Beginning and the End of Civil Friendship in Al-Farabi’s Philosophy

This paper focused on the analysis and explanation of “civil friendship” in al-Farabi’s philosophy; so the question is: what are the beginning and the end of civil friendship in his philosophy? It seems that for al-Farabi, the friendship has the power of binding the creatures to each other.It shapes all contexts for creatures; among them, it forms the variant cities, and the ruler of each city looks at the category of friendship as a tool to have good governance. For Farabi, like Aristotle, man naturally has teleos in itself. For him, the cities need justice and civil friendship to be a good city acording to the scheme that planed by the ruler; without friendship, the cities cannot be shaped, and without justice they cannot be maintained. But in reality, the type of friendship is different in each city, and it defines the happiness for each city.