On Happiness, part A (1 of 2): The Arabic Tradition
SUPPLEMENT: OPTIONAL STUDY ON HAPPINESS
Lecture Class 5a of 5: Ultimate Human Happiness in the Arabic Tradition and in Thomas Aquinas
PART A: Three Thinkers of the Arabic Philosophical Tradition
Preview:
The philosophers of the classical rationalist tradition of philosophy in the lands of Islam were strongly influenced by teachings in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics. Following al-Farabi’s classification of religion as a subdiscipline under political science (practical science), they were critical of theological thinkers who did not realize that religion is an imitation of the truth of philosophy and science for the sake of the less learned in society. For al-Farabi (in most works) and Avicenna ultimate happiness is attained through the advancement of intellectual understanding on the part of an immaterial rational soul that is incorruptible in its essence. For al-Farabi this ontological status had to be earned by substantially transformative philosophical study and understanding with help from the Agent Intellect, while for Avicenna the human soul was understood to be per se rational and immaterial advancing in intellectual understanding through the assistance of the Agent Intellect. In contrast, for Averroes the human soul is embodied and mortal, though thanks to the Agent Intellect it is able to initiate and share in intellectual understanding. For all of these thinkers ultimate happiness comes about through the assistance of the Agent Intellect (first proposed by Aristotle in De Anima 3.5) and consists in the fulfillment of intellect which is the attainment of happiness. Reports of works long lost seem to indicate a change of mind on the part of al-Farabi who is reported to come to be skeptical about a conjoining with the Agent Intellect and the necessity and certainty of science that conjoining was thought to bring about. As for Averroes, careful analysis of Book 3, Comment 36 of his Long Commentary on the De Anima, indicates that he rejected the notion of Ibn Bajjah (largely derived from Alexander and al-Farabi) that the end and ultimate happiness consists in conjoining with and knowing the Agent Intellect and perhaps higher substances through a curious form of intellectual abstraction or some other sort of knowing. Rather, ultimate happiness for Averroes consists in the attainment of highest knowledge possible for an individual during a mortal lifetime through intellectual abstraction in the formation of knowledge of composite entities of the world and discursive reasoning, not through some non-natural or supernatural power of knowing. The thought of Averroes on this was largely misunderstood in the Latin tradition.
See Texts Link.
Readings:
(i) al-Farabi, Attainment of Happiness. Extract from al-Farabi Philosophy of Plato & Aristotle. Mahdi trans rev ed 2001. See Texts Link.
Avicenna on Happiness in Metaphysics Book 10 See Texts Link.
(iii) Averroes on ultimate happiness: selection of texts. See Texts Link.
Three video lectures:
(i) al-Farabi, The Attainment of Happiness:
(ii) Avicenna on Happiness in Metaphysics Book 10:
Averroes on Happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wIPlyGp7a8&feature=youtu.be
The foundations of the discussion of ultimate human happiness are found in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions grounded in the accounts of Plato in the Republic as well as other works and in the accounts of Aristotle in his Metaphysics Books 1 ch. 1-2 and 12.7-8 and in his Nicomachean Ethics, Book 10.7-8. For some thinkers of the the Greek tradition (Alexander and Themistius) translated into Arabic and the major thinkers of the Arabic tradition, another key text was the final sentence of De Anima 3.7, 431b17-19: “Whether or not it is possible for [the human mind] while not existing separate from spacial conditions to think anything that is separate, we must consider later.” This last text raised the issue in the tradition as to whether the ultimate human end or happiness as fulfillment is to attain knowledge of and to unite with the eternal separate substances.
