  In their idea of the active intellect, the Islamic philosophical tradition—and Maimonides in its wake—finds not only the grounding mechanism for human knowledge and prophecy, but for immortality as well. In the context of Aristotle's De Anima 3.5 remarks about an eternal cosmic principle which is the perfected reality of the human intellect set free from its body, various traditions of Islamic philosophy explain immortality in terms of a person's truest nature (viz. his intellect) living on eternally in (or, as) the reality of active intellect. Keeping in mind that there are important differences which arise on questions of individual, or personal, immortality between various Islamic thinkers (Avicenna upholds a sense of individualization after death in contrast to Averroes; see e.g. Pines 1963, cii-ciii; Stroumsa 2009, 181), and leaving debates over Maimonides' own exact position on this question aside (Pines and Stroumsa identify Maimonides’ position as agreeing with Averroes on this matter; see Pines 1963, cii; Stroumsa 2009, 181), we can summarily say that Maimonides follows in the spirit of understanding the afterlife in terms of the human intellect's relationship—individual or otherwise—to the active intellect. In effect, the afterlife is here understood as the human intellect's ultimate return to and joining with the cosmic active intellect, a set of ideas pulled directly from his Islamic philosophical context. 