State Theories and the Ideal State of Farabi

Abstract

has occupied a central position since the emergence of political thought on governance. The
question of what the state is and what it ought to be has been shaped as the outcome of reflections
on the idea of the best form of government. Even in early communities, notions of good
governance were articulated, and various arguments were advanced in this regard. The view that
the best form of government should be based on justice and the common good was explicitly
formulated in Plato’s conception of the Ideal State, and in subsequent periods, different
representations of ideal governance—and thus of the state—were developed within diverse
historical and philosophical contexts. In the process extending from theories of governance to
conceptions of the state, state theories diversified in accordance with differing ideological and
philosophical approaches. Within Islamic thought, the political philosophy of Farabi, widely
regarded as the first systematic theory of the state, occupies a distinctive position. Farabi’s
conception of the state draws, on the one hand, from the political philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle, and on the other hand, articulates an original political vision grounded in Islamic belief.
This study aims to examine general theories of the state alongside Farabi’s political thought, in
order to better understand the position of his theory of the state at the intersection of classical
political philosophy and Islamic intellectual tradition.