{"id":35546,"date":"2026-02-11T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/the-foundations-of-the-beautiful-in-al-farabi\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:17","slug":"the-foundations-of-the-beautiful-in-al-farabi","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/the-foundations-of-the-beautiful-in-al-farabi\/","title":{"rendered":"The foundations of the beautiful in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Aziz Hilal<\/strong> (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, IDEO, Cairo) spoke as part of Strand 1, Ethics and aesthetics in the Islamic heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

The theory of emanation poses a problem in the general economy of the system of the philosopher al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b (d. 950). It is not found in all his treatises and takes on its clear and distinct form only in The Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City<\/em>. There, the question of the beautiful is never treated as a strictly aesthetic category: it belongs to a wider metaphysical and cosmological framework, resting on a unified and hierarchical conception of being. The beautiful is thus deeply rooted in a vision of the world dominated by order, unity and intelligibility.<\/p>\n

The paper examines the role of the beautiful in this system, articulating the notions of beauty, order and ontological perfection, to show that beauty is not a mere supplement to the real but an essential expression of the very structure of being. According to the doctrine of emanation (fay\u1e0d<\/em>), inherited from an Arabised Neoplatonism, being emanates gradually from a first source, absolutely one, simple and immaterial, God or the First (al-Awwal<\/em>); each degree preserves a reflection of the original unity and perfection. The universe so conceived is not fragmented but a continuous chain of beings, hierarchised according to principles of order, proportion and intelligibility, which are also the criteria of what is held to be beautiful. The beautiful is not exterior to the structure of the world: it is its sensible and intelligible manifestation, the visible language of universal harmony.<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/strong>, under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all four papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage: history, language and philosophy<\/h4>\n

Held on Wednesday 11 February 2026, 12:15\u20132:00 pm, in Hall 1 of the Bishop’s Palace of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, this panel was chaired by Wasim Salman. It brought together four speakers: Mounia Ait Kabboura (Royal Military College of Saint-Jean, Canada \/ Universit\u00e9 de Sherbrooke, CERC), a historian of philosophy and of contemporary religious studies; Aziz Hilal (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo), doctor in Arabic philosophy and specialist of Andalusian thought (Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b); Constance Arminjon (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”), historian of contemporary Islamic doctrines and of hermeneutic renewals, joining by videoconference; and Essaid Labib (Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco), a scholar working at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics and gender studies. The panel explored the conceptual foundations of the articulation between ethics and aesthetics in classical Islamic thought, through major figures \u2014 Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, R\u016bm\u012b \u2014 and their contemporary receptions. Its coherence rested upon a shared refusal to separate the beautiful, the good and the true, and upon a conception of Islamic heritage as a living space of thought, open to dialogue and reinterpretation.<\/p>\n

Mounia Ait Kabboura and Aziz Hilal converge on an integrated conception of the true, the good and the beautiful. In Averroes, the universal Intellect grounds a cognitive pluralism in which the rigour of demonstration constitutes an aesthetics of logos<\/em> inseparable from an ethics of intellectual responsibility. In al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, the doctrine of emanation (fay\u1e0d<\/em>) makes beauty not a supplement to the real, but the sensible manifestation of universal harmony: order, proportion and intelligibility are at once ontological criteria and aesthetic criteria. Constance Arminjon, for her part, showed that the spiritual poetry of R\u016bm\u012b actively irrigates the reflection of three contemporary Iranian philosophers \u2014 Soroush, Shabestari and Malekian \u2014 who take hold of it in order to renew moral theology and Shi’i dogmatics. Classical poetry thus becomes a hermeneutic instrument, a mediation between a medieval Sunni heritage and the demands of a contemporary religious thought. Essaid Labib, finally, analysed a passage from Averroes’s commentary on Plato’s Republic<\/em> to show that art \u2014 and music in particular \u2014 becomes there an argument in favour of social and political equality between women and men. Against Renan’s reading, he brought out the beginnings of an inclusive Islamic ethico-aesthetics, mobilising the frameworks of Foucault and of gender studies for a critical rereading of the classical text.<\/p>\n

The exchanges brought three main tensions to light. The first bears on the risk of anachronism: how are we to draw on classical thinkers to shed light on contemporary stakes without reducing their historical complexity? Raised in connection with both Averroes and al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, this question remained open. The second concerns the internal coherence of al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b’s work: since the doctrine of emanation is absent from several of his treatises, the room questioned the possibility of a truly unified Farabian aesthetics. Finally, Arminjon’s paper gave rise to questions on the representativity of the Shi’i figures studied within today’s Iranian intellectual landscape, and on the institutional status of poetry within theology.<\/p>\n

The main contribution of this panel lies in the way it brings to light an integrated conception of knowledge, of the beautiful and of the good, across several traditions and periods of Islamic thought. By articulating medieval philosophy, mystical poetry and contemporary rereading, it shows the plurality of entries into Islamic heritage and its capacity to feed present-day reflections on pluralism, gender and intercultural dialogue. Its limits lie mainly in the absence of any questioning of the concrete \u2014 artistic and social \u2014 mediations through which these categories may have been embodied in effective practices. The density of Arminjon’s dossier (three authors, several centuries) would have deserved a longer space of discussion. Among the tracks left open: a systematic comparison of the theories of beauty in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b and Averroes, and the study of non-Iranian receptions of mystical poetry in contemporary theological debates.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":174},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35546","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nThe foundations of the beautiful in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/the-foundations-of-the-beautiful-in-al-farabi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The foundations of the beautiful in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. 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