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Ghazali says:

We say that when the Muslims understood that the world was created through the will of God, they proved His knowledge from His will, then His life from His will and His knowledge together, ‘ then from His life, according to the principle that every living being knows itself, they proved that He too must know His own essence, since He is alive. And this is a rational procedure of extreme force. For you philosophers, however, since you deny the divine will and the world’s coming into existence, and since you affirm that what proceeds from Him proceeds in a necessary and natural sequence, why should it be impossible that His essence should be of such a nature that only the first effect proceeded from it, and that then the second effect followed the first till the whole order of existents was completed, but, notwithstanding this, the First would not know itself, just as neither fire from which heat proceeds, nor the sun from which light proceeds, know themselves or anything else? For only that which knows itself knows what proceeds from itself, and therefore knows other things besides itself. And we have already shown that, according to the theory of the philosophers the First does not know other things, and we have forced those who do not agree with them on this point to acknowledge this consequence which follows from their assumption. And if it does not know others, it is not absurd to suppose that it does not know its own self.

If they say: ‘Everyone who does not know himself is dead, and how could the First be dead? ‘-we answer: ‘This is indeed a conclusion which follows from your theory, since there is no difference between you and those who say that every one who does not act through will, power and choice, who neither hears nor sees, is dead, and he who does not know other things is dead. And if it is possible that the First is destitute of all these attributes, what need has it of knowing itself? ‘ And if they return to the doctrine that everything which is free from matter is intellect by itself and therefore thinks itself, we have shown that this is an arbitrary judgement without any proof.

And if they say: ‘The proof is that what is existent is divided into what is alive and what is dead, and what is alive is prior and superior to what is dead, and the First is prior and superior: therefore let it be alive; and every living being knows itself, since it is impossible that the living should be amongst its effects and should not itself be alive’, we answer: ‘All this is pure presumption, for we affirm that it is not impossible that that which knows itself should follow from that which does not, either through many intermediaries or without mediation. And if the reason for its impossibility is that in that case the effect would be superior to the cause, well, it is not impossible that the effect should be superior to the cause, for the superiority of the cause to the effect is not a fundamental principle. Further, how can you refute the view that its superiority might consist not in its knowledge but in the fact that the existence of the universe is a consequence of its essence? For the proof is that, whereas the First neither sees nor hears, there are many other beings who know other things than themselves and who do see and hear. ‘

And if it were said, ‘Existents are divided into the seeing and the blind, the knowing and the ignorant’, we answer: ‘Well, let the seeing then be superior and let the First see and have knowledge of things!” But the philosophers deny this, and say that its excellence does not consist in seeing and knowing things, but in not being in need of sight and knowledge and being the essence from which there proceeds the universe in which the knowing and the seeing beings exist. And in the same way it may be said that this essence does not possess excellence because it has knowledge itself, but because it is the principle of essences which possess knowledge, and this is an excellence which is peculiar to it.

The philosophers are therefore forced to deny also that the First knows itself, for nothing proves such a knowledge but will, and nothing proves will except the temporal beginning of the world, and if this principle is destroyed, all these things are destroyed which are accepted through the speculation of the mind alone. For, they do not possess a proof for any thing they affirm or deny concerning the attributes of the First, but they make only such guesses and conjectures as lawyers would despise in their suppositions. However, no wonder that the intellect should be perplexed about the divine attributes; one should wonder only at the wonderful self-complacency of the philosophers, at their satisfaction with their proofs and their belief that they know those things through evident proofs, notwithstanding the mistakes and the errors in them.

I say:

The most wonderful thing is the claim of the theologians that the temporal becoming of the world implies that it has been willed by a will, for we find that temporal things occur through nature, through will, and by chance. x Those that occur through will are the products of art, and those that occur through nature are natural things, and if temporal things occurred only through will, will would have to be included in the definition of the temporal, whereas it is well known that the definition of temporal becoming is ‘existence succeeding non-existence’. If indeed the world had come into being temporally, it would be more appropriate that it should have come into being, in so far as it was a natural existent, from principles appropriate to natural things, rather than from principles appropriate to artificial things, i. e. the will. Since, however, it is established that the world exists through a First Agent which preferred its existence to its nonexistence, it is necessary that this agent should be a willer, and if this First Agent does not cease to prefer the world’s existence to its nonexistence, and the willer-as Ghazali says-must have knowledge, the philosophers are in complete agreement with the theologians about this fundamental point. The whole theological argument, however, which he gives has only persuasive power, because it compares natural things to artificial.

As to what he says of the philosophers, that they believe that what proceeds from the Creator proceeds in a natural way, this is a wrong imputation. What they really believe is that existents proceed from Him in a way superior to nature and to the human will, for both these ways are subject to an imperfection, but they are not the only possible ways, since it has been proved that the act of God can proceed from Him neither in a natural way nor in a voluntary, in the sense in which this is understood in the sublunary world. For will in an animal is the principle of movement, and if the Creator is devoid of movement, He is devoid of the principle of movement in the way a voluntary agent in the empirical world moves. ‘ What proceeds from God proceeds in a nobler way than the voluntary, a way which nobody can understand but God Himself. And the proof that He wills is that He knows the opposites, and if He were an agent in absolutely the same way as He is a knower, He would carry out the two contrary acts together, and this is impossible; and therefore it is necessary that He should perform one of the two contraries through choice.