(i) al-Farabi on Ultimate Happiness
In his Attainment of Happiness, al-Farabi distinguishes two kinds of happiness, that of worldly existence and that of the afterlife:
The human things through which nations and citizens of cities attain earthly happiness in this life and supreme happiness in the life beyond are of four kinds: theoretical virtues, deliberative virtues, moral virtues, and practical arts. p.13, #1
He then immediately turns to the theoretical sciences which have as their end knowledge for its own sake and not for some action (practical science) nor for making some thing (productive science), writing
Theoretical virtues consist in the sciences whose ultimate purpose is only to make the beings and what they contain intelligible with certainty. (p.13 #2)
And further the end is to know beings and ultimately the being in the first rank, “the first principle” which “is the divinity, and the principles that come after it.” (p.24, #19)
For this philosophy is the primary way to knowledge and the realization the most proper life in societies. But there is another way, that of religion:
Now when one acquires knowledge of the beings or receives instruction in them, if he perceives their ideas themselves with his intellect, and his assent to them is by means of certain demonstration, then the science that comprises these cognitions is philosophy. But if they are known by imagining them through similitudes that imitate them, and assent to what is imagined of them is caused by persuasive methods, then the ancients call what comprises these cognitions religion. And if those intelligibles themselves are adopted, and persuasive methods are used, then the religion comprising them is called popular, generally accepted, and external philosophy. Therefore, according to the ancients, religion is an imitation of philosophy. Both comprise the same subjects and both give an account of the ultimate principles of the beings. For both supply knowledge about the first principle and cause of the beings, and both give an account of the ultimate end for the sake of which man is made-that is, supreme happiness-and the ultimate end of everyone of the other beings. In everything of which philosophy gives an account based on intellectual perception or conception, religion gives an account based on imagination. In everything demonstrated by philosophy, religion employs persuasion. Philosophy gives an account of the ultimate principles (that is, the essence of the first principle and the essences of the incorporeal second principles:;), as they are perceived by the 41 intellect. Religion sets forth their images by means of similitudes of them taken from corporeal principles and imitates them by their likenesses among political offices. (Attainment of Happiness, pp.44-45, #55)
The sciences concerning beings are necessary for the proper structure of human society and are key to the formation of character. And quite like Plato he goes on to sort human beings according to their characters and abilities for knowledge. Following Plato on the importance of the leadership of the philosopher king in the Republic, al-Farabi speaks of the true legislator:
[I]t is evident that when one seeks to bring into actual existence the intelligibles of the things depending on the will supplied by practical philosophy, he ought to prescribe the conditions that render possible their actual existence. Once the conditions that render their actual existence possible are prescribed, the voluntary intelligibles are embodied in laws. Therefore the legislator is he who, by the excellence of his deliberation, has the capacity to find the conditions required for the actual existence of voluntary intelligibles in such a way as to lead to the achievement of supreme happiness. It is also evident that only after perceiving them by his intellect should the legislator seek to discover their conditions, and he cannot find their conditions that enable him to guide others toward supreme happiness without having perceived supreme happiness with his intellect. (Attainment of Happiness, p.45, #56)
The account of al-Farabi in this work gives first place to philosophy in a fully rationalist way drawing on the Republic of Plato and also the works of rhetoric and the sciences of Aristotle. Religion is relegated to a position under the practical science of politics since it is about the use of images, representations and imitations of philosophy in a way suitable to persuade to right action those people who are unable to know it through philosophy and the sciences. It is in this way that happiness is realize in the individual who can master the theoretical sciences and in the society that can be guided to what is right and true by a proper legislator. The true philosophy is philosopher, king and imam.
We have already seen in an earlier that al-Farabi in his Letter on the Intellect reasoned that through intellect select human beings could accumulate knowledge leading to a transformation in substance from that of a generable and perishable entity to an imperishable immaterial entity eternal a parte post. There he wrote,
24. Next, [the Active Intellect] aims to bring [those forms in matter] closer and closer to the immaterial forms until the acquired intellect comes to be, at which point the substance of man, or man by virtue of what constitutes his substance, becomes the closest thing possible to the Active Intellect. This is the ultimate happiness and the afterlife, which is that the ultimate thing by which man becomes a substance comes about for him, and he attains his final perfection, which is that the final thing through which he becomes a substance performs the final action by virtue of which he becomes a substance. This is what is meant by the afterlife. When [the acquired intellect] does not act on some other thing outside of itself, where to act is to cause itself to exist, then it itself, its action, and the fact that it acts are one and the same thing. At that point, it has absolutely no need for the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist, and it has absolutely no need in any of its actions to seek the help of a faculty of a soul in a body, or to use any corporeal instrument whatsoever. The least perfect existence belonging to it is when it requires the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist as an existent, and when it is a form in a body or a corporeal matter as a whole. Above that, it does not require the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist, but in order to perform its actions, or many of them, it needs to use a corporeal faculty and to seek the aid of its action, for example, sensory perception and imagination. Its most perfect existence, though, is to reach the state we just mentioned. (CAP, p.76)
That is, highest happiness is to become a separate immaterial substance through knowledge attainment and to reach the level of the Agent / Active Intellect with one’s natural human powers and the assistance of the Agent / Active Intellect.
