Quiz #2 Flashcards
(24 cards)
What are the 4 key features of Islam that inform Al-Farabi’s Political Regime?
- Its laws are revealed through a prophet-legislator
- It organizes its followers into a political community
- It provides for their beliefs
- It Provides rules of conduct
What is the point that Al-Farabi wants to show with the Political Regime?
The ideal political regime can lead people to happiness.
What is Al-Farabi’s view about humans and human society?
Humans are social animals and that there are 3 types of human society, with medium societies, and nations, being the most perfect.
According to Al-Farabi, what differentiates nations from each other?
- National Character: determined by geographical location, since environmental conditions influence what the people eat and drink.
- Language
What role does God play in the Political Regime? What is the 10th intelligence?
He is the First cause and the Necessary Being. He creates the First intelligence, which trickles down to the 10th intelligence. This is active intellect, which is pure thought and creates the 4 elements along with souls and forms.
What are the two ways in which the Active Intellect inform matter?
- By expressing the forms (essences) into matter to create material substances
- By producing forms (intelligbles/universals) into the human intellect thus generating knowledge
What are the 3 levels of development of the rational soul?
First Level: Development of sensitive/appetitive part (the ability to recognize and desire individual objects)
Second Level: Development of the imaginative/appetitive part (the ability to recognize and desire images that are not physically present)
Third Level: Development of the rational part/appetitive part (the ability to recognize intelligbles and desire the good)
How does Al-Farabi view happiness?
The Active Intellect leads us to seek happiness, which is good without qualification. Happiness must be known if it is to be achieved. To be happy is to pursue the voluntary good. The purpose of life is happiness.
What are the 5 steps for the voluntary good to come into being?
- The theoretical-rational faculty apprehends the good/happiness
- This causes a rational desire for the good
- This desire causes the agent to deliberate about how to achieve this good through the practical-rational faculty
- This deliberation ends in a conclusion about what ought to be done to achieve the object
- The imaginative and sensitive faculties put the agent’s conclusion into action
Where does Al-Farabi get the idea of the Active Intellect? How do Islamic philosophers view the active intellect?
Aristotle, who states there is passive intellect and active intellect. Passive Intellect is the reception of things in the mind, while the active intellect produces these things. They view it as a separate substance.
What are the prerequisites to achieving happiness according to Al-Farabi? What happens if you don’t have these prerequisites?
You must have knowledge of both the good and bad through your active intellect. If you cannot see the difference between good and bad, you need a wise and virtuous teacher.
What is Al-Farabi’s idea of the Supreme Ruler? What are his 6 characteristics?
Much like Plato, Al-Farabi believes the ideal ruler is not only a philosopher but also a prophet of Islam.
1. He possesses every kind of knowledge
2. He does not need anyone else to rule or guide him
3. He is a link between the divine and the human
4. He is a teacher/guide who instructs the masses on the means to happiness
5. He has great and superior natural dispositions
6. His soul is in union with Active Intellect
What purpose does the Supreme Ruler fill? What sort of symbols does the Supreme Ruler use?
According to Al-Farabi, the masses only have an imaginative grasp on the difference between good and evil and the Supreme ruler must use their Active Intellect to lead the people toward the truth. In order to do so, the ruler turns these tough ideas into symbols for the rest of the populous to understand, i.e., religion. Instead of using philosophical proofs, the people need images and metaphors to be convinced to follow the virtuous path. Angels are used as a prime example of a divine being that can be interpreted by the common folk.
What 2 types of people are present in a virtuous regime?
- The Wise: they have a rational, clear philosophical conception of the truth, they know what happiness truly consists of, and they have a duty to reach the masses in a language the masses understand.
- The Believers: those who can only apprehend the truth by means of images/representations and it is their duty to follow the laws that the wise lay down.
What are the 3 types of community/regime/city that oppose the Virtuous City?
- Ignorant Cities: communities that philosophy have never taken told and there is no true knowledge about good, bad, happiness etc. They substitute in some other kind of lower goal as their end.
- Immoral Cities: Formerly virtuous cities that have lapsed and now pursue one of the goals found in the ignorant cities.
