Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 461 distinguish its claims from its rivals'. Chadwick's "History and Symbolism in the Garden at Milan" asks whether the conversion scene in Augustine's Confessions is factual report or poetic fancy. Chadwick gives Augustine's hermeneutics and the "purely literary" elements in Augustine's writing careful, sensitive consideration, but in the end contends that Augustine's story is "factual and correctly remembered" (55). Thomas Finan returns to Augustine's garden in "A Mystic in Milan." Finan argues that despite Augustine's talk of being "unable to see" and "beaten back by" God, Augustine's was a "successful" though transient mystical experience. Mystics talk of inability to see, Finan reminds us, to express the transcendence of that which they experience, not to deny that they experience it. In "Augustine the Christian Thinker," Mary Clark suggests the "radically evangelical character of Augustine's thought" (56), claiming that "trinitarian life was" its "fundamental theme" (63). Clark also discusses connections between Augustine and Marius Victorinus. Robert O'Connell contributes a critique of OIivier DuRoy's claim to find "Porphyrianism in the Early Augustine." Gerard O'Daly offers a careful survey of"Hierarchies in Augustine's Thought." John Dillon's "Philosophy and Theology in Produs" argues that later Platonism sees philosophy and theology not as in tension but as complementary (67)- In practice, Dillon suggests, Neoplatonists assured this complementarity by so reading their theological texts as to bring them into line with Neoplatonist philosophy. As Dillon shows, these readings were often allegorical. But they also were often strained, as late classic and medieval allegories are almost by definition. I suggest that the philosophers' need to distort their theological sources indicates a sense in which for Neoplatonism, philosophy and theology art in tension. One can distinguish analytical and "literary" or primarily historical ways to do the history of philosophy. The former stresses the logic of arguments and the logical analysis of positions. It often tries to make historical texts address current philosophical problems. The latter stresses questions of influence and thinks it of the first importance to discover what a text's author may have understood him/herself to be saying. Obviously, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and both have value. This collection is very much in the "literary" vein. Analytic philosophers and analytic historians of philosophy may find little here to pique their interest. In truth, some essays in this collection may not interest any philosophers (as vs. classicists) at all, e.g., AUard's account of a computer analysis of the text of Eriugena's Ptriphyseon or Herren's discussion of Eriugena's poetry. But some students of the period may find some of these essays worthwhile. BRIAN LEFTOW Fordham University Miriam Gaiston. Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 199o. Pp. viii + 240. Cloth, $35.00. The declared purpose of Miriam Galston's book is to attempt "to resolve some of the existing uncertainties in the interpretation of Alfarabi by offering a philosophic explanation of certain of the inconsistencies and obscurities in his political writings" (1o). 462 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:3 JULY 1993 In order to understand what the author means by "uncertainties," "inconsistencies" and "obscurities" in relation to Alfarabi's political theory, we must turn to the wider context to which Alfarabi (87o-95 ~ A.D.) belonged and to the tradition in which he lived and wrote, namely, the Islamic medieval milieu. Medieval Islamic political philosophy is characterized by the attempt of Muslim intellectuals (the falasifah) to harmonize the principles of their religion with Greek philosophical thought, that of Plato and Aristotle in particular. This attempt put the fa/as/fah in a difficult position, in that the two systems of thought they were trying to reconcile were in many respects irreconcilable. Thus, the falasifah were in a sense forced to adopt a multi-level style of writing in order to address not only the masses of believers, whose knowledge of the universe is based on imagination and opinion, but also the select few capable of understanding the universe through reason and philosophical thinking. Such multi-level style presupposes a distinction between the "few" and the "many" and...