(ii) Avicenna on Ultimate Happiness
It seems that in all parts of philosophy Avicenna rethought the Aristotelian tradition which much more clarity and systematization than we find in the works of Aristotle. In the matter of ultimate happiness Avicenna seems largely to follow al-Farabi but in many respects is account deeper and much more thoroughly grounded and even vivid. In the case of Avicenna, he makes it clear that he accepts Islamic religion and with his philosophical analysis he explains its practices and doctrines as required for the fulfillment of human beings. That is, he appears to provide in philosophy a justification of Islamic practices in some detail. Nevertheless, his view is that philosophy has some priority insofar as it is the clearest apprehension of the truth, a truth conveyed to lesser minds through religious symbols and similitudes.
One of his major accounts which was available in Latin translation is found in Book 10 of his Metaphysics. But in Book 9 ch. 7 he makes a very clear statement of his view of the return of the rational soul to the Agent Intellect:
Then, [secondly, as regards “the return,”] there is that which is apprehended by reason and demonstrative syllogism; this, prophethood has confirmed. It consists of the happiness and misery established by [syllogistic argument] and which belong to souls, even though [our] estimative powers fall short of conceiving them now, due to causes which we will be explaining. The metaphysical philosophers’ desire for attaining this [latter] happiness is greater than their desire for bodily happiness Indeed, it is as though they pay no heed [to bodily happiness,] even if it is granted them. They do not deem it great beside this happiness, which consists in drawing close to the First Truth and which we will be describing shortly. Let us, then, make known the state of this happiness and the misery that is its opposite. For [the description of] bodily [happiness and misery] has been completely given in the religious law. (Marmura tr, p. 348)
If [on the other hand] the rational faculty had brought the soul to a degree of perfection by which it is enabled, when it separates from the body, to achieve that complete perfection that is [appropriate] for it to attain, its example would then be that of the benumbed person made to taste the most delicious taste and exposed to the most appetizing state but [who] does not feel [this], but [who thereafter] has the numbness removed, experiencing [as a result] momentous pleasure all at once. This pleasure would not be of the same genus as sensory and animal pleasure, but a pleasure that is similar to the good state that belongs to the pure, living, [celestial] substances. It is more elevated than every [other] pleasure, and more noble. (Marmura, tr. p. 352)
If [on the other hand] the rational faculty had brought the soul to a degree of perfection by which it is enabled, when it separates from the body, to achieve that complete perfection that is [appropriate] for it to attain, its example would then be that of the benumbed person made to taste the most delicious taste and exposed to the most appetizing state but [who] does not feel [this], but [who thereafter] has the numbness removed, experiencing [as a result] momentous pleasure all at once. This pleasure would not be of the same genus as sensory and animal pleasure, but a pleasure that is similar to the good state that belongs to the pure, living, [celestial] substances. It is more elevated than every [other] pleasure, and more noble. This, then, is happiness . . . .” (Marmura, tr. p. 352)
I will not go through the text of Book 10 in detail here since it is covered in detail in the video on this topic at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOOR8eSJBbs&feature=youtu.be.
