How to Be Happy ? According to Al-farabi


 Money, love, or even health are often cited as paths to happiness. After all, if I’m rich, I can obtain any goods or services I desire—though “any” is a bit exaggerated, because can one purchase someone’s love? Love, at first glance, seems priceless. Love for another person can cause emotional distress, which can harm our health. Yet health can be “unequal”: not everyone is healthy, and some may never be, due to a disability that disrupts their life. So how do we navigate these apparent contradictions? Should we draw on the advantages of these three concepts to achieve happiness? Does benefiting from what’s good in each context not rule out their possible drawbacks?

For the famous Persian philosopher Al‑Farabi, neither of the above—rather, the key to happiness lies in the pursuit of knowledge. Here’s why:


A. The pursuit of knowledge brings happiness

According to Al‑Farabi, seeking knowledge leads to virtue (a balance between extremes and negligence in life¹), which leads to happiness².

In contrast, the others—love, money, or health—lead to vices (either extremism or negligence), so they offer not true happiness but a hollow one, since they are mere means, not ends:

  • Health: Life reduced to mere necessity, which relegates it to an almost animal state.

  • Money: Life focused only on acquiring goods or services—superficial by nature.

  • Love: Life centered on seeking affection and pleasure—unsustainable.

Al‑Farabi suggests that if these three values were all directed toward the pursuit of knowledge, they could truly bring about happiness³.

 Why does the pursuit of knowledge bring happiness?

Let’s take an example: the more I write, the better my writing becomes—and I feel satisfaction and joy, and the love I pour into it grows. If I persistently strive to improve my writing, that ongoing state of satisfaction is what we call happiness⁴. How do we improve writing? By seeking truth, which broadens general knowledge (knowing, knowing oneself, and knowing how to do things) related to those actions—whether writing, loving, earning money, or caring for health. In other words, innovation enhances action, which in turn increases the satisfaction that action provides! Thus, to seek happiness, we must persevere in continuously improving an activity that brings us joy and satisfaction—and to do so, we must pursue truth.

A balanced life through dual pursuits

It’s the result of these two parallel pursuits that yields a moderate life:

  • Seeking knowledge shields us from negligence (waiting passively for love, money, or health to come to us).

  • It also guards against extremism (forcing love, pursuing money ruthlessly, or letting sickness spread unchecked).

It improves actions (through philosophical reflection—understanding that not everyone can love us, developing business models for more income, or finding scientific solutions to disease).

It’s worth noting that Al‑Farabi’s conception of happiness—strongly influenced by Aristotle and Plato—is similar to Jeremy Bentham’s hedonistic utilitarianism: a constant pursuit of small pleasures that, when repeated, create a state of enduring happiness.

B. Critique & Opinion: The Problem of the Golden Mean

Although inspired by Aristotle and Plato, this conception seems fairly robust by making the pursuit of truth—or, in a modern sense, innovation—a necessity for transforming satisfying actions (such as love, money, and health) into true happiness when that satisfaction becomes constant.

However, the idea of virtue as the “just mean” is problematic: seeking a middle ground between two extremes can lead to utopian conclusions that aren’t aligned with truth. If paradigms have verifiable tools (like the principle of non‑contradiction in propositions or logical functions), and the mean is not such a tool, then invoking it doesn’t help solve problems. For example: if one student answers 8 for 6 + 4 and another answers 10, is the student who says 9 correct simply because it's between the two? Verification tools are essential—they validate ideas or prevent erroneous simplifications.

My personal view is that knowledge (or more precisely its stand‑in, truth) is the highest value, as its function is to remind us what is. Hence, all other values must be grounded in these realities so as not to be misled. In other words, truth defines the conditions under which other values can exist. It’s like a tour guide that orients these values toward “Being.” For example: before declaring something good or evil, isn’t it fundamental to define what "good" or "evil" truly is—not via a dictionary, but via reasoned reflection and examination of reality? This exercise then enables us to distinguish and define them. Granted, this reflection itself may be flawed—if truth is viewed as correspondence to reality through language, isn’t language what reveals truth in the first place, thus defining everything else? That said, while I assert this view, it's entirely reasonable for someone to believe that morality, money, or family are the ultimate values.


In summary:

According to Al‑Farabi, to achieve happiness, one should innovate (i.e., continually seek new knowledge) in the domains of love, money, and health—so that one experiences a constant state of satisfaction, which is what we call happiness.


Notes & References

  1. Sylvain Roux, La Recherche du principe chez Platon, Aristote et Plotin, Paris, Vrin, 2005, p. 258 (definition of virtue).

  2. Traité des opinions des habitants de la cité idéale, introduction, translation, and notes by Tahani Sabri, p. 28.

  3. Ibid., p. 113.

  4. Ibid., p. 114.

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