The Soul’s Ultimate Destination

Abstract

Chapter 2 investigates Pointers VIII, “On Joy and Happiness” (fī l-bahja wa-l-saʿāda). This chapter consists of five topics. The first presents Ibn Sīnā’s argument that intellectual pleasures are superior to bodily pleasures. The second topic builds on this by discussing the nature of pleasure and pain. This, in turn, requires explaining the nature of good and evil, perfection and imperfection, and the attainment of and desire for these. The third topic expands on this by discussing how the body impedes our awareness of pleasure and pain. In the fourth topic, Ibn Sīnā explains how the body’s enduring effects on the soul can lead to pain and torment in the afterlife, while souls that are adequately prepared will instead experience true happiness. It is here that he denies the possibility of transmigration of souls, while leaving open the possibility for certain souls, unprepared for the wholly incorporeal and intellectual nature of the afterlife, to be associated with a celestial body in order to experience a certain measure of imagined corporeal pleasure. The chapter concludes with the fifth topic, in which Ibn Sīnā ranks existent beings based on the level of joy they can experience.