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[ 86 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
soul, to be immortal, must be a substance in its own right. Since corporeal human
beings are composed of a variety of substances—not only soul and body but var-
ious sorts of bodily substances—and yet are unified, something has to account
for their unity. The idea of “nesting” was introduced in order to account for it.
Gabirol’s views, which were seen as a step away from Neoplatonism toward a
kind of Aristotelian materialism, were translated into Latin and, during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, widely debated by Christian Scholastics.
In the second half of the twelfth century, Jewish philosophy, under the influ-
ence of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Avempace (Ibn B–jjah), entered a more rigor-
ously Aristotelian phase. From the point of view of Jewish philosophy, the high
point of this phase was reached in the work of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204),
who, like Averroës, thought that Aristotle’s philosophy represented the high-
water
mark of human reason. Maimonides agreed with Averroës that Aristotle
should be purged of Neoplatonic accretions and embraced systematically, but in
a way that would include, rather than ignore, the Jewish theological tradition. In
his G uide to the Perplexed, which was written in Arabic, Maimonides strongly
criticized Jewish kalam
and pietism, taking instead the view that the essence of
Judaism is a speculative understanding of God. He asserted that Jewish theology
in its entirety could be understood in Aristotelian terms, without compromising
either the theology or the philosophy. Understanding thusly is vital, he claimed,
in order to make theology credible to people living in a postbiblical age.
Maimonides believed that humans have immortal souls whose only activity is
the pure intellectual contemplation of God. This suggests that in his view, the
soul’s immortality may not entail personal immortality. In an early work, he
seems to have thought that there is no resurrection of the body, but in his Essay on
the Resurrection, written late in his life, he endorsed the idea. He claimed that
resurrection takes place at roughly the time of the return of the Messiah but is not
permanent. Rather, it is followed by a second death, which only the “righteous”
survive. The form of their survival is as immortal souls, contemplating God.
Maimonides’
Guide to the Perplexed
was translated into Latin and widely read by
Christian Scholastics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was received
with awe and respect, especially by Dominicans, who referred to him simply as “the
Rabbi” or “Rabbi Moses.” It importantly influenced Aquinas. In it, Maimonides
claimed that there are four kinds of perfection that humans can acquire. The first,
and lowest, is property. The second is bodily perfection, including psychological
balance. The third is moral perfection. The fourth, and highest, is intellectual per-
fection, including “the possession of such notions which lead to true metaphysical
opinions as
regards God.” With this perfection, he said, humans achieve immortal-
ity and, unlike in the case of the other perfections, this last one “is exclusively yours;
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