The Genesis of Secular Politics in Medieval Philosophy: The King of Averroes and the Emperor of Dante, 2016
By: Sabeen Ahmed
Title The Genesis of Secular Politics in Medieval Philosophy: The King of Averroes and the Emperor of Dante
Type Article
Language undefined
Date 2016
Journal Labyrinth
Volume 18
Issue 2
Pages 209–231
Categories Politics, Aristotle, Tradition and Reception
Author(s) Sabeen Ahmed
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
In contemporary political discourse, the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric often undergirds philosophical analyses of "democracy" both at home and abroad. This is nowhere better articulated than in Jacques Derrida's Rogues, in which he describes Islam as the only religious or theocratic culture that would "inspire and declare any resistance to democracy" (Derrida 2005, 29). Curiously, Derrida attributes the failings of democracy in Islam to the lack of reference to Aristotle's Politics in the writings of the medieval Muslim philosophers. This paper aims to analyze this gross misconception of Islamic philosophy and illuminate the thoroughgoing influence the Muslim philosophers had on their Christian successors, those who are so often credited as foundations of Western political philosophy. In so doing, I compare the ideal states presented by Averroes and Dante – in which Aristotelian influence is intimately interlaced – and offer an analysis thereof as heralds of what we might call the secularization of the political, inspiring those democratic values that Derrida believes to be absent in the rich philosophy of the Middle Ages.

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Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss
By: Peter Makhlouf
Title Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss
Type Article
Language English
Journal International Journal of the Classical Tradition
Pages 1-29
Categories al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Maimonides, Aristotle, Poetics, Rhetoric, Politics, Tradition and Reception
Author(s) Peter Makhlouf
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
Judaeo-Arabic prophetology, as developed in the wake of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, was highly attentive to the kind of representational modes produced by divine revelation and their political use—but also their political precarity. By drawing on another corpus, less often discussed in this context, the Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, this study proposes to undertake a close analysis of how the medieval thinkers in question (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides) understood the poetics of prophecy to function. What emerges is an account of how the political theo-logic of poetics and rhetoric—as developed with respect to terms such as imitation, imagination and visualization—came to play a central role in the theory of prophecy, and how that theory of prophecy in turn gave rise to an understanding of what Leo Strauss once termed the ‘literary character’ of these philosophers' ‘art of writing’.

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Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss
By: Peter Makhlouf
Title Prophecy Between Poetics and Politics from Al-Farabi to Leo Strauss
Type Article
Language English
Journal International Journal of the Classical Tradition
Pages 1-29
Categories al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Maimonides, Aristotle, Poetics, Rhetoric, Politics, Tradition and Reception
Author(s) Peter Makhlouf
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
Judaeo-Arabic prophetology, as developed in the wake of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, was highly attentive to the kind of representational modes produced by divine revelation and their political use—but also their political precarity. By drawing on another corpus, less often discussed in this context, the Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, this study proposes to undertake a close analysis of how the medieval thinkers in question (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides) understood the poetics of prophecy to function. What emerges is an account of how the political theo-logic of poetics and rhetoric—as developed with respect to terms such as imitation, imagination and visualization—came to play a central role in the theory of prophecy, and how that theory of prophecy in turn gave rise to an understanding of what Leo Strauss once termed the ‘literary character’ of these philosophers' ‘art of writing’.

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The Genesis of Secular Politics in Medieval Philosophy: The King of Averroes and the Emperor of Dante, 2016
By: Sabeen Ahmed
Title The Genesis of Secular Politics in Medieval Philosophy: The King of Averroes and the Emperor of Dante
Type Article
Language undefined
Date 2016
Journal Labyrinth
Volume 18
Issue 2
Pages 209–231
Categories Politics, Aristotle, Tradition and Reception
Author(s) Sabeen Ahmed
Publisher(s)
Translator(s)
In contemporary political discourse, the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric often undergirds philosophical analyses of "democracy" both at home and abroad. This is nowhere better articulated than in Jacques Derrida's Rogues, in which he describes Islam as the only religious or theocratic culture that would "inspire and declare any resistance to democracy" (Derrida 2005, 29). Curiously, Derrida attributes the failings of democracy in Islam to the lack of reference to Aristotle's Politics in the writings of the medieval Muslim philosophers. This paper aims to analyze this gross misconception of Islamic philosophy and illuminate the thoroughgoing influence the Muslim philosophers had on their Christian successors, those who are so often credited as foundations of Western political philosophy. In so doing, I compare the ideal states presented by Averroes and Dante – in which Aristotelian influence is intimately interlaced – and offer an analysis thereof as heralds of what we might call the secularization of the political, inspiring those democratic values that Derrida believes to be absent in the rich philosophy of the Middle Ages.

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