It is difficult to do justice to the erudition and insights of Parens's book in a short essay. It is essential reading for people interested in medieval philosophy, Alfarabi, Maimonides, or Leo Strauss. It will also be valuable for those interested in political science, political philosophy, the relationship between theoretical and practical understanding, the purpose of philosophy, the function of law (whether revealed or not), and a host of other topics that have long preoccupied thoughtful people.

For specialists, Parens mines the works of Strauss, Alfarabi, Maimonides, and others for observations any one of which could inspire a conference––or better yet, an ongoing conversation––in its own right. Many of the passages Parens highlights come from Strauss's earliest writings, translated into English in recent decades, so they are fresh and exciting. Given how prolific Strauss was, Parens has done an extraordinary public service by calling these observations to our attention and weaving them into the fabric of the argument of his wide-ranging and provocative book.

People who are not already immersed in these topics may reasonably wonder why someone should still care about, for example, conflicts that existed between philosophy and religion or philosophy and civic authorities in environments so different from our own, at least where tolerance and democracy are dominant values. A passage he quotes from Strauss's Philosophy and Law, first published in 1935, should give such doubters pause.

Platonism, or being a Platonist, is not about espousing doctrines that are associated with Plato's writings, but rather about a way of life, a life of inquiry, animated by the question of what is the right or best way to live. Thus, Strauss in this passage calls the Islamic Aristotelians (and their Jewish disciples) “Platonists,” even when they hold Aristotelian positions, as they often do. This view may explain Alfarabi's curious assertion, at the end of the Attainment of Happiness, that “in what they presented, [Plato's and Aristotle's] purpose is the same, and that they intended to offer one and the same philosophy” (APPA 50).

Parens develops Strauss's insight several times in his book, where he reminds readers that the conflict between philosophy and religion, or philosophy and the Law, was profound because philosophy as a way of life “made total demands” on a person (19, 56, 60). Indeed, in most of premodern thought, he reminds us, philosophy was not a profession, but “a total way of life” (19). Religion, at least in the Islamic and Jewish traditions, also made total demands upon adherents (18–19). Jewish Law and Islamic law both prescribe what adherents should believe and how they should behave in ordinary tasks on a daily basis. The level of detail can be astonishing, dictating, for example, what time of day we should pay our workers, how we should plow our fields, and which fabrics we can and cannot combine.

Thus, although the conflict between religion and philosophy might on one level seem doctrinal, that is, based upon competing claims to truth or understanding the nature of the world, on a deeper level, the conflict is between competing claims for how we spend our time and the goals and values we pursue. Modern readers who compartmentalize the facets of their lives would do well to heed Parens's reminder of what we sacrifice in so doing.

Relatedly, Parens calls to the reader's attention what he calls Maimonides's “denigration of action” (134) and “radical degradation of morality” in the Guide, which Parens attributes to the philosopher “privileg[ing] contemplation over action” (51). It may seem ironic to claim that a man who devoted such extraordinary time and effort to writing books and other materials that were not philosophic actually privileged contemplation over and denigrated action.Footnote ⁴ Parens explains the contradiction by noting that the effect and perhaps intent of Maimonides's herculean reworking of Talmud was so that “at least some Jews could [find time to] study philosophy” (125). Maimonides was, then, a man of action, but his life of action was compelled by a commitment to facilitate the possibility of a contemplative life for others and future generations.

Strauss's decoupling of “Platonic” from specific doctrines also raises interesting questions for the interpretation of Alfarabi's writings. It is commonplace to say that Alfarabi was Platonic in his political philosophy even as he tended toward Aristotle in other areas, like natural philosophy.Footnote ⁵ In light of Strauss's statement, how should we understand these labels?

Parens connects Alfarabi's Platonic orientation to his rejection of the sharp distinction that Aristotle apparently endorsed between the theoretical and the practical sciences (19–20), which Parens infers from Alfarabi's placing a cosmology at the end of his Book of Religion, in contrast to the Political Regime and Virtuous City, where cosmology precedes the political (15; cf. 68). Alfarabi's choice to place cosmology at the end of the Religion might suggest to some that he also distinguished sharply between the theoretical and the practical. However, Parens argues, this choice reveals Alfarabi's refusal to ground political philosophy in metaphysics, a leitmotif of Parens's book (27, 32; see 46, 60). In my view, this does not mean that Alfarabi dismisses political inquiry's potential theoretical content or partial reliance on theory. Rather, as Parens notes on several occasions, political philosophy properly understood is itself a comprehensive study of human things (35; see 108, 113). A philosopher may find metaphysics too speculative to ground other inquiries, without rejecting natural philosophy or theoretical political inquiry.

The implication of the preceding is that metaphysics and theoretical inquiry should not be equated (cf. 68), since political inquiry properly understood is theoretical in some dimensions. Even when political inquiry cannot be derived from theoretical inquiry, it also cannot go forward without it. I have argued elsewhere that the Political Regime suggests that political inquiry partially rests on philosophical psychology, that is, the account of the soul and mind in Aristotle's De anima. But whatever we call the theoretical component, Parens focuses the reader on the crux of the matter: the relationship between the theoretical and practical is “dialectical” (15), or “dialogic” (77). To some extent, “inquiry into the divine has its basis in the inquiry into human things” (147).

Alfarabi pursues this idea in three less familiar works, his Great Book of Music, Book of Dialectic, and Book of Demonstration. In the Music, Alfarabi elaborates the reciprocal relationship between theoretical and practical arts, which sometimes have the same name, but pursue the identical subject matter with different methods and aims (Music 89:3–99:7). The Demonstration discusses the interaction between conceptual and propositional understanding, the ways in which each is initially recognized in a provisional or imprecise way, and how successive layers of refinement occur (Demonstration 23–25, 39–41, 77–82). In the Dialectic, Alfarabi replaces the traditional distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge based upon whether the subjects owe or do not owe their existence to human volition with a new distinction based upon what does or does not contribute to happiness (Dialectic 69:10–18). So understood, aspects of theoretical inquiry are part of practical philosophy and theoretical and practical inquiry can be mutually reinforcing (see PE 68–70, 88–90).

All of these works emphasize the role of experience in both theoretical and practical inquiry. Experience is presented as grounded in observation, but transcending observation because of its role in detecting patterns and connections between individual items that can be perceived. In the highest case, experience makes possible a person's grasp of the primary premises of the sciences, which, being primary, cannot be demonstrated.Footnote ⁶ Experience is thus central for the development of the sciences and for the manner in which the theoretical and practical inquiries inform and are informed by each other (see OPP).