation of that thing to the rational soul is like the light of vision so there we go right and he goes on it is by reason of this think that the rational of salt intellects the active intellect that the things that are potentially intelligible become actually intelligible and that man who is potentially look because actually a perfectly an intellect and he until he oughta reaches the ring of the active village so may becomes an intellect per se after he was not and an intelligible per se after he was not and it divides substance after being a material and this is what the activity does and this is why it's called the active intellect so its activity is in terms of the neighborly of the capabilities for human beings to actualize their ability to know but want to make in order for them to be to go beyond their material world realm it wants me to achieve not the level of the activity put to achieve a very high intellectual level but it ultimately in this you can see how sort of mysticism probably comes into the equation here so this is a sort of if you will the epistemology if you will now let's talk about form and matter and here I think that it's clear again that he's really pulling from the analysis of Aristotle he says form is in the cup Oriole substance the way that the shape of bed is in the bed and the batter being the wood of the bed right and if the same example I gave is the Kaaba of course you give the example of a wooden bed but form here cannot exist without matter and matter only exists for the sake of for now this sort of interesting here we're going to see is that one of the things that's we're here is that forms are actually higher up on the chain if you will of data like that matters but forms kick you out of existence so you form is what allows us to recognize the decay and the generation of things are the corruption and the generation of things because the only weight so for instance if you take for instance an old man right there may be a bit old there right you can go back and look at my older videos you can see I'm started to get a little older which I'm not happy about but what is that you see the way you recognize that someone is in a state of decay that they're becoming older is that their form is changing and the way once you recognize that something is coming into being all right think about a mother who becomes pregnant right you can't see the baby but you can see the perform change and that form of course is because the baby's form is changing so forth so generation of things is also understood but form but notice that form always requires matter but what's interesting here is he says that matter exists for the sake of form so that's the reason you have matter it so you can have these forms one things that's interesting though is he's gonna say that matter never goes out of existence so matter has a sort of all those eternal quality to it that form doesn't just sort of an interesting thing he says here for instance try matter cannot exist a void of a given form okay now prime matter is what does he meet my perimeter prime matter is the notion of matter without a t4 rights that it's the abstraction of matter of what the idea of there being matter without any sort of shape so it's pride matter now we never experienced president or we don't experience things that are already informed right so prime matter though cannot exist without a given form because if it's existing it always has a form matter that is a principal at a caused solely by way of being the subject for bearing the form it's not an agent nor an end or something that can exist independently of some form right so but you can put it this way is that the the reason we have matter from Robbie's perspective it's so that we so that forms can can exist it's it's a cause but it's not an agent so it's up doing something it's not the goal of the forum is to be as matter but it's required so let's see here let's talk about souls the next thing here is okay a soul if it does not seek perfection it undertakes actions towards that head exist only as potentialities and configurations so the point here is that he's also leaking here the notion of for he's making the notion of the active intellect in the way goddess is healthy doesn't actualize their potential and he's linking with the idea of the soul so the soul is actually existence native potentiality and its activities are always organized towards they're sort of seeking of perfections or the improvement now there's different orders of form right so the elements refer to the lowest organization of form for instance I'm sort of changing the subject looking here but he sort of mentioned is that I thought it was important here to recognize these consistent here that the soul is actualized by the act of Felix it exists totally potentially until that point now what are the different orders of form now the elements refer to the lowest organization of form so if you will Adams or whatever whatever is at the very bottom of everything these basic elements at the lowest potential organization of form and the higher the form the more complex the configuration in each of these levels is really a measure of the complexity so for instance to give you a sort of example a low level of complexity here is the periodic table of elements where we have atoms and notice that each one of the atoms according to the periodic table they're going to try to explain the periodic table right here but each one of these atoms ultimately each one of these elements refers to an organization of the atoms themselves and so that's a very low level of organization when you compare it with for instance a library I'm pretty sure this is the library at Columbia