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

God everything is possible, a theory which implies objective possibility (the
same inconsistency was committed by the Stoics). Both philosophers and
theologians, indeed, hold about this difficult problem contradictory
theories, and it is therefore not astonishing that Ghazali’s and Averroës’
discussion about it is full of confusion (for the details I refer to my notes).
In the second chapter Ghazali treats the problem of the incorruptibility of
the world. As Ghazali says himself; the problem of the incorruptibility of
the world is essentially the same as that of its being uncreated and the
same arguments can be brought forward. Still, there is less opposition
amongst the theologians about its incorruptibility than about its being
uncreated. Some of the Mu‘tazilites argued, just as Thomas Aquinas was
to do later, that we can only know through the Divine Law that this world of
ours will end and there is no rational proof for its annihilation. Just as a
series of numbers needs a first term but no final term, the beginning of the
world does not imply its end. However, the orthodox view is that the
annihilation of the world, including Heaven and Hell, is in God’s power,
although this will not happen. Still, in the corruptibility of the world there is
a new difficulty for the theologians. If God destroys the world He causes
‘nothingness’, that is, His act is related to ‘nothing’. But can an act be
related to ‘nothing’? The question as it is posed seems to rest on a
confusion between action and effect but its deeper sense would be to
establish the nature of God’s action and the process by which His creative
and annihilating power exercises itself. As there cannot be any analogy
with the physical process through which our human will performs its
function, the mystery of His creative and annihilating action cannot be
solved and the naive answers the theologians give satisfy neither
Averroës nor Ghazali himself. Averroës argues that there is no essential
difference between production and destruction and, in agreement with
Aristotle, he affirms that there are three principles for them: form, matter,
and privation. When a thing becomes, its form arises and its privation
disappears; when it is destroyed its privation arises and its form
disappears, but the substratum of this process, matter, remains eternally. I
have criticized this theory in my notes and will only mention here that for
Aristotle and Averroës this process of production and destruction is
eternal, circular, and reversible. Things, however, do not revolve in an
eternal cycle, nor is there an eternal return as the Stoics and Nietzsche
held. Inexorably the past is gone. Every ‘now’ is new. Every flower in the
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