Weeds: Cultivating the Imagination in Medieval Arabic Political Philosophy

Kochin, Michael S.

doi:10.1353/jhi.1999.0026

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…But, the same reasoning cannot hold for the philosopher in a virtuous city, who is not committed to “error.” To solve this problem, Kochin makes a move not justified by the text that creates more problems than it solves. He construes such a philosopher as “a weed or, more politely, a wildflower, pushing up toward the sun through the broken asphalt of politics” (Kochin 1999, 400). Kochin’s sleight of hand thus does not dwell on a key feature of weeds—that they are problematic and dangerous growths.…”

Section: A Horticultural-political Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Good Weeds? Alfarabi’s Virtuous Subversives

Howells

Hawley

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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Why would anyone cultivate weeds? Alfarabi’s The Political Regime prompts this unexpected question. There Alfarabi uses a horticultural metaphor inherited from Plato to describe his ideal regime. His imagined polity is a garden beset by weeds, which threaten to choke the life out of the other plants. Although most of these weeds are to be eradicated for the sake of the garden that is his ideal regime, Alfarabi proposes to cultivate one variety. This kind of weed challenges the official doctrines of the regime. Since the regime is based on false teachings about the universe, such debunking questioning poses a series threat. Yet alfarabi proposes to indulge and encourage the doubts of these weeds. In this paper, we explore the reasons for Alfarabi’s strange treatment of these dissidents. We argue that Alfarabi’s proposal reflects an important disagreement with his teacher, Plato, about the extent to which an ideal model ought to be tethered to reality. Our argument helps to illuminate one of the more perplexing aspects of Alfarabi’s political thought and his relationship with Plato. Most broadly, we show that we will miss important contributions to ideal theory if we fail to appreciate that what constitutes “ideal” may vary widely.

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Section: A Horticultural-political Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By specifying the particular downfalls of freelance philosophy to his ideal or virtuous city, Alfarabi attempts to expand upon Plato's implication that unchecked philosophy is a threat to the ideal regime (Cf. Ali and Qin 2019, Khoshnaw 2014with Colmo 1992, Sankari 1970).…”

Section: Alfarabi's Alternativementioning

confidence: 99%

Good Weeds? Alfarabi’s Virtuous Subversives

Howells

Hawley

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss'sPersecution and the Art of Writing

Kochin¹

2002

Rev Pol

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Strauss's historical investigation of the use of exoteric writing in Farabi, Maimonides, Halevi, and Spinoza, is in fact his history of the philosophers' exoteric accommodations to the permanent difference in human natures, the difference between the many who require a categorical moral teaching and the few who are capable of ordering their own lives in the face of the hypothetical status of all moral commands. The men of the Enlightenment aspired to render the moral law superfluous for all by constructing a machinery of government powerful enough to compel all to live justly. Strauss critiques this aspiration by leading his reader to face the permanency of the difference between the few and the many. Strauss uses historical scholarship to force the reader to rethink the possibility of contemplation of the eternal or permanent, the possibility that the Enlightenment's historicist epigones have sought to foreclose.

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Testimony and the epistemic problem of society in al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya

Lauri

2018

Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies

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Weeds: Cultivating the Imagination in Medieval Arabic Political Philosophy

Cited by 8 publications

References 4 publications

Good Weeds? Alfarabi’s Virtuous Subversives

Good Weeds? Alfarabi’s Virtuous Subversives

Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss'sPersecution and the Art of Writing

Testimony and the epistemic problem of society in al-Risālat al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Sīrat al-Nabawiyya

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