- Errant Cities: Communities in which the leader himself is a philosopher but has lapsed and become a false prophet, leading his people astray because he is corrupted.
What are the 6 types of Ignorant Cities?
- Indispensiable Cities: Mere subsistence is their goal
- Vile Cities: Accumulation of wealth is their goal
- Vase Cities: Pleasure/amusement is their goal
- Timocratic Cities: Honour and fame are their goal
- Despotic/Tyrannical Cities: Power over others is their goal
- Democratic Cities: Freedom is their goal
What sort of argument does Aquinas like to use in his proof of the existence of God?
He uses a Cosmological Argument, which takes its premises from some features of the cosmos. It uses empirical facts to come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of a transcendent cause that explains the fact. A transcendent cause is a cause which lies beyond the material world and ultimately explains it.
What are the 10 steps in Aquinas’ argument regarding the 1st Way? What is the 1st Way?
The 1st way is the Argument from Motion or Change
1. It is evident to the senses that some things are in motion
2. Everything that is moved is moved by another
3. Motion involves the transformation from potentiality to actuality
4. Only what is actual or has the power to actualize can transform potentiality into actuality
5. Nothing can be in potentiality and actuality at the same time and in the same respect
6. Therefore, nothing can move itself
7. If a mover is itself in motion, then it too must have been moved by another
8. An infinity of (essentially ordered) movers is impossible
9. Therefore, there must be a First Mover which is itself unmoved.
10. This we call God
What is the Law of Non-Contradiction?
“It is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time and in the same respect.” Your shirt cannot be both white and not white at the same time and in the same respect. This same point holds true with respect to potentiality and actuality.
What are the 2 types of casual series according to Aquinas?
- Those that are non-essentially (per accidens) ordered:
These are series in which the casual activity of any member in the series is not dependent on any prior member of the series. Such a casual series extends over time and can, in principle, be infinite. Aquinas does not talk about this here. - Those that are essentially (per se) ordered:
These are series in which the motion or activity of one member depends essentially on the motion or activity on the motion or activity of another member to reduce its potency to act, i.e., to move it, and that one depends on another member to move it and so on. This casual chain happens simultaneously, in that each member acts at the same time. This series cannot be infinite, each link in the chain depends on the first mover for their activity.
What is The Argument from Final Casualty/The Fifth Way?
The fifth way is based on the notion that there are regular patterns of cause and effect in the world. It is not simply that a struck match regularly causes a fire, but that it only causes fire (as opposed to smelling like roses). Things consistently act, in other words, for ends (final causes).
What are the 9 steps in the 5th Way? What is the 5th Way?
The 5th Way: Argument from Final Causality
1. Natural beings without knowledge regularly act for an END (i.e. they display causal regularly/final casualty)
2. Whatever regularly acts for an end, acts from PURPOSE
3. Whatever acts from purpose does not act randomly or from chance
4. Therefore, non-intelligent beings that act for an end do not act randomly or from chance but from purpose
5. Purpose implies intention
6. Intention implies intelligence
7. Creatures without intelligence that act for an end must therefore be directed by something with intelligence
8. Therefore, there must be some Supreme Intelligence who directs all non-intelligent beings towards their end
9. This we call God
What are the 4 Causes?
- Material Cause: refers to the underlying stuff that a substance is made of
- Formal Cause: refers to the form, pattern or structure that the substance exhibits
- Efficient Cause: refers to the agent that actualizes a potency
- Final Cause: refers to an inherent direction or tendency towards some end or ends of a thing
For example, a wooden table has a material cause of wood, a formal cause of design, an efficient cause of carpentry, and a final cause of dining.
What does Final causality or teleology refer to? What tendency do all objects have? What does this imply?
Final causality or teleology just refers to the inherent goal-directedness of all substances. It refers to the Tendency of some agent to produce a determinate effect. We might call this tendency an inherent power. An object is directed towards producing just the effect that it does. This is true of all causes in the natural world. Goal-directedness/final causality/teleology: exists wherever regular patterns of cause and effect do. There is a necessary connection between causes and effects. There is nothing random about them.
