Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy of Religion

Reassessing the Issue of God’s Personhood in Avicenna’s Philosophy: On the Attribution of Psychic Affections to the Divine

Document Type : Research Paper

Author
Student at the Faculty of Theology, University of Tehran
10.22059/jpht.2026.414552.1006205
Abstract
The issue of God’s personhood in contemporary philosophy of religion is often linked to the possibility of attributing psychic and emotional properties to the divine essence. In the common interpretation of Avicenna’s theology, his emphasis on the simplicity of the Necessary Existent, the negation of change, and the impossibility of divine passibility has often been understood in a way that renders any attribution of emotional properties to God incompatible. This article, by re-examining the concept of “psychic affections” within the framework of Avicenna’s philosophical psychology, seeks to reanalyze the relationship between these properties and the issue of God’s personhood. In this study, the concept of psychic affection and its distinction from the soul’s actions in Avicenna’s works are first analyzed, and then the criteria of personhood in contemporary philosophy of religion are compared with the metaphysical foundations of Avicenna’s theology. The results indicate that although Avicenna attributes concepts such as love, pleasure, and satisfaction to God, in his system these concepts are stripped of their human-like and affective meanings and are reinterpreted in a metaphysical framework. Accordingly, the attribution of such properties in Avicennian theology does not imply human-like personhood, but rather points to a kind of metaphysical individuality consistent with the simplicity and immutability of the Necessary Existent.
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