Halid Metin Yolcu

This article examines Alfārābī's engagement with Platonic philosophy through the lens of textual accessibility. Historical and philological research has demonstrated that the translation of Platonic dialogues into Arabic was extremely limited during Alfārābī's lifetime. Nevertheless, Alfārābī made extensive references to Plato within the context of political philosophy, employing him systematically, and composed an independent treatise on the philosopher's thought in which he evaluated all of Plato's dialogues within an original and unconventional ordering. This study argues that this paradoxical situation points to an original philosophical construction on Fārābī's part. Fārābī reinterpreted the limited Platonic material available to him from his own Aristotelian perspective and constructed a 'fictional' Plato in order to fill the gap created by the absence of Aristotle's Politics and to establish the relationship between theoretical and practical philosophy. As examples of this construction, the article examines the narrative in The Philosophy of Plato concerning Plato's unification of the paths of Socrates and Thrasymachus, as well as the unusual pairing between Plato's cave allegory and Aristotle's Organon found in a passage preserved in the Latin translation of his commentary on the Rhetoric. The article aims to offer a balanced perspective on Alfārābī's reception of Plato by critically evaluating two opposing positions in the literature—represented here by Strauss and Gutas—regarding Alfārābī's political thought and his relationship with Plato. In this context, it is argued that Alfārābī's fictional Plato plays an important role in the balance he establishes within his Aristotle-centered philosophical system, forging a complex nexus among education, politics, religion, rhetoric, and philosophy.