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

the shadow for it. But, as you see, all these difficulties arise for the man
who has not understood that production is the conversion of a thing from
potential into actual existence, and that destruction is the reverse, i.e. the
change from the actual into the potentials It appears from this that
possibility and matter are necessarily connected with anything becoming,
and that what is subsistent in itself can be neither destroyed nor produced.
The theory of the Ash’arites mentioned here by Ghazali, which regards
the production of a substance, subsistent in itself, as possible, but not so
its destruction, is an extremely weak one, for the consequences which
apply to destruction apply also to production, only, it was thought, because
in the former case it is more obvious that there was here a real difference.
He then mentions the answers of the different sects to the difficulty which
faces them on the question of annihilation.
Ghazali says:
The Mu’tazilites say: the act proceeding from Him is an
existent, i.e. extinction, which He does not create in a
substratum; at one and the same moment it annihilates the
whole world and disappears by itself, so that it does not
stand in need of another extinction and thus of an infinite
regress.
And mentioning this answer to the difficulty, he says:
This is wrong for different reasons. First, extinction is not
an intelligible existent, the creation of which can be
supposed. Moreover, why, if it is supposed to exist, does it
disappear by itself without a cause for its disappearance?
Further, why does it annihilate the world? For its creation
and inherence in the essence of the world are impossible,
since the inherent meets its substratum and exists together
with it if only in an instant; if the extinction and existence of
the world could meet, extinction would not be in opposition to
existence and would not annihilate it’ and, if extinction is
created neither in the world nor in a substratum, where could
its existence be in order to be opposed to the existence of
the world? Another shocking feature in this doctrine is that
God cannot annihilate part of the world without annihilating
126