GLOBAL PHILOSOPHY - Al Farabi and the Problem of Prophecy

Описание: Al-Farabi was one of the great philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age. This video is about his epistemology and philosophy of religion and it will connect to topics on the AQA philosophy A-level syllabus. What, according to al-Farabi, is the unique epistemic role of revelation and prophecy. Why should we trust prophets and how should we choose which prophet to follow?

Study Questions:
1. What was al-Kindi's view of the relation between religion and philosophy, revelation and reason, and what did al-Farabi think was wrong with this view?
2. What is the unique epistemic role of prophecy and revelation, according to al-Farabi?
3. What is the prophecy problem?
4. What is the problem of expertise?
5. Experts can be boring and charlatans can be convincing. Why might we think this causes problems for Goldman's solution to the problem of expertise?
6. How did al-Farabi try to solve the prophecy problem?

Suggested Reading:
Peter Adamson, Philosophy in the Islamic World, Oxford University Press, 2016, Ch.9
Anthony Booth, Analytic Islamic Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), ch.4, 'Al-Farabi and Islamic Moderate Evidentialism’.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ar...
The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 2005, Ch. 4- The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, 2016, Ch.5
Al-Farabi: On the Perfect State, trans. Walzer, R. (Oxford University Press, 1985).