Al-Farabi on the First Concepts and the Role of Imagination in Their Formation

The first concepts, according to Al-Farabi, are the cause of the first degree of actualization for the potential intellect, the origination of free will, the individual human life, and the first step towards higher degrees of perception and action. The origination of the first concepts depends on the origination of the powers of sensation, imagination, and understanding, transcending from their respective acquired knowledge and the actualization of the voluntary component dependent on their acquired knowledge. The interactions of sensory-imaginative stages and the formation of the first knowledge and origination of the free will, on the one hand, and the interactions of the first knowledge and higher degrees of knowledge, on the other hand, reveal the polarization of the free will and the active intellect, and the determinative role of the free will in the epistemic position of every human being. Admitting different kinds of first concepts by Al-Farabi shows his precedence in expanding the first principles of the sciences and his modified foundationalism. The imagination plays a part in different levels of the origination of the first concepts: it is a repository of observation recordings, has roles in the formation of experiences at the level of secondary will, and is a receiver of first concepts and an imitator of agent intellect emanations. Furthermore, the epistemological structure of human beings, because of their incapability to know the true nature of things, is imaginative.