(iii) Averroes on Ultimate Happiness
Two issues:
1. Post mortem existence of the human soul
In all of there of his commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima Averroes follows the tradition and asserts the existence of the separate Agent Intellect as essential to the activities of intellectual abstraction and human knowing. Hence, the concern now is with the status of the material intellect and individual humans. In the Short Commentary Averroes crafts an intriguing account whereby what is called ‘material intellect’ is in fact a disposition of the human imaginative power located in the brain. When the Agent Intellect becomes a formal actuating cause of intellectual understanding (“form for us” in terminology borrow from Alexander of Aphrodisias), it disposes images derived from the senses and formed in the imagination to be representative of an intelligible. However, these intelligibles perish with the natural corruption of the power of imagination based in the brain, that is, at human death. In his later Middle Commentary Averroes rejects his earlier account and instead asserts that intelligibles abstracted from individual sensory experience by the Agent Intellect cannot be received into a bodily power since this would particularize them or rob them of their universality. The subject must be a true intellect and truly immaterial, he reasons. The material intellect, on this account, is an intellect as an immaterial receptive power attached to and individuated by the embodied particular human soul to which it belongs. This account entails that, when the human perishes as composite of body and soul, so too does is its power of receptive intellect, the material intellect. Neither of these two commentaries on De Anima provides philosophical reasoning or statements in support the persistent existence of an individual soul or intellect after death. In his final account in the Long Commentary on the De Anima Averroes, sets out a more complex account of the separately existing Agent Intellect and Material Intellect embracing Aristotle’s suggest at De Anima 2.2 that “intellect and the theoretical [thinking] power . . . seem to be a different kind of soul” which “alone can be separate, in the way that the eternal [is separate] from the perishable.” (De Anima 2.2, 413b25-27. Cf. LCDA 3.21 {160-161}; tr. 128.) While he asserts individual humans to have a special brain power of cogitation as “a kind of reason” (aliqua ratio) (LCDA 3.20 {449}, tr. 359) that works with the separate intellects in intellectual abstraction, this is a “passible intellect” which perishes with the body. The intrinsic human power called the “theoretical intellect” is first actualized by the Agent Intellect and then realized in its fullness by the Material Intellect, since the abstracted intelligibles in act come to exist in the Material Intellect as imperishable intelligibles and in the human power as perishable intelligibles. This theoretical intellect present in human beings is “generable and corruptible” (LCDA 3.5 {406}, tr 322; {412}, tr 329) as are the subjects in which it is present. However, the theoretical intelligibles in the Material Intellect are eternal as is the human species, while individual humans are mortal. It seems, then, that ultimate human happiness for Averroes can only be had by human beings in the present life.
(See R.C. Taylor, “Personal Immortality in Averroes’ Mature Philosophical Psychology,” Documenti e Studi sulla Traduzione Filosofica Medievale 9 (1998) pp. 87-110; and “Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul,” Muslim World 102 (2012) 580-596.)
2. The attainment of happiness. Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle, Book 3, Comment 36.
For Averroes, like his predecessors of the tradition, ultimate human happiness consists in the highest possible intellectual fulfillment, something common to all three commentaries on De Anima. But for present purposes I will focus on the account in his LCDA, Book 3, Comment 36, where he directly addresses the issue of ultimate human happiness and the accounts of predecessors Alexander, Themistius, al-Farabi, and Ibn Bajja. The view of Avicenna may be on his mind but he gives it no direct discussion. His main foci of concern are two: the foundational (albeit conflicting) accounts of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the more proximate teachings of Ibn Bajjah who relies on Alexander and also al-Farabi (who himself provides two conflicting accounts).
This section of the LCDA is particularly challenging because of Averroes’s argumentative strategy of engagement with the texts of these thinkers, sometimes seemingly assenting to portions of their views but most often finding reason to dismiss them. All had in some way stated directly or implied that ultimate human happiness consists in some kind of an intellectual conjoining with separate eternal intelligence.
Divisio textus. The following is a schematic division of LCDA Book 3, Comment 36.
1. Statement of the Investigation and textual difficulties (3.36.6-47) {480-481} pp. 382-383.
1.1. Statement of the investigation (3.36.6-14) {480} p. 382.
Intellectual abstraction and understanding involve both noetic identity of knower and known and also that the receptive subject of the intellectual abstraction itself be an intellect. Further, can the intellect in us understand intellect which is itself immaterial and separate?
1.2. Textual Difficulties and Their Implications (3.36.14-47) {480-481} pp. 382-383.
1.2.1. The text of the Lemma: Can intellect in us understand things separate from matter and magnitude by itself? (3.36.14-15) {480} p. 382.
1.2.2. The text of the alternate Arabic translation (3.36.21-24) {408} p. 382.
1.2.3. The different questions these texts present (3.36.24-33) {480} pp. 382-383.
Can intellect in us understand things separate from matter and magnitude by itself?
Can intellect understand forms through a uniting with us?