University and here what we see here is that for instance notice that this is this building here is composed of many many different elements within its organization and many many different atoms it's so there's there's levels and degrees in terms of the arrangement of the elements which means that this is the corresponding relationship between the four wouldn't matter so there's so you can sort us that's why first is you can go to the library you then you can pull out your microscope and look at really see the elements but you can see this smaller bits that everything is made of and so one of the problems here's will work what's the form and here we're all froggies Dennis says well there's levels of degrees of form based upon configuration and organization so of the things which exist form and pride matter of things which exist form and primary are the most efficient he says so of all the things which exist from God at the top all the way down to us form and prime matter of the most efficient what exactly does tap me that's why I put a certain question work well in order to exist form of matter need each other right so that's the first thing so they're deficient in the sense that neither is self-sufficient right so the perfection it also considered the idea that the perfection of a substance always requires a change in the form of something that's sort of giving example people talk about the idea that a nation should try to become a bore that the United States should try to be a little more perfect union I think this goes from the guys burger dress right but ask yourself what would it mean for any of us or the nation or any configuration of foreigner to become more perfect well it's perfection always would need a change in form so that's a little poor thing and and the other thing is that means that there's always a different prime matter is reorganized in so the way he says it's by virtue of its form that the body has its more perfect state of being that is to say its actual existence whereas it's by virtue of its mass that the body has its more deficient state of being that is to say its potential existence so here we see for instance that potentiality in actuality right or both potentiality is a less perfect state of being that actuality because what is actualized potentiality just means that the form could be and then it's about that that potential nature's sent out within the substance but then it gets actualized through a change of form and that's what we that's what a movement of perfection we have to be right for at least an embodied being so that means that matter doesn't need a subject who is this but form does so the certain sense matter is superior to form because matter doesn't have a contrary to its privation right so for instance there's no opposite of the matter right there there's no contrary of matter because the opposite of matter would be something that had no matter which is non-existent and it's non-existent that it's not a contrary relationship so matter is superior to four because form you could have contrary forms next to each other this can't be the case so for instance on contraries Harambee says anything that has a foundation or a contrary cannot exist forever which means that matter does exist rather sir because matter is a subject for contrary forms you're sort of example so you can see there's two contrary forms here and they're both side by side but that's because the contrary relationship is informed we couldn't make this would matter you can't put matter next to the opposite of the inverse of matter no it's interesting here because maybe some of you would think what about dark matter isn't that the adverse and maybe it is but I'm not a physicist so I'm not going to try to bring that into the discussion of all Farabi which would be interesting because maybe the contemporary physics would invalidate this I'm not sure I'll let the physicist determine that but when we can taste from all for obvious perspective and from this errands to T lien model matter receives all the contraries equally right notice matter doesn't get upset when it changes form it just so now we have to talk about what are noncorporeal forms so in these forms there's no mattered form deficiency so this means that really I think we have to say there's two different ways of talking about form so for instance mathematics articulates duncum poriyal forms so the Pythagorean theorem a squared plus B squared equals C squared this is a form that has to do or this is really a principle or a consequence of the form of an equilateral triangle or not an equilateral I'm sorry a right angle triangle it's always the same it never changes but now notice that it doesn't have matter and it doesn't have form at least in a substantial sense but it does have form an intellectual type of form which is nod Kapoor oil and that form has no deficiencies it doesn't decay over time or anything right it but here these noncorporeal forms like mathematics and ultimately these other intellectual forms that what is able to articulate think about Plato here they don't exist for the sake of something these forms don't exist for the sake of something else right because their existence seems to be independent he says their existences is the stone on them by something more perfect in existence than they are so there is this type of deficiency maybe in them it automated what he's trying to articulate here is that on the one hand they don't exist the triangles then the Pythagorean theorem doesn't exist for us down here right why it does seem that they have to give their existence from something still higher a higher type of form so that means that it's not that they they have a