La dottrina dell’intelletto in Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī. Introduzione, traduzione e commento della Risāla fī l-ʿaql ed esame della traduzione latina

The present study seeks to expound the doctrine of the intellect as formulated by the philosopher Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950/951) in his Risāla fī l-ʿaql (Epistle on the Intellect). To this end, the work is divided into three parts. The first part sets out the biographical, historical, and cultural context in which al-Fārābī’s intellectual activity should be situated; it offers an overview of the manuscript tradition and of the existing scholarship on the Risāla; examines the title, structure, contents, aims, and chronology of the work, and identifies both its sources and its polemical targets. The second part presents a new Italian translation of the treatise. The third part provides a line-by-line commentary on the Arabic text. In addition, the study makes available several materials intended to facilitate the investigation of the Latin translation of the Risāla fī l-ʿaql (De intellectu): these include an examination of the text established by Étienne Gilson, a transcription of a Latin epitome of the treatise (Extractio Alpharabii de intellectu et intellecto) – known to Gilson but hitherto unpublished – and an Arabic-Latin and Latin-Arabic lexicon.