1.2.4. The investigation determined, a suggestion of correction to the text of the lemma
(3.36.34-47) {480-481} p. 383.
Can we ourselves understand the intellect through which understanding takes place?
2. The refutation of Ibn Bajjah in the context of analyses of predecessors (3.36.48-.459) {481-495} pp. 383-395.
2.1. Whether humans ‘have a nature for understanding separate things ultimately’
(3.36.48-80) {481-482} pp. 383-384.
The impossibility of the Farabian notion that a generable and corruptible entity can transform into an eternal and incorruptible entity. If the material intellect is generated and corruptible, it seems we cannot conjoin with separate intellect.
2.2. Analyses of predecessors (3.36.81-459) {481-495} pp. 383-395.
2.2.1. Alexander (3.36.81-220) {481-487} pp. 383-388.
2.2.2. Ibn Bajjah (3.36.221-459) {487-495} pp. 388-395.
2.2.2.1. Preliminaries re. Ibn Bajjah (3.36.221-234) {487} pp. 388-389.
2.2.2.2. Themistius & Alexander (3.36.235-321) {487-490} pp. 389-391.
2.2.2.3. Return to Ibn Bajjah (3.36.322-459) {490-495} pp. 391-395.
3. Averroes’s own account of knowing separate intellectual substances (3.36.460-566) {495-502} pp. 395-501.
3.1. Preliminary principle: Two activities: understanding and extracting intelligibles (3.36.460- 504) {495-496} pp. 395-396.
3.2. Intellect in us is composed with the agent intellect (3.36.505-558) {496-499} pp. 396-398.
3.2.1. Intellect in us (3.36.505-526) {496-498} pp. 396-397.
There are two types of intelligibles, natural and voluntary.
3.2.2. The generation of the theoretical intellect and the theoretical intelligibles
(3.36.527-558) {497-499} p. 397-398.
Clarifying the metaphors of matter and instrument used in characterizing the Agent
Intellect and the human intellect
Problems for those who hold the material intellect to be generable and corruptible.
3.3. The eternal material intellect (3.36.559-616) {499} p. 398.
3.3.1. Explaining the eternal material intellect, the eternal agent intellect and the human intellect in a positive disposition (intellectus in habitu). (3.36.559-577) {499} p. 398.
3.3.2. Explanation of the conjoining of the agent intellect with us; reasoning regarding what is proper to us. (3.36.578-616) {499-500} p. 398-399.
3.4. The exclamation of Themistius on the marvelous nature of human knowing (3.36.617-622){501} p. 399.
3.5. Conclusion in favor of Alexander that conjoining is the cause for the end which is human intellectual understanding and against Ibn Bajjah that intellection is the cause for the end which is conjoining with separate substances. (3.36.623-629) {501} p. 400.
3.6. Concluding remarks. (3.36.630-665) {501-502} pp. 400-401.
Aside from the clarification of the textual problems, the major purpose of Averroes’s discussion in this Comment is to quash the notion that ultimate happiness consists knowing separate substances through intellectual abstraction or some special or perhaps divine power of insight providing humans with a direct understanding or noetic vision of separate substances. The target of his critical analysis is Ibn Bajjah who developed from Alexander of Aphrodisias and some of the writings of al-Farabi the notion that the end and purpose of human efforts at intellectual understanding is a conjunction or uniting with the separate Agent Intellect where all the forms are contained.
One of the key arguments made by Averroes against Ibn Bajjah is that he has confused two different meanings of the term for conceptualization. The word is ymaginari in Latin and taṣawwur in Arabic. The basic meaning is to form an image but in the context of intellectual understanding it means to form a concept and to understand something. However, Ibn Bajjah has it that, because humans can by abstraction form concepts of material things of sensory experience and understand them, that same power can be used to apprehend and to form higher and higher forms or intelligibles of immaterial notions and ultimately lead to the forms in the Agent Intellect. This yields a conjoining with the Agent Intellect and apprehension separate substances as ultimate human fulfillment and happiness. Though the words are the same and the general notion of concept formation is present, Averroes rejects the idea that the embodied power of abstraction of concepts from material things can properly be employed for a direct intellectual apprehension of separate substances. In the course of his discussion Averroes also rejects the notion that knowledge can be given to the human soul simply as an effect of the causality of the Agent Intellect. Rather, he clearly insists that the attainment of knowledge by human beings must be carried out by the human being through powers proper to it. Hence, he insists that the Agent Intellect come to become an actuating form for the human being by conjoining with it to carry out intellectual abstraction. ( LCDA 3.36.611-616; {500}; tr. 399. Also see R.C. Taylor, “Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in the Soul according to Aquinas and Averroes,” in The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul. Reflections on Platonic Psychology in the Monotheistic Religions, Maha El-Kaisy Friemuth and John M. Dillon, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 187-220.)
