ABSTRACT
The question of the eternity of the world in Fārābī's writings has up to now been addressed twice; first by Herbert Davidson in his book Proofs for Eternity, and more recently by Marwan Rashed in an extensive study entitled 'Al-Fārābī's lost treatise on Changing Beings'. In fact, among Fārābī's preserved works, at least two lines of argument, which are straightforwardly Neoplatonic, partly stem from Proclus' proofs for the eternity of the world. If the term 'world' could refer to the All, then Aristotle's categories would have no epistemological relevance as to the question of the eternity of the world. In other words, the most obvious argument for the eternity of the world in Fārābī's writings is found in the causal structure of his universe. Yet Fārābī's main argument for the eternity of the world already relied on this structure since it allows him to evade the question of the eternity of what is outside the 'world'.
