Political science that is a part of philosophy is limited—in what it investigates of the voluntary actions, ways of life, and dispositions, and in the rest of what it investigates—to universals and to giving their patterns. It also brings about cognizance of the patterns for determining particulars: how, by what, and by what extent they ought to be determined. It leaves them undetermined in actuality, because determining in actuality belongs to a faculty other than philosophy and and perhaps because the circumstances and occurrences with respect to which determination takes place is infinite and without limitation. Al-Farabi "The Book of Religion, 15. in The Political Writings. Trans. Charles Butterworth, p. 106.
In Al-Farabi (reflecting the classical heritage) a philosophy of a special science is, in the first instance, a theoretical subject matter grounded in some principled yields demonstrations or proofs about universals. These are universals that apply to a particular domain. From the perspective of contemporary social science, Al-Farabi's political science that is a part of philosophy, is highly abstract and general. In order to avoid confusion let's call this (politics that is a part of philosophy) general political science. But as Al-Farabi notes in the quoted passage, it's also part of such a general political science to create the framework that allow some of the preconditions for subsuming important features of political reality under these universals.
Now for Al-Farabi 'religion' is always a means to some given political end ("religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who seeks to obtain through their practicing it a specific purpose with respect to them or by means of them.") And, given this (recall) expansive functional definition and understanding of religion (which has clear debts to Plato), general political science studies the contents -- i.e., social mores (including institutions), habits of thoughts, and voluntary actions -- that are the main ingredients of religion. So, general political science is the general knowledge of the contours of making 'religion' politically functional. So, general political science is the generic knowledge of how political leaders/founders can achieve their aims.
Of course, general political science deals in merely possible religions and the ways of discerning types of actions, dispositions, and mores. Really existing political reality is too specific to fall under general political science. It's too specific in ways that are in a sense too varied. Al-Farabi's way of expressing this -- "infinite and without limitation" -- is striking because it reminds one of properties of God. (Modern theorists would say political reality is too complex or too uncertain to be put in a model.) And so applying the generic knowledge of religion requires contextual knowledge, prudence, grounded in experience of individual particulars (17).
Now, I want to close with a speculative thought (that may involve a terminological misunderstanding). I noted a few years ago, that one of Al-Farabi's distant philosophical successors, Ibn Rushd, inscribed (recall) in his commentary on Plato's Republic, a pattern of the rise and, especially fall of political regimes that was applicable to different social realities (see also this post on the Decisive Treatise). Ibn Rushd is no political historian, but he does thereby provide a framework for the kind of philosophical history that makes Ibn Khaldun worth reading to this day. In particular, Ibn Khaldun is (recall) the historian who focuses on the means by which religion is a means toward political ends, and by analyzing the mechanisms of one of its means, group-feeling.* What I had no appreciated before, but believe is true, is that this is the completion (not the anthisesis) of Al-Farabi's program for a general political science.+
*That's compatible with Ibn Khaldun being pious.
+I am converging here with Muhsin Mahdi's Ibn Khaldûn's Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Culture
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