deficiency in terms of generation or corruption but they have a deficiency of the sense that they are not their own efficient cause right so there is a type of deficiency which means that what we're really talking about are layers or levels of perfection in terms of existence and what's wrong here is that well there's no secondary causes can find perfection in themselves alone that's the way all Farabi articulates the draw there's no level of existence is self-sufficient except for the first cause and here's a sort of picture of the universe's creation sue this is dark matter so if they die didn't make this but at the level here notice that at our own model right we have the Big Bang obviously off Ravi doesn't articulate or agree with the Big Bang or anything but sort of I liked it with this image here because the other sort of shows that there's a sort of central point of first cause and I think that this is not the Bob the universal Farabi has clearly right but well we can't say is that he does state that there whatever starts at all the first cause is the only thing that is self sufficient that's the only thing that's why gods in election is the same as the object of what God is an elective that's the self sufficiency of the unmoved mover and there's no level of existence except for that first cause which is self sufficient so they're all organized in this hierarchy now we can talk here and I'll probably you can see the sort of bouncing around a little bit we can also talk about the souls and the faculties as availables now we already mentioned that the faculties available include sensory perception aid imagination right we talked about the rational side of things and I'm sure we'll get there again but what about these other things right what kind of perfection is there in the Faculty of sensation or or the ability to have images of the things you see his answer is the perfection is really something like whether or not it's accurate whether or not there's a resemblance of things right so the accuracy of resemblance is the type of perfection he thinks that these other faculties of the soul the animals soul include so then we can say well what exactly does rationality add to the equation he writes when the rational part of the soul is perfected and it then becomes an actual intellect river goes from potential to actual it very much resembles the separate things except that it receives perfection actuality and splendor adornment of beauty of existence only by in electing not just the things above it in rank but also the things below it and Ray making them all too Felicity what affords it's very substance great so the idea here is that for instance my Faculty of sight only allows me to see things outside of Moodle allows me to see but my reasoning allows me to not just understand the things I've seen but also notice and the reasons MC so as it were the rationale the active intellect of the individual allows a multiplicity of knowledge that's not that the other senses and other faculties in other parts of the soul are not able to attain so the rational soul is really critical that right now if we're gonna contrast this with the first cause we would say that well the first cause has no deficiency it's absolutely prior it also has to be simple because it can't be divided and it's also a divine contemplation of the diviner that's not to how we're going to articulate since it's an intellect and intellects intellect things so what is the simple intellectual substance it's the intellect that your legs itself it can't be divided so that means it's not a quantity as such and it has no contrary the first cause therefore has to be one it has to be seen you learned here I want you to see and recognize the important relationship that all Ferraris philosophical discussion here it has ultimately with the religious discussion here in terms of the singular nature of God al farabi writes in light of this its existence by which it and notice he is capitalizing it here so he's talking about the divine one in light of this its existence by which it's distinguished from all other beings also cannot be other than that by which it is an existence in itself therefore its distinction from everything else is through a unity that is its being one of the meanings of unity is the proper existence by which every exist is distinguished from another and it is by virtue of this that each exists is called one in the sense that it hasn't existence proper to it alone and this particular connotation of the term unity goes along with existence in this respect the first is also was and more deserving of that name and credit ation that anything so there's you might want to pause the video and read that again but you could see here is that when one says that God is one in the Islamic world all fraud or any world really the idea here is that we don't just need monotheism there's just one but there's Ascension which we can really take this to a very very deep level it's oneness in the most essential sense of what does so the first cause is absolutely one now the first therefore does not have matter right so the first is intellect which means that it has intellectual intelligibility an intellect itself right which means it of course it's a turtle as well right the first columns got is so the first cause is book knower and known right which is sort of interesting it's both the thing which knows itself and it's the thing that it knows about itself so perfect knowledge he says quote is the complete knowledge that always belongs to what is always a turtle likewise the first is wise not knowledge that it receives through knowing something outside of itself it is sufficient in itself to be wise