162 CHAPTER SIX
writings, the Guide gives us a glimpse of a positive description of Mai-
monides’ understanding of paradise.
Toward the end of the Guide, in what he calls “a kind of a conclu-
sion,” Maimonides turns to offer the reader a guide to the highest way of
worship. This guide, he says, “makes known to him [that is, the reader]
how providence watches over him in this habitation, until he is brought
over to the bundle of life (tsror ha-hayyim).”^31 This last expression,
taken from Abigail’s words to David (1 Sam. 25:29), is interpreted in the
Jewish tradition since the Talmud as referring to the world to come. This
is also how Maimonides interprets this idiom, in his aforementioned in-
troduction to Pereq Heleq. True to his word, it is in this chapter 51 that
Maimonides speaks most clearly of the lot of the perfect souls, at death
and beyond it.
The phi losophers have already explained that the bodily faculties
impede in youth the attainment of most of the moral virtues, and all
the more that of pure thought, which is achieved through the perfec-
tion of the intelligibles that lead to passionate love of Him, may He
be exalted.... When a perfect man is stricken with years and approaches
death, this apprehension increases very powerfully, joy over this ap-
prehension and a great love for the object of apprehension become
stronger, until the soul is separated from the body at that moment in
this state of plea sure.
... The Sages... followed the generally accepted poetical way of
expression that call the apprehension that is achieved in a state of
intense and passionate love for Him, may He be exalted, a kiss.
... After having reached this condition of enduring permanence,
that intellect remains in one and the same state,... And he will re-
main permanently in that state of intense plea sure.^32
The individuals who have achieved the highest intellectual apprehension
experience, in their death and beyond it, great joy and permanent intense
pleasure. In this, Maimonides, like the other falasifa, identifi es the high-
est degree of the hereafter with the intellectual, noncorporeal bliss.
Like most falasifa, Maimonides did not think of the bliss in the here-
after in terms of individual survival. He did not endorse Avicenna’s
personal immortality, and his express rejection of this theory developed
by “a modern phi losopher” may be directed specifi cally against Avicen-
na.^33 He also disagrees with Avicenna concerning the possibility of im-
(^31) Guide 3.51 (Dalala, 454; Pines, 618).
(^32) Guide 3.51 (Dalala, 462– 63; Pines, 627– 28).
(^33) See Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” ciii.