Nous in Aristotle and Fârâbî

Aristotle, the pioneer of the peripatetic tradition, has been the focus of discussions and studies throughout the ages and has put forward very rationalist theses in areas such as metaphysics, epistemology and ontology. As the best example of the transition from myth to logos in Greek culture, he influenced many philosophers who came after him on how the paradigm of mind should be understood, and discussed the human position in his books on the process of human knowledge, the potential of essence, and the relationship between mind and essence. In the light of this information, our study consists of three parts. In the first chapter, starting from how the concept of mind was examined in Ancient Greece, Aristotle's distinction between potential and action,potential, his classification of the agent intelligent, and the quality of the concept of active mind were emphasized. He explained events such as movement, formation-destruction, and change with the concepts of form and verb. In the second chapter, while Fârâbî evaluated the mind as a means of understanding and reaching the truth, he was largely influenced by Aristotle's system of reason and created an eclectic system by adding original interpretations. The particularly striking point in this system is the proofs of the epistemological value of the prophethood and the possibility of true knowledge, which Fârâbî attributes to the active mind, the quality of which is not fully clear in Aristotle. After Aristotle was described as the "First Teacher", Fârâbî was nicknamed the "Second Teacher", which explains why we chose our thesis topic on the axis of these two philosophers. In the third chapter, a general summary is made on Aristotle and Fârâbî's theories of essence and mind and the similar and different opinions between the two philosophers are examined. Fârâbî, who clearly departed from the Aristotelian line regarding the possibility and evidence of epistemological knowledge, opened a new door in Islamic philosophy with the phenomenon of prophethood, while accepting revelation as a type of knowledge.