in knowing itself now there's a question here about whether or not what we really have created is a circular argument and whether or not it off probably to certain let's say yes it is circular but it's a virtuous circularity because it's the first cause it's it's it's or you could say it's not a circulator because it's simple anyway there's a sort of interesting question here and later philosophers and modern philosophers are much more critical in this sense now the first is beautiful beyond understanding so there's there's also an aesthetic dimension to this it's the source of beauty itself and here you can see that the way in which all Farabi recognizes a unity between Aristotle's conception of the first mover and ultimately Plato's conception right of the good now in light of this he writes its existence by which it is distinguished from other means and cannot be other than that which exists itself oh hold on I think I have made a mistake here with this quoted twice or my apology it wasn't it wasn't the quote I actually did the wrong corner so anyway well we can see here because I don't want to go back and redo all this well we can say is that the first is beautiful beyond understanding because in a certain says we cannot really understand it but it's the it's where all beauty emanates from now he does say that the first here is the first thing that's desired and the first thing that's beloved right so you can see here is that the more a person is attached to matter it not it elects then that means that there's a deficiency of the things they desire the things they love but the highest form of intellectual life is one where we desire the first itself and that is the thing that is loved the most so existence in the first the first does not aim to create the existence of other things the first does not gain a perfection by creating nor does the first need anything other than its own being so when we say they the God mumuga always say that God is one it is the first cause then that means mean when we say that God is in electing itself that means that God doesn't exist to create us right and God's not does it made more is it made better or more perfect by created us nor does God need the other two God right so how do we talk about this first thing well what we can say is that you know how was the relationship of creation oh that's right well all probably says the terms that should be employed for the first are the terms that designate those existence among us that are perfect in it excellent without however anything of those terms designating the excellence of perfection that the first has in the way that those terms customarily designating such existence of motives so in a certain way there's a way in which there's is sort of ineffable or ineffable quality to the first we can't actually even articulate God it's kind of like looking at the Sun when you look at the Sun you can't actually see the Sun because you're blinded by its beauty I suppose now one thing here is that you can notice that means that there's a problem with language here which means that our language is always only reaching towards our intellectual Labor's only reaching towards the first that never actually can get there right he says the terms that designate the perfection of excellence pertaining to the things among us include the following right sometimes they belong to something in itself and sometimes they relate to something else and that's what we talk about existence or one right he says there are terms that designate what belong to something in relation to something external to it like just and generous and I don't want to go through the full discussion Ecostar it's a bit laborious but all for obvious recognizing that there's not that there is a problem with our language here yes there's qualifier language in a way that tends to go beyond what we would normally mean we talk about things being first right okay so now let's talk about the secondary causes of the active the active intellect which were ranked in order of existence we've mentioned it before and by the way I'm really following all for hobbies texts here so as he sort of jumps around you're you're sort of seeing he takes a multiple multiple perspective approach and slowly articulates it now one thing I wanted mention you I don't spend too much time is that what we do see is that we see a type of symbolic thinking developing we mentioned earlier his relationship to logic we're not really covering that so much of this video but you concede by just this sentence he says the relation of the excellence of the first to the excellence of a given secondary cause X is commensurate with the joy that X takes intellect to the first a relation to the joy X takes any delecti itself so we see a way in which there's almost a development algebraic notation here now off to be clear this is for the translation I didn't haven't gone back I can't read the original language neither look there but you can see that there's a high degree of analytic development that really goes beyond the type of discussion we see in Aristotle so I think that you really can say there's a type of Aristotle's thinking here now the celestial forces secondary cause as a kid right the celestial forms are in motion eternally without interruption right they just keep circling things on and on and on so there is a turn allottee they're up until you get to the Sun looter as we mentioned before now see when we talk about happiness right or he all probably talks about happiness here at 42 he says the substance nature and activity of the celestial body is such that there immediately falls further its existence of falls from it the existence of frontmatter so