The Pursuit of Happiness in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Thought

The articles in this volume explore the teachings on happiness by a range of thinkers from antiquity through Spinoza, most of whom held human happiness to comprise intellectual knowledge of that which is Good in itself, namely God. These thinkers were from Greek pagan, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian backgrounds and wrote their works in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin. Still, they shared similar philosophical views of what constitutes the Highest Good, and of the intellectual activities to be undertaken in pursuit of that Good. Yet, they differed, often greatly, in the role they assigned to deeds and practical activities in the pursuit of this happiness. These differences were, at times, not only along religious lines, but also along political and ethical lines. Other differences treated the relationship between the body and intellectual happiness and the various ways in which bodily health and well-being can contribute to intellectual health and true happiness.

Introduction — Yehuda Halper and Resianne Fontaine

Happiness Without Sense-Perception: From Plotinus to the visio beatifica, East and West — Cristina D’Ancona

Happiness in Jewish-Hellenistic and Rabbinic Thought — Giuseppe Veltri

Philosophical Terms for ‘Happiness’ in Languages of Culture in Medieval Near, Middle, and Far East — Mauro Zonta

Alfarabi on Categories of Existence and Politics — Charles E. Butterworth

Alfarabi’s Directing Attention to the Way of Happiness or the Way out of the Cave — Thérèse-Anne Druart

Light, Exhilarants, and Healing the Spirit: Some Observations on Avicenna’s al-Adwiya al-Qalbiyya (Cardiac Drugs) — Y. Tzvi Langermann

On the Certainty of Traditio — Hannah Kasher and Ariel Malachi

From Tranquility to Extra Effort: Some Notes on the Introduction and Conclusion of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed — Dong Xiuyuan

Maimonides on Joseph Ibn Jābir’s Ultimate Happiness — Charles Manekin

‘Shun Evil and Do Good’: The Problem of Evil According to Maimonides’ Commentators on Guide, III. 8–12 — Resianne Fontaine

Happiness, Eros, and the Active Intellect: Understanding Erotic Desire in Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ in light of the Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics — Yehuda Halper

‘…donc le bonheur ne réside pas dans le jeu’: Quelques brèves remarques sur le Commentaire moyen d’Averroès à l’Éthique à Nicomaque, X 6 — Frédérique Woerther

Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Theology of Prayer — Binyamin Abrahamov

Meaning Beyond Defining: Averroes’s Dispositio in Thomas Aquinas’s Account of Heavenly Beatitude — Katja Krause

How to ‘Win the Fulfillment of the Best Life Set by the Gods’: Questions Addressed to Plato by Gersonides — Ruth Glasner

Courage and Death: Aristotle, Aquinas and Joseph b. Shem-Ṭob — Chaim M. Neria

Hasdai Crescas’s Use of the Term ‘Happiness’ — Warren Zev Harvey

Happiness in Life and after Death in Late Medieval Byzantine Jewish Thought — Dov Schwartz

Spinoza and Some of His Medieval Philosophers on the Summum Bonum — Yitzhak Melamed

The Pure Young Men: Chastity, Euripides, and the Madrasas of Pakistan — John Walbridge

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Bibliography of the Writings of Steven Harvey

Index of Names

Index of Passages Cited