“La perfection spécifique de l’homme est appelée le bonheur suprême.”
Al-Fârâbî, qui vécut à Bagdad au IXe siècle, est considéré comme le premier grand philosophe musulman. De son vivant, il fut surnommé le "second Maître”, Aristote étant le premier. Toute sa vie il a cherché à accorder la philosophie de Platon à celle d’Aristote et s’est donné pour tâche de ramener la sagesse grecque dans les pays arabes.
Al-Farabi (/ˌælfəˈrɑːbi/; Arabic: ابو نصر محمد بن محمد فارابی Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Al Fārābī;, known in the West as Alpharabius (c. 872[2] in Fārāb – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951 in Damascus), Born c. 872 Fārāb on the Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in modern Kazakhstan or Faryāb in Khorāsān (modern day Afghanistan) and Died in Damascus, Syria He was a renowned philosopher and jurist who wrote in the fields of political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic. He was also a scientist, cosmologist, mathematician and music scholar. In Arabic philosophical tradition, he is known with the honorific "the Second Master", after Aristotle. He is credited with preserving the original Greek texts during the Middle Ages because of his commentaries and treatises, and influencing many prominent philosophers, like Avicenna and Maimonides. Through his works, he became well-known in the East as well as the West.