AccScience Publishing / BIJP / Volume 14 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.29228/beytulhikme.69770
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Philosophy’s Desire for The City/State: A Comparison Between Platonopolis and al-Madinah al-Fadilah

Ömer Ceran1
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1 Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli Üniversitesi, İlahiyat Fakültesi, Felsefe ve Din Bilimleri Bölümü 50300, Nevşehir, Türkiye
BIJP 2024, 14(1), 153–166; https://doi.org/10.29228/beytulhikme.69770
Received: 30 March 2023 | Published online: 9 March 2024
© 2024 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Some philosophers have designed perfect models of the city and the state. The aim of these philosophers’ contemplations is the happiness of individuals and society. They considered that these models would serve this aim. This thought is based on that man has to live in a society. As a result of this, moral and political philosophies emerged. These models which are designed by philosophers also highlight the ideal philosophical environment. Some of them were assessed as utopia and criticized on its implementation. In this study we will compare the ideas of two philosophers who designed a model of the city and the state. The first of them is Plotinos. He mostly lived in Egypt and Rome in the 3rd century. He advised that the emperor should build the city of Platonopolis. The emperor had promised to build this city but it never happened. The other is al-Farabi who lived in the 9th and 10th centuries in the Middle East. He named his ideal city ‘el-Medīnetü’l-Fāḍıla’ He compared the city /state to the universe. Namely beings are ruled by God. The city must also be ruled by a divine king who makes rules. He tried to show how it will turn out to be an ideal thinking environment for philosophy. In this study we will try to show the different and the similar aspects of two philosophers about their ideal cities models.

Keywords
New Platonism
İslamic philosophy
political philosophy
Plotinos
al-Farabi
Platonopolis
el-Medinetü’l-Fazıla.
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Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy, Print ISSN: 1303-8303, Published by AccScience Publishing