In modern political thought, significant attention is directed towards the end of politics. The common good, the protection of property, or the liberation of the oppressed are commonly identified as the ends of politics in modern discourse. However, little is typically said about the origin of politics. Although Plato is deeply concerned with the objective of politics, its τέλος, he is equally concerned with the origins of political life.
In The Republic, Plato articulates his vision of the most primitive human society imaginable. In this idyllic society, work is distributed evenly, moderation governs human conduct, and stability reigns. For Plato, it is wrong, however, to call this society a just one. Justice, for Plato, is the art of adequately ordering higher and lower elements of a system, and this rustic state has no lower or higher elements, no disputes, and no distinctions between people. Thus, this is a pre-justice and, by extension, a pre-political society. In the dialogue, Socrates’ interlocutors are not pleased with this idyllic order and demand the inclusion of “relishes,” including courtesans, exotic foods, and fine clothing. These relishes, Socrates argues, require the existence of servants, craftspeople, and other specialists. The city with relishes will also be predisposed to war, as the finite resources will always increase. This, in Platonic thinking, is the first political society. Conflicts over luxuries inevitably will plague this city, necessitating a neutral arbiter to settle disputes. In this need for arbitration lies the potential for justice, which Plato argues to be established by society’s most virtuous members.
Al-Farabi, one of Plato’s most prominent Muslim readers, disputes Plato’s warm reception of the pre-political order. In his commentary on this idea, al-Farabi decries what he calls the indispensable city, literally a city in which only bare necessities, indispensable things, are available to its populace. Rather than casting this situation in a noble light as Plato does, al-Farabi understands his indispensable city as fundamentally aberrant. The need for politics, al-Farabi argues, does not come from introducing luxury into the primitive city; politics precedes even human desire. Al-Farabi understands the primitive city as a place of materialism, where men’s heads are turned to the mundane. Instead, al-Farabi envisions an ideal state where the “attainment of the most excellent of things” is the central focus of human life. The most excellent things possible for man, al-Farabi holds, are virtue and piety. Thus, al-Farabi sees the political as indigenous to the human experience, prioritizing the pursuit of virtue in the ideal state as the highest aim of political life.
For Ibn Sina, the idyllic state of cooperation and social peace necessitates the inclusion of a prophet. Beyond being God’s mouthpiece to humanity, the prophet is a “lawgiver and dispenser of justice,” uniquely equipped to fairly arbitrate disputes within the community. This ability stems from the prophet’s status as Al-Insān al-Kāmil, the complete person. As the prophet is the perfect man, untainted by the desires that make other men poor judges, he is different. This unique capacity of the prophet to inspire confidence among the people and remain neutral makes the prophet a central figure in a cooperative political order. Ibn Sina rejects al-Farabi’s negative view of the rustic state and subverts Plato’s focus on desire by offering a solution, a man free of desire and perfect in virtue.
In Plato’s account of the rustic city, politics cogenerates alongside human desire. In Plato’s medieval Islamic readers, the origin of politics is not as cut and dry. For al-Farabi, the rustic city was deviant, and virtue has always been the source and summit of social life. For Ibn Sina, the rustic state is only possible under a prophet’s guidance, by extension, arguing for a return to a pre-political state. Throughout the Platonic tradition, the various explanations and commentaries on the origin of political life demonstrate a rich intellectual tradition and a series of compelling answers to our perennial questions.
Author: Wyatt Flicker