Eric Schliesser — Al-Farabi On Treating People as Ends or Means (with nods to Spinoza, Rousseau, and Kant)

Only of interest to those into history of social and political thought. Al-Farabi aka Alpharabius is not well known in the West other than specialist circles, although he is renown in Islamic philosophy.

The quoted passage entails (animal rights' activists will not like this) that mankind has dominion over (most) other animals because they lack a rational faculty. But it also implies that by nature humans may not be treated by each other as a means because they have -- to use poetic language -- the spark of rationality. Let's call this Al-Farabi's rational humanism. It is compatible with his assumption that mankind is naturally hierarchically differentiated in many different ways and, in turn, cultivated and educated in ways that increase multiplicity.

"Rationality" in ancient and medieval thought signifies the ability to know and use universals and relate them through reasoning. This enables making a distinction between the rational appetite that human and shared with separate intelligences and sense appetite that is shared with animals. A good person and a good society are based on rationality, whereas a bad person and a bad society are devoted to sense gratification, which modern economics calls "utility" after Jeremy Bentham.

Digressions&Impressions
Al-Farabi On Treating People as Ends or Means (with nods to Spinoza, Rousseau, and Kant)
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences