Summary 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. TABLE OF CONTENTS 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 Jabir'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 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-'Arabi'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-Tob - 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 *** Bibliography of the Writings of Steven Harvey Index of Names Index of Passages Cited