Necessity and Impossibility of City in Al-farabi's View

Reviewing the thoughts of those Muslim philosophers who have political debates about city shows that their discussions about virtuous city will finally come to two ends of spectrum; either homelessness (isolation) or cosmopolitan (vagabondage). In one hand, virtuous man is nurtured in virtuous city and in other hand, the non-virtuous city prevents man from having virtue and virtuous man is forced to go out of city. Farabi, while discusses different kinds of non-virtuous cities to bespeak the possibility of virtuous city, suggest the "virtuous planet". He divides societies into small, middle and big sized, and prescribes the transition from living in a city to cosmopolitan; virtuous planet is a big gathering of all societies all over the earth that is directed by one leader based on virtuous actions. The significant point in this kind of philosophizing is that two spectrum of homelessness and cosmopolitan are suggested for virtuous man. This view toward social life continues among philosophers such as Avicenna, Suhrewardi, Ibn Bajja (Avempace) and Ibn Tofail (Abubacer Aben Tofail). Nevertheless, al-Farabi's thought about non-virtuous cities recognizes living in a civil society. Focusing on al-Farabi's ideas in this article, above-mentioned issues are discussed by philosophical content analysis method.