“The Metaphysical Proof of Prophecy in Avicenna”, in Prophecy and Prophets in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Palazzo, A. Rodolfi (proceedings of the Convegno di Studi Il profeta e la profezia tra XI e XIV secolo, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 10-11 October 2019, org. A. Rodolfi), SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze 2020, pp. 39-75

Avicenna’s doctrine of prophecy has a “systemic” dimension, since Avicenna deals with this central event of Islam in various disciplines and parts of his works: in psychology (theory of perception, doctrine of locomotion, and noetics), as to its cognitive and operational aspects, and in the three branches of practical philosophy, because of the prophetic foundation of ethical, economical, and political conduct. A further account of prophecy interconnects all these diverse and scattered treatments: it is its discussion in metaphysics, the highest discipline of the system, which conveys the proof of the necessary existence of prophecy. Metaphysics is deputed to provide this proof since it takes “existent qua existent” as its subject-matter and, by considering restricted areas of the scope of “existent”, it grounds the epistemological principles of all the other disciplines. To document at its best the dependence of the accounts of prophecy in psychology and practical philosophy on the metaphysical discussion of it, the present article examines the doctrine of prophecy in Avicenna’s philosophical magnum opus Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of the Cure/Healing), with particular regard to its psychology (Kitāb al-Nafs, Book of the Soul), metaphysics (Ilāhiyyāt, Science of the divine things), and practical philosophy (the appendix on this subject in the last two chapters of the Ilāhiyyāt).