The error of the theologians with regard to this question is that they say that every act is either natural or voluntary, but do not understand the meaning of either of these words. For nature, according to the philosophers, has different meanings, the primary being the ascending of fire and the descending of earth, ‘ and an existent only has this movement when something has prevented it from being in its natural place, and there was therefore something that constrained it; but the Creator is too high for this kind of nature. The philosophers also apply the term ‘nature’ to every potency from which an intellectual act proceeds, in the same way as the acts which proceed from the arts, and some of the philosophers ascribe intellect to this nature, and some say that this nature does not possess intellect but acts only by natures And they say that this nature proceeds from an intellect, because they compare it to artificial things which move themselves and from which orderly well-arranged acts proceed . And therefore their master Aristotle asserts that it is manifest that the nature of intellect rules the universe. ? And how far is this belief from what Ghazali ascribes to them!

Who, however, assumes as a universal maxim that he who knows himself must know other things which proceed from him, must conclude that he who does not know other things cannot know himself.

And having refuted Avicenna’s theory that God knows other things, by the arguments of the philosophers on this point which he adduces against him, ‘ he concludes against him that the First does not know itself; and this conclusion is valid. ,

And as to what he relates of the argument of the philosophers on this point, namely that they say that he who does not know himself is dead and the First cannot be dead, this is a persuasive argument composed of common propositions, for he who is not alive is not dead unless it is in his nature to receive life’-or one must mean by ‘dead’ what is meant by ‘inanimate’ and ‘inorganic’, and then this is a true dichotomy, for every existent is either alive or inorganic, provided we understand by ‘life’ a term which is equivocally used of the eternal and the corruptible.

And as to Ghazali's words:

And if they return to the doctrine that everything which is free from matter is intellect by itself and therefore thinks itself, we have shown that this is an arbitrary judgement without any proof.

I say:

We have already shown the manner in which this proof of the philosophers must be taken, in so far as this proof preserves its power by being given in this book-I mean its power is diminished, as is necessary when a thing is removed from its natural context. And as to what he says of their arguing on this point against the philosophers that the existent is either alive or dead, and that which is alive is more noble than that which is dead, and that the principle is nobler than that which is alive and that it is therefore necessarily alive, if by ‘dead’ is understood the inanimate, these propositions are common and true.

His assertion, however, that life can proceed from the lifeless and knowledge from what does not possess knowledge, and that the dignity of the First consists only in its being the principle of the universe, is false. For if life could proceed from the lifeless, then the existent might proceed from the non-existent, and then anything whatever might proceed from anything whatever, and there would be no congruity between causes and effects, either in the genus predicated analogically or in the species. 4

As to his assertion that, when the philosophers say that what is nobler than life must be alive, it is like saying that that which is nobler than what has hearing and seeing must have hearing and seeing: the philosophers do not say so, for they deny that the First Principle can hear and see. And Ghazali’s argument that, since, according to the philosophers, that which is superior to what hears and sees . need not hear and see, then also what is superior to the living and the knowing need not itself be alive and possessed of knowledge and that, just as according to the philosophers that which possesses sight can proceed from what has no sight, so it is possible that knowledge should proceed from what has no knowledge: this is a very sophistical and false argument.

For according to the philosophers that which has no hearing or seeing is not absolutely superior to that which has hearing and seeing, but only because it has a perception superior to seeing and hearing, namely knowledge. ‘ But, since there is nothing superior to knowledge, it is not possible that that which does not possess knowledge should be superior to that which does, be it a principle or not. For since some of the principles possess knowledge, others not, it is not permissible that those which do not know should be superior to those that do, just as little as this is possible in regard to effects which do and do not possess knowledge. And the nobility of being a principle cannot surpass the nobility of knowledge, unless the nobility of a principle that does not possess knowledge could surpass the nobility of a principle that does. And the excellence of being a principle cannot surpass the excellence of knowledge. And therefore it is necessary that the principle which has the utmost nobility should possess the utmost excellence, which is knowledge. The philosophers only avoid ascribing to the First hearing and seeing, because this would imply its possessing a soul. The Holy Law ascribes hearing and seeing to God to remind us that God is not deprived of any kind of knowledge and understanding, and the masses cannot be made to grasp this meaning except by the use of the terms ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’, and for this reason this exegesis is limited to the learned, and therefore cannot be taken as one of the dogmas of the Holy Law common to the masses. And the same is the case with many questions the solutions of which the Holy Law leaves to science.

Everything this chapter contains is the confusion and the incoherence of Ghazali himself. But, we appeal to God on account of the mistakes the learned have made, and that He may pardon them because of their wish to glorify His name in all such questions, and we pray God that He may not place us among those who are excluded from the next world through their faults in this, or from the highest through their desire for the lowest, and that He may bestow on us final blessedness!