Gersonides on the Heavenly Bodies’ Relation to the Agent Intellect

This chapter examines the fourteenth century philosopher Levi ben Gerson’s (Gersonides) account of the Agent Intellect as it fits within his broader cosmology. For Gersonides, the Agent Intellect accounts for a wide range of phenomena—everything from the generation of living beings to the possibility of prophetic dreams—by acting as an intermediary between emanations from heavenly bodies and the variety of living and non-living beings on earth. Simultaneously, Gersonides is also committed to a cosmological model in which higher things, i.e., the movers of the planetary spheres, are ontologically prior to their effects. Gersonides’ cosmology results in a peculiar tension where, on one hand, the Agent Intellect is spoken of as using the entirety of the celestial realm as its instrument, while simultaneously holding that it is a product of the rest of the heavenly bodies.