Al-Farabi and His School (Electronic book text)

Al-Farabi and His School, examines one of the most exciting and dynamic periods in the development of medieval Islam that ran from the late ninth century to the early eleventh century AD. The Age is examined through the thought of its five principal thinkers and labelled after the first and greatest of these, the Age of Farabism. It is demonstrated in this book that the great Islamic philosopher al-Farabi, called the Second Master' after Aristotle, produced a recognisable school of thought in which others pursued and developed some of his own intellectual preoccupations. This school of thought, which Dr Netton calls the School of al-Farabi', was influenced by the thought of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, but it was much more than a mere clone of Greek thought - expressing both originality and independence through this very intellectual influence. Its adherents, including Yahya b. Adi, Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani, al- Amiri and Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi are described and assessed in this volume. Their thought is treated in al-Farabi and His School with particular reference to the most basic questions which can be asked in the theory of knowledge or epistemology.; The book thus fills a lacuna in the literature by using this approach to highlight the intellectual continuity which was maintained in an age of flux. Particular attention is paid to the ethical dimensions of knowledge.