Averroes himself rejects the notion that ultimate happiness consists in human knowing of all the separate substances through a special power of that sort. Rather, ultimate happiness for human beings consists in the greatest possible intellectual fulfillment and perfection, something that comes about thanks to intellectual abstraction and the formation of knowledge of the natures of things of the sensible world through a conjoining with the Material Intellect and the Agent Intellect, and the human reasoning consequent on that. It does not consist in some other higher order of human knowing or contemplation of all separate substances in some supra natural fashion, neither through a conjoining with the Agent Intellect yielding a transcendent apprehension of the higher intellects and God, pace Aquinas. Rather, for Averroes highest human fulfillment lies in the highest demonstrative theoretical, that is, scientific, knowledge achievable by perishable human beings during their natural finite bodily lifetimes. That knowledge is attained through the development of natural science, that is, physics and its subdisciplines such as psychology, which leads to the assertion of a science of metaphysics. In this science of metaphysics both the first principle and cause of all as well as all created beings are studied as are the principles of the science. In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle Averroes speaks of a shari‘ah or religion of the philosophers saying that it is the study of God and his creation in the science of metaphysics and that this constitutes the most perfect form of worship. (Averroès Tafsīr mā bac d aṭ-Ṭabīcat, M. Bouyges, ed., 3 vol. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1938-1952, vol. 1, p.10. For an analysis, see Taylor, “Averroes on the Sharîʿah,” 2012.)
Averroes begins his account writing,
[T]he intellect existing in us has two activities insofar as it is ascribed to us, one of the genus of affection, namely, understanding, and the other of the genus of activity, namely, to extract forms and denude them of matters, which is nothing but making them intelligible in act after they were such in potency. (LCDA 3.36, {495}, p.395.)
There is, then, a conjoining of the human knower with separate intellectual substance, namely, the separate Agent Intellect, which makes theoretical knowledge actual through intellectual abstraction. When that activity is complete in every way, the Agent Intellect is conjoined to us wholly in a fulfillment like that of the actualization of the intellect in a positive disposition or theoretical intellect in relation to the potentially knowing human.
With what appears to be a clear rejection of the notion that humans can know other separate substances somehow through the Agent Intellect or Material Intellect, Averroes emphasizes that humans understand in a way proper to themselves, writing
it is necessary that a human being understand all the intelligibles through the intellect proper to him and that he carry out the activity proper to him in regard to all beings, just as he understands by his proper intellection all the beings through the intellect which is in a positive disposition when it has been conjoined with forms of the imagination. (LCDA 3.36.611-616; {500}; tr. 399)
Three paragraphs below he adds,
“In virtue of this the question of how it understands what has long existed with a new intellection is solved. It is also evident from this why we are not conjoined with this intellect in the beginning but rather in the end. For so long as the form is in us in potency, it will be conjoined with us in potency and for so long as it is conjoined with us in potency, it is impossible for us to understand something in virtue of that. But when the form is made to exist in act in us (this will be in its conjoining in act), then we will understand all the things which we understand in virtue of [this intellect] and we will bring about the activity proper to ourselves in virtue of it.” 3.36.630-639; {501}; tr. 400.
Were the individual human being not involved in the activity of abstraction, the Agent Intellect would merely be a separate substance acting upon the human being. The activity of abstraction would not be properly of the human being but rather would be one of the Agent Intellect alone as an efficient cause. But we strive for knowledge through our own efforts and our own will such that when the conjoining takes place with the Agent Intellect coming to be “in the soul” and “form for us,” it is we together with the Agent Intellect acting in the realization of knowledge that we experience as science.
