Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

principles which are immediately evident. And indeed Aristotle
acknowledges their existence. When we ask, however, what these first
principles are, he does not give us any answer but only points out the
Laws of Thought as such. But from the Laws of Thought nothing can be
deduced, as Aristotle acknowledges himself. As a matter of fact Aristotle is
quite unaware of the assumption on which his system is based. He is what
philosophers are wont to call nowadays a naive realist. He believes that
the world which we perceive and think about with all it contains has a
reality independent of our perceptions or our thoughts. But this view
seems so natural to him that he is not aware that it could be doubted or
that any reason might be asked for it. Now I, for my part, believe that the
objectivity of a common world in which we all live and die is the necessary
assumption of all reasoning and thought. I believe indeed, with Aristotle,
that there are primary assumptions which cannot be deduced from other
principles. All reasoning assumes the existence of an objective truth which
is sought and therefore is assumed to have an independent reality of its
own. Every thinking person is conscious of his own identity and the
identity of his fellow beings from whom he accepts language and thoughts
and to whom he can communicate his own ideas and emotions. Besides,
all conceptual thought implies universality, i.e. belief in law and in
objective necessity. I can only infer from Socrates being a man that he is
mortal when I have assumed that the same thing (in this case man in so
far as he is man) in the same conditions will always necessarily behave in
the same way.
In his book Ghazali attacks the philosophers on twenty points. Except for
the last two points which are only slightly touched by Averroës, Averroës
follows point for point the arguments Ghazali uses and tries to refute them.
Ghazali’s book is badly constructed, it is unsystematic and repetitive. If
Ghazali had proceeded systematically he would have attacked first the
philosophical basis of the system of the philosophers-namely their proof
for the existence of God, since from God, the Highest Principle, everything
else is deduced. But the first problem Ghazali mentions is the philosphers’
proof for the eternity of the world. This is the problem which Ghazali
considers to be the most important and to which he allots the greatest
space, almost a quarter of his book. He starts by saying rather arbitrarily
that the philosophers have four arguments, but, in discussing them, he
mixes them up and the whole discussion is complicated by the fact that he
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