Keywords
How to Cite
Abstract
This article builds on the Political Science Reviewer’s “Symposium: An Intoduction to Music in Plato’s Political Thought,” and represents the first attempt to understand Averroes’s views on the relationship between politics and music. Averroes treats the topic mainly in the framework of his Commentary on Plato’s Republic. He goes further than Plato in articulating how music would have to be regulated and reduced, in order to function as an appendage of poetry that serves solely the purposes of the city. However, a number of equivocations in Averroes’s work on Plato, and contradictory statements in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, imply that while a certain kind of music is well-suited to political messaging, others kinds will stubbornly resist being employed in so narrow a fashion. This conclusion sheds light on why Alfarabi, who wrote so much about music, nonetheless said so little about its use in politics.
Similar Articles
- John von Heyking, “Had Every Athenian Citizen Been a Socrates” , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 46 No. 1 (2022): Symposium on Political Theology
- Trevor Shelley, Tocquevillean Poetics , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 44 No. 2 (2020): Symposium: Leadership and the History of Political Thought
- Rebecca LeMoine, Rereading Plato on Censorship , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 1 (2021): Symposium: Music in Plato's Political Thought
- Sophie Pangle, Plato on the Subversion of Law in Homeric Poetry , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 1 (2021): Symposium: Music in Plato's Political Thought
- Jeremy Seth Geddert, Plato as Choirmaster , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 1 (2021): Symposium: Music in Plato's Political Thought
- Kirk Fitzpatrick, Two Songs in the Kallipolis of Plato's Republic , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 1 (2021): Symposium: Music in Plato's Political Thought
- John von Heyking, S. F. McGuire, Barry Cooper, David J. Walsh, Thierry Gontier, John von Heyking's The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 2 (2018): Symposium: The Political Thought of Robert Nisbet
- Clemens Kauffmann, Men on Horseback , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 45 No. 2 (2021): Symposium: Russell Kirk in the 21st Century
- Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, Voegelin on Aristotle’s “Science of the Polis” , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 41 No. 1 (2017): Symposium: Eric Voegelin and the Ancients
- Timothy Fuller, Pfeffer Merrill, Avramenko, and Planinc on Eric Voegelin’s Use of Classical Political Science , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 41 No. 1 (2017): Symposium: Eric Voegelin and the Ancients
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Lee Trepanier, Thinking in Times of Trouble , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Ross Carroll, Edmund Burke, Imperialist Ideologue? , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Michael Federici, The Meaning of Conservatism , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 40 (2016): A Symposium on Paul Gottfried’s Conservatism in America
- Gaelan Murphy, Hans-georg Gadamer and the Harmony of Word and Deed , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- John von Heyking, S. F. McGuire, Barry Cooper, David J. Walsh, Thierry Gontier, John von Heyking's The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 2 (2018): Symposium: The Political Thought of Robert Nisbet
- Thaddeus J Kozinski, Alasdair MacIntyre’s Political Liberalism , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 36 (2007): A Symposium on Leo Strauss and His Students
- Ted V McAllister, What Does Burke Have to Do With America? , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 40 (2016): A Symposium on Paul Gottfried’s Conservatism in America
- Kevin Kearns, Reason’s Handmaiden , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 2 (2018): Symposium: The Political Thought of Robert Nisbet
- Giunia Gatta, Between Politics and Suprapolitics , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 1 (2018): Symposium: Philosophy in Weimar Germany
- Luke C Sheahan, State as Historical Necessity , The Political Science Reviewer: Vol. 42 No. 2 (2018): Symposium: The Political Thought of Robert Nisbet