Reception of Plato in al-Fârâbî's philosophy

This thesis aims to demonstrate that it is necessary to identify the nature of the relationship between Plato and al-Fārābī in order to grasp and analyze the latter's philosophical approach, whose expression has yet to reach a complete and final form. Accordingly, after discussing how Platonic philosophy should be approached and what transformations it has undergone as a tradition, I have attempted to identify Platonic texts and the knowledge of Plato available to al-Fārābī, considering the status of the Platonic corpus during its transmission from Greek into Arabic. Using this factual ground as a starting point, I first evaluate two opposing approaches that deal with the relationship between al-Fārābī and Plato in the literature, after which I have endeavored to illustrate how Plato is addressed in al-Fārābī's own works and how alFārābī was affected by him. Keywords: Fārābī, Plato, Aristotle, Islamic philosophy, reception, politics