Abstract

Butterworth here offers a perfectible translation of the Political Regime and a commendable, skilled rendition of the Summary of Plato's Laws. These two texts are published together and in this order because the contrast between their respective contents and methods would show that only in the last fourth of the first, as opposed to the whole of the second, "does Alfarabi consider political life as it usually is", that is, shorn of what Leo Strauss's disciples regard as metaphysical humbug. Metaphysics, they contend, is synonymous with Neoplatonism, which, in turn, is synonymous with specious religious rhetoric. In Butterworth's opinion, Alfarabi resorted to it as a veil, opaque and gilded enough to keep his...