he thinks that these secondary causes are creating from matter now if it that gives probably matter which so ever of the forms that is in its nature possibility and predisposition to receive and the active intellect is disposed in its nature its substance to examine everything that the celestial body prepares and gives and whatever is receptive in one way to be freed and separated from matter it frees from matter and preservation as a result of which that thing comes to be closest in rate to it this means that the intelligible that our potential become actual intelligible and as a result that the active intellect that was a potential it becomes in actually lives humans alone can become like that and this is the ultimate happiness that is the most excellent perfection the humans can reach so what that means is that through a result of agency and through a result of the acts the active intellect and the celestial bodies these secondary causes that our image where pride matter is emanating and receiving its various forms that this is ultimately where act ultimate happiness comes from so I mean of course the ultimate happiness is an intellectual happiness it's not a it's not a physical obvious because the physical stuff this can never be happiness right now but it's all good because God created it so anyway now I'm just gonna sort of end the video here I've sort of talked it's sort of giving you a whole bunch different angles but I hope you're starting to get a sense of the basic matrix or system that all Farabi lays out and I want to end here by just sort of saying a word about his cosmology right he thinks that the celestial bodies exist for the first cause right that's the theory of than the nation but and and so that's it we already talked about he has this heliocentric model and I'm certain he has a geocentric model he takes from Aristotle etc right but his whole model is based upon this cosmology now one of the major problems is that it's a failed cosmology right notice one of the things he says he says the celestial bodies are numerous they move variously in circular fashion rather all are connected to the power of the first heaven which is one and consequently they all move by virtue of the motion of the first tendon so they have other powers by virtue of which they're distinct from one another because of which their motions differ now necessary is all that the power coverage of the whole celestial body is the existence of primary called it - everything below the heaven and it has serviced all of the things by virtue of which the celestial bodies are distinct from one another is the existence of many different forms of pride matters so now we see the in his cosmology so each one of these spheres has pride and honor but their different forms of pride matter yeah and as a consequence of their different positions their relation to one another and to the earth they are made to approach something sometimes and recede from it and others to be conjunction with Plato now I'm not gonna say that what's he talking about right the way I understand it what he's talking about is when we go and we watch how Mars is or brain sometimes every two years Mars gets closer to Earth it comes closer and then every two years it recedes away from Earth but it does it in a cyclical fashion now we know today the problem here is that the celestial bodies are not spheres and also they're not circular they're they're actually an elliptical path as a consequence of gravity right and so that's why there was coming and going away but you can see here why is this a failed cosmology because ultimately because off Ravi has the wrong model of of his has the wrong cosmological model he's actually now basically are trying to articulate metaphysical reasons for the observations of our experience and ultimately this creates a big problem for us today it's not a problem for all for Robbie it's awfully quite brilliant I hope you can see it's it's mammoth undertaking it he's actually done a very nice job but you can see it raises for us some fundamental questions which is namely what is the relationship of reasoning E&L for all these philosophy and it also what is the relationship of aerosols consequently as well is art or can reasoning ultimately we'll put this way it is can intellect alone get us to the truth of things where it looks like maybe we actually need to pay more attention to the physical material side of things so this sort of question in our modern interpretation of what the things we'd want to import from his philosophy into our own the cosmological part is a problem that's a problem and Aristotle so it's not a surprise so but I think that you can see here that he's got a very very interesting analysis and theory of the universe in metaphysics starting from the first mover through theories of emanation through secondary causes ultimately to the soul and to ultimately how we can attain happiness and and that's a little brief tour evolve Robbie's principles of existing things and ultimately of his general introduction to his philosophy thank you very much for watching I hope this was helpful and again I encourage you not to use this as the year use this lecture as a way to begin your studies of this philosophy because there's a lot more in there and there's a lot of great works on this that really dive into this in much more detail that I can so thank you very much and I look forward to see you guys

Channel: Mark Thorsby

Views: 2,826

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Philosophy, Medieval Philosophy, al-Farabi, Emanation, Arsitotle, Plato, the Soul

Id: FGicV4YXuEc

Length: 70min 41sec (4241 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2018