Al‑Farabi’s Virtuous City

How a 10th‑century “Second Teacher” turned happiness into a theory of legitimacy

One evening in Aleppo, the story goes, a quiet scholar entered a royal gathering, assembled a set of reeds into a flute, and played three tunes: one made everyone laugh, the next made them weep, and the last sent the room to sleep. The tale is almost certainly apocryphal, written centuries after the fact, but it captures something true about the man: Abu Nasr al‑Farabi thought politics, like music, required more than technical skill—it needed harmony.¹

Al‑Farabi (c. 870–950/951), nicknamed “the Second Teacher” after Aristotle, wrote in the cosmopolitan world between Baghdad’s scholars and the Hamdanid court of Aleppo. A logician, music theorist, and political philosopher, he asked one blunt question: What makes rule legitimate? His answer did not begin with “consent” or “force,” but with a destination—felicity, the full flourishing of human beings.²

Here is his engine. Human beings, Al‑Farabi argues, cannot complete themselves alone. We need one another not merely for bread and walls but for becoming the kind of minds and characters capable of happiness. The smallest association that can genuinely carry us to that end is the city; villages are too small, while nations—or even a “union of all societies”—extend the same cooperative logic at larger scales. In his own words: “The city in which people co‑operate for the things by which felicity in its real and true sense can be attained is the excellent city.” Think of his politics like an orchestra: households are sections, neighborhoods are ensembles, and the city is where the score can be played as written. Legitimacy lies in whether the conductor can bring the parts into tune with the common melody—human flourishing.³⁴

That conductor, crucially, is not a mere technocrat. Al‑Farabi’s ideal ruler blends two gifts. First, theoretical wisdom: the disciplined grasp of what is true and good. Second, imaginative power: the ability to translate abstract truths into symbols, stories, rituals—what he calls “religion”—that can move a diverse populace toward the good. Expertise without narrative cannot govern; narrative without truth misleads. The point is not the ruler’s charisma but the city’s education: citizens learn, through law and culture, to want what is worth wanting.³

Now the stress test. In 945, Daylamite warlords—the Buyids—seized Baghdad and reduced the Abbasid caliph to a figurehead. Meanwhile in Aleppo, Sayf al‑Dawla fought the Byzantines and rival Muslim dynasties while sponsoring poets and scholars like Al‑Farabi. This was fragmentation, not utopia; cities starved under blockades, frontiers burned, and courts glittered while coffers emptied. Against that backdrop, Al‑Farabi sketched not a fairy tale but a diagnostic. Most cities, he said, miss the mark. He cataloged “ignorant,” “wicked,” and “errant” cities—places that pursue mere wealth, honor, pleasure, domination, or confused freedom instead of true felicity. The typology is a sober concession: virtue is rare; regimes often chase shinier, nearer goods.⁵⁶

So what? Al‑Farabi gives us a mental model that complements—sometimes challenges—the social‑contract talk we inherit from Hobbes and Locke. Instead of asking only “Who consented?” he asks: “Toward what are we consenting?” Two quick tests for reading today’s headlines:

1) The Ends Test. When a leader sells a policy—tax cuts, surveillance powers, school reforms—ask which good it serves. Is the aim bare security, prestige, profit, pleasure, power? Or does it plausibly grow people’s long‑term capacities to reason, to live well with others, to pursue lives they would endorse on reflection? If the good is too thin, legitimacy is thin.

2) The Double‑Key Test. Does leadership combine knowledge and narrative? Public health, climate, AI governance, city budgets—all need real expertise. But they also require shared stories that make sacrifice and cooperation intelligible. In Al‑Farabi’s language, law and “religion” (symbols) should midwife virtue, not manipulate it. Technocracy without meaning will stall; populist spectacle without truth corrodes.

There’s a caution baked in. A politics of “human flourishing” can turn paternalistic fast: Who decides what counts as felicity? Al‑Farabi’s own skepticism about “democratic” cities reminds us that perfectionism can distrust pluralism. A liberal reply is to keep his tests but distribute the baton—use institutions, rights, and public reasoning so the melody emerges from many players, not one maestro. The helpful question to keep asking at every level—from school boards to national security councils—isn’t simply “Is this popular?” or “Is this legal?” but “Does this help the whole body, not just a limb?” On that standard, consent is not abandoned; it is educated.

History is best understood in arcs. From a fractured 10th‑century Middle East, Al‑Farabi invites us to judge regimes by the music they make together. If the tune you hear in public life is louder, faster, angrier, ask whether anyone is still conducting toward happiness—or whether we’ve mistaken noise for a symphony.