| Summary: | This study examines a number of different answers to the question: where does Avicenna demonstrate the existence of God within the <jats:italic>Metaphysics of the Healing</jats:italic>? Many interpreters have contended that there is an argument for God's existence in <jats:italic>Metaphysics of the Healing</jats:italic> I.6–7. In this study I show that such views are incorrect and that the only argument for God's existence in the <jats:italic>Metaphysics of the Healing</jats:italic> is found in VIII.1–3. My own interpretation relies upon a careful consideration of the scientific order and first principles of the <jats:italic>Metaphysics of the Healing</jats:italic>, paying attention to Avicenna's own explicit statements concerning the goals and intentions of different books and chapters, and a close analysis of the structure of the different arguments found in the relevant texts of the <jats:italic>Metaphysics of the Healing</jats:italic>. I conclude that Avicenna's explicit goal in I.6–7 is to establish the properties that belong to necessary existence and possible existence, which consists, not in a demonstration of God's existence, but in a dialectical treatment of the first principles of metaphysics.
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