Orient- und Islamwissenschaft

Dr. Francesco Omar Zamboni

Francesco Omar Zamboni obtained his PhD in Philosophy in 2021 from the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa). His doctoral dissertation focused on Avicenna’s ontology (theory of existence) and aetiology (theory of causation), as well as on their reception in XI, XII, and XIII c. Islamic philosophy.
In 2021, as research fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici (Naples), he investigated the Islamic theories of resurrection in relation to ontology (the recreation of the non-existent) and philosophical anthropology (materialist theories of personhood and identity).
In 2022 and 2023, he worked as post-doctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). His research focused on general metaphysics in the post-Avicennian period, and more specifically on the theory of transcendental properties developed by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.
He is currently Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tübingen. His research focuses on Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s epistemology of metaphysics. He aims to develop an axiomatics (theory of principles) of Razi’s metaphysics.


Research interests

Medieval Islamic metaphysics (ontology, aetiology), epistemology (perception, reasoning, immediate knowledge, and theory of science), anthropology (materialist theories of personhood and identity).

List of publications

Monographs

Zamboni, F. O. (2024). At the Roots of Causality. Ontology and Aetiology from Avicenna to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Leiden-Boston: Brill.

Translations

Zamboni, F. O. (2021). Avicenna. Le indicazioni e gli avvertimenti. Rome: WriteUp Books. (this is a complete and annotated Italian translation of Avicenna’s Pointers and Admonitions)

Peer-reviewed articles and book chapters (selection)
  • Zamboni, F.O., Rezakhany, H. (2024). ‘Clearing the Heart. Rāzī and Reasoning’. Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 35: 255–284.
  • Zamboni, F.O. (2024). ‘Like Mending a Torn Fabric. Anthropology and Eschatology in Ibn al-Malāḥimī’. Journal of Islamic Philosophy 15/1: 30–65.
  • Zamboni, F.O. (2023). ‘Weak Discourses on People’s Lips: Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī against Representationalism and Conceptualism’. Nazariyat Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy 9/2: 69–112.
  • Zamboni, F. O. (2023). ‘Existence and the Problem of Aḥwāl: The Quiddity and Ontological Status of Existence in Avicenna and His Islamic Reception’. Oriens 51/3-4: 1–45.
  • Zamboni, F.O. (2023). ‘What Tips the Scales? Choice, Motivation, and the Status of the Will in Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’. 35–61 in M. Michalowska, R. Fedriga (eds.). Willing and Understanding: Late Medieval Debates on the Will, the Intellect, and Practical Knowledge. Leiden-Boston: Brill.
  • Zamboni, F. O. (2022). ‘Bringing Things Back from Nothingness: The Restoration of the Non-Existent before and after Avicenna’. Nazariyat Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy 8/1: 25-62.
  • Zamboni, F. O. (2020). ‘Is Existence One or Manifold? Avicenna and his Early Interpreters on the Modulation of Existence’. Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 30: 121-150
  • Zamboni, F. O. (2020). ‘Atomism and Islamic thought’. 198-215 in U. Zilioli (ed.). Atomism in Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Academics.