The Political Writings: Political Regime and Summary of Plato’s Laws

Alfarabi (ca. 870-950) founded the great tradition of Aristotelian/Platonic political philosophy in medieval Islamic and Arabic culture. In this second volume of political writings, Charles E. Butterworth presents translations of Alfarabi’s Political Regime and Summary of Plato’s Laws, accompanied by introductions that discuss the background for each work and explore its teaching. In addition, the texts are carefully annotated to aid the reader in following Alfarabi’s argument. An Arabic-English/English-Arabic glossary allows interested readers to verify the way particular words are translated. Throughout, Butterworth’s method is to translate consistently the same Arabic word by the same English word, rendering Alfarabi’s style in an unusually faithful and yet approachable manner.