The Attainment of Happiness

A short treatise that forms the first part of al-Fārābī's trilogy The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. It opens by naming the four human things that bring happiness to nations and cities: the theoretical virtues, the deliberative virtues, the moral virtues and the practical arts. Al-Fārābī then sets out the order of learning, from mathematics through natural science to metaphysics and political science, and explains how theoretical knowledge must be joined to practical wisdom if it is to be realised in a community. He distinguishes two ways of teaching: demonstration for the few, and persuasion and imaginative representation for the many. From this follows his best-known claim: religion presents through images and persuasion what philosophy knows by demonstration, so that religion is an imitation of philosophy. The book argues that the philosopher, the supreme ruler, the lawgiver and the imam are, rightly understood, a single idea, and that the true philosopher must be able to teach and to rule.

It is the clearest short statement of al-Fārābī's view that philosophy and religion express one truth in different forms, an idea later taken up by Ibn Rushd and Maimonides.