 Across al-Farabi’s various writings, it remains unclear whether this stage of ultimate felicity can already be reached during one’s lifetime, when the soul is still linked with the human body, or only in the hereafter, once the soul has separated from the body due to this latter’s  death.[9]  Still, in striking contrast to Islamic teachings, al-Farabi is convinced that the afterlife is exclusively psychic or rather intellectual. In his thought there is no room for corporeal resurrection. Instead, the felicity of the hereafter, according to him, means purely intellectual pleasures, a state, however, which requires preparation during one’s lifetime, a state, moreover, which allows for individual differences. In function of the excellence an individual has achieved during her life, the felicity of her afterlife will be greater or lesser. This excellence now, on al-Farabi’s account, can be measured against a number of ‘natural duties’, prerequisite for the attainment of happiness, but differentiated in accordance with the individual citizens’ natural endowments: