Resumen de Echoes of the caliphate in Al-Farabi's reconceptualization of Plato's decline of the regimes

R. L'Arrivee

• Scholarship on al-Farabi interprets his theoretical analysis of politics apart from its historical context, which results in a failure to understand how his political philosophy is useful for understanding Islamic politics. This paper brings al-Farabi's theory of the regimes into dialogue with Islamic political history. Al-Farabi modifies the political thought of Plato and Aristotle to illuminate the rise and decline of the caliphate according to Islamic principles. For al-Farabi, the mechanism of the decline of the caliphate rests in excessive material desire satisfaction and the misuse of wealth for the aggrandizement of political elites.