A Comparative Study of Aristotle and Fārābī’s Views on Illusion

In Aristotle and Fārābī's philosophy, knowledge begins with sense perceptions. This approach to the acquisition of knowledge faces two challenges posed by Sufism, “illusion” and the “the conflicting interpretations of sense perceptions”. Aristotle tries to answer these two questions by dividing sense perceptions into “specific” and “common” ones and proposing the concept of “balanced conditions”, and the duality of “appearance” and “perception”. Fārābī has not taken a position on the second challenge, but he draws a different approach to the first challenge by dividing the certainty into “complete certainty” and “incomplete certainty”. In his view, certainty arising from “sense perceptions” is an incomplete one, and by adhering to the three conditions, one can adhere to the certainties of sense intuition. It seems that neither of the two solutions of these two thinkers is complete in solving the problem; but Aristotle's solution to the problem of “illusion” is more defensible than Fārābī’s.