When that conjoining has not been asserted, there will be no difference between relating it to a human being and relating it to all beings except in virtue of the diversity of its activity in them. In this way its relation to a human being will be only the relation of the agent to the human being, not a relation of form, and the question of al-Farabi which he voiced in his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics arises. For assurance of the possibility of conjoining of the intellect with us lies in explaining that its relation to a human being is a relation of form and agent, not a relation of agent alone. (LCDA 3.36.655-664; {501}; tr. 401.)
For Averroes it is through human conjoining with the separate Agent and Material Intellects that transitory mortal humans are able to attain the happiness that consists in the highest form of knowing available to them. It is this which he celebrates when he writes,
In this way, therefore, human beings, as Themistius says, are made like unto God in that he is all beings in a way and one who knows these in a way, for beings are nothing but his knowledge and the cause of beings is nothing but his knowledge. How marvelous is that order and how mysterious is that mode of being! (LCDA 3.36.617-622; {501}, tr. p. 399. CF. Themistius, Paraphrase of the De Anima Greek 1899, 99.23-28; English 1006, 124-125. Arabic 180.6-10.)
Quite to the contrary of Ibn Bajjah’s view that human knowledge is the means to the ultimate end of happiness and fulfillment in conjunction with separate intellect, Averroes held conjunction with the Agent and Material Intellects to be the means to ultimate human fulfillment an happiness in the fullness of human intellectual knowledge.
In this way will be established the opinion of Alexander, according to which he says that to understand separate things comes about through conjoining of that intellect with us. This is not because understanding is found to exist in us after previously it did not, which is the cause in the conjoining of the agent intellect with us, as Ibn Bajjah intended, but rather [it is because] the cause of intellection is conjoining, not the contrary. (LCDA, 3.36.623-629; {501}; tr. p. 400. For discussion of this in Ibn Bajjah, see LCDA intro xxv-xx.vi)
As we have seen, in LCDA 3.36 Averroes was primarily concerned to set aside the account of Ibn Bajjah while also providing an account of how it developed from writings of Alexander and al-Farabi. Alexander had set out different understandings of the function the Agent Intellect in relation to the human soul. In his Book on the Soul he had stressed the role of the Agent Intellect as conjoining with the human power of soul as “form for us” to account for human intellectual knowledge garnered in a collaborative way to be enjoyed until the death of the perishable human being. In his On the Intellect he had stressed not only abstraction of form but also a conjoining which would lead to an ultimate transcendent fulfillment in knowing separate things. Like Alexander, al-Farabi crafted an account of the latter sort involving intellectual abstraction of intelligibles from material particulars and a transformative ascent to intellectual understanding of separate things in his Letter on the Intellect. But al-Farabi later questioned how such knowledge of separate substances or things could be possible and how a perishable human being could become an immaterial substance eternal a parte post. It is clear that Averroes saw severe difficulties initiated by the accounts of Alexander that manifested themselves in al-Farabi. He then turned to Ibn Bajjah who seemingly found a way to construct from those sources a new account. For Ibn Bajjah, the human material intellect is a disposition of the forms of the imagination, a power that is perishable. But he reasoned that through the use of the techniques of abstraction a rational being could rise higher and higher by repeatedly abstracting quiddities until it reached a quiddity which could not be abstracted. This quiddity is the quiddity in the Agent Intellect and the use of rational knowledge in the activities of abstractions through many levels leads to the apprehension of the ultimate quiddity and conjunction with the Agent Intellect itself with possibly the opportunity through that conjunction rise to the apprehension of even more transcendent entities. As Averroes points out, for Ibn Bajjah ultimate happiness was to be found in using knowledge for the attainment of conjunction. This, however, Averroes rejected. Instead, he asserted that conjunction with the Agent Intellect and a uniting with the Material Intellect were tools used by the human soul in the formation of its intellect in a positive disposition (intellectus in habitu) or theoretical intellect with knowledge of abstracted intelligibles in act. This achievement of knowledge for Averroes is ultimate happiness for a perishable human being. From this standpoint, it is now easy to see his argumentative strategy in LCDA 3.36 was primarily focused on the rejection of the reasoning of Ibn Bajjah and the denial of the notion of the human being’s ability to become an intellect and to achieve ultimate fulfillment in a noetic conjunction with separate substance(s).