True individual happiness, as al-Farabi sees it, thus turns out to be a peculiar blend of Aristotelian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic elements. It simultaneously embraces the idea of the individual felicity attained by the philosophers, the notion of a purification and, ultimately, deification of the human soul, and a theory of intellect which largely intertwines cosmic and epistemic dimensions. While the just-quoted passage from the Perfect State shows that, beyond the knowledge of certain things,