The Implications of Avicenna's Conception of the Soul for his Conception of the Survival

In this paper I will show that Avicenna considers the bodily resurrection as a non-reasonable doctrine, which cannot be proved and can only be accepted through religious narrations which are eventually proved by reason. Avicenna, of course, maintains that the spiritual resurrection can be proved by reason. He takes the essence of the soul to be the intellect as an immaterial entity. Since the intellectual faculty is immaterial and survives the death of the body, there might be a philosophical account for its pleasures and pains. Thus the spiritual resurrection consists in the pleasures and pains of the intellect, which arise from the person's virtues and vices. But given that the vegetative and animative faculties are inside the body, they are destroyed after the separation of the soul from the body, and so its pleasures and pains cannot be philosophically accounted for. Thus it is impossible to prove the bodily resurrection by reason. It seems to me that this intellectual modesty is much better than attempts to prove the bodily resurrection through reason.