An Analysis of the Thoughts of Alfarabius and Rorty

As the issue of education is complicated and multidimensional, it seems necessary to review the thoughts of different scholars in this discipline, and to compare them in order to make better use of their ideas. Using analyticdocumentary method, the researchers intended to compare the ideas of Alfarabius, the Islamic scholar, and those of Rorty, a neo-pragmatist scholar. A considerable point is that, both of these scholars have presented important and valuable reflections on ideal society and anthropology, which have resulted in outstanding outcomes for education. In this piece of research, firstthe thoughts of Alfarabius on the issues of anthropology, education, and their attitude towards society were compared. Then, having explained their ideas on these three points, the researchers tried to analyze them carefully. The main purpose of this study was to find out the similarities and differences between the thoughts of these two scholars. The result indicated that both of these scholars considered social education as a significant issue. Moreover, both emphasized on man’s self-making and his role as agency in education. They also shared the same idea about esthetic approaches to teaching.