Good, Evil, and Holistic Purposivism: Avicenna’s Providential God Reconsidered

Abstract

This article develops an alternative reading of Avicenna’s conception of providence. I first examine whether he affirms the traditional theistic attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence that ground the standard view of providence, arguing that he implicitly denies them and thus renders his argument in Ilāhīyyāt IX.6 non-theodical. I then offer a positive account, proposing that Avicenna advances an ananthropocentric model of providence, which I call “holistic purposivism,” according to which the good of the whole determines the good of each part, making evil relative and eliminating absolute evil in an optimally ordered world.