Avicenna’s Parsimonious Theocratic Political Philosophy in the Cure as an Antidote to Modernity with Reference to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra

ABSTRACT: Avicenna’s political philosophy has received relative short shrift compared with Al-Fārābī in the literature: it has been primarily discussed by Butterworth (2000). Nevertheless, Avicenna’s philosophy is particularly relevant to the present moment with the burgeoning interest in theocracies such as Christian Nationalism. This paper provides a basic explication of the minimal elements of Avicenna’s parsimonious theocracy. According to Nussbaum’s criteria, serious political philosophies have seven elements (1997). While, in her estimation Nietzsche’s philosophy lacks these elements, I argue that Avicenna satisfied her criteria. Once the basic principles of Avicenna’s political philosophy as found in the concluding chapters of book X of his Metaphysics of the Healing are established, a comparison is made with the philosophy of Nietzsche. Nietzsche, it is argued, has identified many of the symptoms of the malaise of modernity and late-stage capitalism in his Zarathustra . It is argued that these problems identified by Nietzsche can largely be addressed by Avicenna’s teleological political philosophy and his insistence on a prophet as lawgiver. Having made the comparison between Avicenna and Nietzsche, the paper turns to the topic of Deep Ecology. It is maintained that, while philosophers have tried to ground Deep Ecology in elements of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Gandhi, Avicenna is also particularly relevant to this project in providing a metaphysics and political philosophy in line with some of the aims of parts of Naess’s project and other adherents of Deep Ecology.