164 CHAPTER SIX
goal of apprehending the separate intellects, but did not actually think
that this goal was attainable by humans. As a result, the highest attainable
human perfection according to them was only civic and po litical happi-
ness. In such a view, naturally, otherworldly happiness is non- existent,
and indeed Farabi is said to have expressed the opinion that the belief in
the soul’s immortality and the hereafter is nothing but myths, “old wives
tales.”^39 Pines examined Maimonides’ writings closely, and came to the
conclusion that “the only passage in the Guide which contains an appar-
ently unambiguous affi rmation of the survival of the intellect occurs at
the end of 3.51.”^40
Pines’s view has been strongly criticized by Davidson, who has at-
tempted to show that Maimonides, like his two Muslim pre decessors,
“recognized the possibility of human thought with the active intellect
itself as a permanent object, and he suggests that when the human intel-
lect achieves such thought, it enters a state of permanent conjunction
with the active intellect.”^41 Concerning the same passage in Guide 3.51,
Davidson concedes that its language “falls short of technical precision”
but believes that it suggests a fi nal conjunction with the incorporeal
realm.
The lack of technical precision is indeed noteworthy and telling, but I
believe it must be interpreted differently. Despite his insistence on the hu-
man inability to grasp this bliss or express it, Maimonides delves in this
passage into untypical poetic descriptions.^42 Such descriptions are quite
usual in the writings of Avicenna, but are rather rare in Maimonides’
more sober rhetoric. In sharp contrast to his lukewarm, pursed- lipped
admittance of the resurrection, his description of the bliss of the perfect
souls rings with the exultation and rapture of the believer.
The goal that the phi losophers set for themselves— apprehending the
highest truth as a precondition to immortality— was an im mensely daunt-
ing one. The examination of philosophical texts and rationalist analysis
(^39) Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge,” 98; and see above, chap. 5, apud note 73.
(^40) Dalala, 463; (Pines, 628); Pines,”The Limitations of Human Knowledge,” 95. On this
chapter, see also Keller, “Die Religion der Gebildeten,” 48– 49.
(^41) Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” 98. Further on this question see,
for example, B. S. Kogan, “ ‘What Can We Know and When Can We Know It?’ Maimo-
nides on the Active Intelligence and Human Cognition,” in E. L. Ormsby, ed., Moses
Maimonides and His Time (Washington, D.C., 1989), 121– 37; Avieze Ravitzky, “Maimo-
nides: Esotericism and Educational Philosophy,” in Seeskin, The Cambridge Companion
to Maimonides, 316– 17; G. Freudenthal, “The Biological Limitations of Man’s Intellec-
tual Perfection According to Maimonides,” in Tamer, ed., The Trials of Maimonides,
137–49.
(^42) A similar expansion can be seen in Maimonides’ introduction to the Guide, where he
describes the understanding of the perfect man as constant light.