Gersonides on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Agent Intellect

Abstract

In De anima 3. 5 Aristotle distinguished two aspects in the activity of intellection or knowing: one active, the other passive. His remarks are notoriously obscure, and they have occasioned an enormous exegetical literature from antiquity to our own day. Besides laying the foundations of an epistemological edifice that remained intact for many centuries, Aristotle also suggested that the active factor in knowing is eternal and immortal. Thus, he retained in some form Plato's belief that there is a link between knowledge and immortality. Several of the leading ancient and medieval interpreters of Aristotle developed this suggestion into a complex doctrine of immortality, the main thesis of which was the idea that human perfection consists in union or conjunction with the active power in knowledge. This essay intends to examine Levi ben Gerson's (Gersonides) critique of the theory of immortality as conjunction. We begin with the psychological presuppositions of the theory.