Abstract

Farabi, “the Second Teacher” and the founder of Islamic philosophy is one of the most important philosophers in the history of Islamic philosophy. Like other Muslim philosophers and mystics, he has no independent argument about aesthetic concepts. In this research, one of the main concepts of modern aesthetics, namely the “aesthetic judgment”, is analyzed according Farabi’s perspective, and to achieving this, some of the key concepts of Kant’s aesthetics, as one of the turning points of modern aesthetics, are used. In this paper, concepts such as “second perfection”, in the philosophy of Farabi, and “the ideal of beauty” in Kant’s philosophy are evaluated and then new explanation is introduced of aesthetic judgment in Farabi. The results show that for Farabi the canonical art is that art which has some features, and leads audience toward true happiness. This canon corresponds to Kant’s definition of ideal beauty, and is made clear with combination of the aesthetic normal idea and the rational idea in the philosophy of Kant.