“Aspects and Contexts of Desire in Medieval Arabic Philosophy: The Desire for God in Avicenna's Metaphysics”, in Images of Desire in the Mediterranean World, ed. A. Paravicini Bagliani, P. Silanos, SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo, Firenze 2024, pp. 53-85

The paper examines one specific aspect of Avicenna's (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037) treatment of desire in his magnum opus of philosophy, namely the desire for God as it is framed in the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things) of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ (Book of Cure/Healing), the account of metaphysics placed at the end of Avicenna famous and influential encyclopedia of philosophy. The perspective of analysis is necessarily "transversal", since the topic of the desire for God is not dealt with ex professo in any specific place of the Ilāhiyyāt, but emerges in various parts of it, characterizing each of its main structural components (epistemology of metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, philosophical theology, eschatology). Thus, the Avicennian doctrine of the desire for God expounded in the Ilāhiyyāt not only provides a multifaceted account of the theme, but also allows to appreciate the multilayered structure of Avicenna's work. Some key texts of these different frameworks evidence a subtle gradation, according to which there is a desire for God that characterizes all things other than God, a desire for God that is specific of the movers of celestial bodies, and a properly human desire for God: each of these desires is designated by specific terminology and falls besides the exclusively divine propension that God has for Himself, which, properly speaking, cannot be considered a desire. In this way, the presence or absence of desire for God determines in Avicenna’s universe the same bifurcation between the non-divine realm of reality, on the one hand, and God Himself, on the other, that elsewhere Avicenna obtains by means of other pairs of concepts, like “relative necessity” vs. “absolute necessity”, or “existence mixed with essence” vs. “pure existence”.