What Was I Made For?

Billie Eilish asks a pivotal question in the credits of Barbie, a movie tackling feminism in all its facets. “What was I made for?” The song starts in a melancholy sort of fashion, then ends in the resolute lines “Think I forgot how to be happy/Something I’m not, but something I can be.” She’s answering her earlier question. The entire existence of humanity is for the achievement of happiness. What one qualifies as happiness can certainly be debated, but the purpose for humanity is universal across its many variations.

Alfarabi touches upon this in his “Political Regime”, saying that “Since what is intended by the existence of the human being is that he obtain ultimate happiness, to obtain it he needs to know happiness and to set it before his eyes as his end.” (67). The viable next step in this line of reasoning is the definition of happiness. Alfarabi writes that “Happiness is unqualified good. Whatever is useful for obtaining happiness and gaining it is also good, not for its own sake but for the sake of its usefulness with respect to happiness.” (63). The term of “unqualified good” refers to the act of humanity ascending to a level that they are not able to do so on their own. In the world of Islamic philosophy, this is the ascension to the Active Intellect, or to the mind of God himself. The human being “manages to dispense with material and gets to be free from it”, so “it does not perish when material perishes…it has come not to need material. Then it attains happiness.” (71).

Alfarabi here espouses the Platonic idea of the ascending state of being, as one ascends from the real world into the spiritual world, one becomes more and more detached and more knowledgeable of the “Forms” behind things and less of the things themselves. One sees not the shapes of the things in the cave, but sees them in their actuality. With happiness established at the goal for humanity and is thus defined, Alfarabi puts forth the three ways that happiness is achieved. Acting in conjunction, reason, revelation, and religion all act as methods to ascend humanity to the mind of God and forego the myriad material idols that crowd our judgement.

The Platonic way to achieve a detached sort of happiness is through human reason. Alfarabi tends to agree, asserting that through reason, one can achieve a knowledge of the essence of beings. The end goal of this reason is to understand what happiness is. Happiness through reason is when one attains the knowledge that rises their intellect to the rank of the Active Intellect and remains substantial in the face of God. This knowledge takes two forms: knowledge of being and knowledge of the nature of God. One can achieve knowledge of being through virtuous actions, and knowledge of the nature of God through the study of revelation.

Most humans do not have this ability to use their reason to form a concept of the nature of God, to have it “sketched in the human soul as they exist in truth.” (74). Only one, the “king in truth” has the “ability to determine, define, and direct the activities towards happiness.” (69). Alfarabi calls this a “great, extraordinary nature”, and the “passive intellect.” (71). This king in truth is in fact Mohammed, the one who spoke the Quran into existence. Here reason reacts with revelation, as the Quran is the direct speech of God. The words are revealed through the voice of Mohammed in revelation, and filtered through our own reasonable minds.

One will find that in these revelations, there is reasonable thought. One need not even believe in the actuality of God or any supernatural and can still find value in the commands and teachings. That is the relationship between both reason and revelation. If the nature of God is as an intellect, then all revelation is instantly reasonable. Through our own sense of reason, and by directing our actions virtuously in the way of Mohammed, we can achieve happiness through ascension to the intellect of God, completely and utterly detached from all materiality.

These are wonderful ideals, but this plays out in a very different way practically. Alfarabi writes that, “A human being either forms a concept of the principles of the existents, their rankings, happiness, and the rulership of the virtuous cities and intellects them or imagines them.” (74). If one intellects the concept, they experience it in its actuality, in its Platonic form. Yet most just imagine the concept, or form images of it that make it easier to understand. Just as Jesus told parables to create images to follow, Alfarabi finds just as much meaning in virtuous images than a complete understanding of virtuous actions. “Most people have no ability, either by innate character or by custom, to understand and form a concept of those things. For those people, an image ought to be made…of how the principles, their rankings, the active intellect, and the first ruler come about.” (74).

Here, he makes an important distinction between innate character and custom. Innate character would render one ignorant or by no fault of their own unable, while custom would be simply the absence of a “virtuous” religion. There is some wiggle room here. Other people can achieve happiness through a change in images or customs, just as one could read the Bible or Torah or Quran in another religion. All of these “religious” texts could be reasonable read as a series of virtuous images and could still lead one to happiness. The ability to do so is just so rare as to render it useless in a wide scale. Here enter religion.

Religion takes both reasonable wisdom and the revelation of Mohammed, the truth of man and truth of God, and converts it to laws and images and opinions. One is trained to be both wise and faithful, as both feed into the benefit of the other. The religious believer believes stories and acts virtuously without being able to demonstrate or prove the truth of revelation or reason. This is because the principles under religion are rational as well as easily understood, in order for the greater population to achieve happiness. It’s job is to educate and get as close to the truth as possible through images. The natural intersection of religion and the greater good therefore is politics. The truth of this human happiness is mediated through both religion and politics.

Alfarabi ends his text by applying these ideas to his ideal “virtuous city” and listing examples of the political variants also found in the wild. As each political community is different, the images within religion must be modified to suit the community and customs. The virtuous religion can accept different images across its many political communities, if it leads to the greater whole achieving an imagination of true happiness. Alfarabi writes, “This is the true ultimate happiness that is the purpose of the active intellect.” (72). If the purpose of God is to actively help humanity achieve happiness, all political communities have the same goal. Then how are religion and politics reconciled practically?

Alfarabi writes, “Happiness is obtained only by removing evils from cities and from nations-not just the voluntary ones, but also the natural ones-and by their attaining all the goods-the natural ones and the voluntary ones.” (73). This sounds nothing like democracy, it rings more of a strict social order. If religious law is backed by government, then it even mediates the aspect of faith binding one to comply. The population is forced to accept the government’s laws as reasonable and if backed by the words of God, there is no real disputation or freedom available. By obligating one to comply through political power, happiness appears as a forced concept as well, the only acceptable solution.

Let’s return to the discussion on purpose. If our purpose is to achieve happiness, and happiness is achieved for the wider public through images and laws, then one could hypothetically use one’s reason to better interpret laws and religious tenets. Any unhappiness would then be an issue of interpretation of either revelation or reason, or of one’s own inability to see their purpose. The notion of happiness as something that is natural is completely foreign or forgotten to our modern world, while in Alfarabi it is stated as it is clear as day.

Our democracy is designed for freedom and equality, which many assume are catalysts for happiness, but more lead to a sometimes-unhealthy sense of individualism and suffocating self-identification. Alfarabi’s virtuous city is entirely gained around the collective happiness of the body of people within it. Within the weaving of reason and revelation into religion, Alfarabi reconciles religion and politics in a way that achieves this. As Billie Eilish might ask her question, Alfarabi would point to the images of virtue around her, as they exist in any society and say, “You’re not alone. Ask them.”