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

demands the existence of the necessary existent. But if by
`necessary existent’ is understood something besides the
existent which has no efficient cause and which brings the
causal series to an end, we do not by any means concede
that this is necessary. And whenever the mind regards it as
possible to acknowledge an eternal existent which has no
cause for its existence, it regards it as possible to
acknowledge an eternal subject for which there is no cause,
either for its essence or for its attribute.
As to Ghazali’s words:
I say:
We have shown in the fifth discussion that you have no
proof for your denial of the first case, that of absolute duality;
what is affirmed by you in the fifth discussion can only be
justified by basing it upon your denial of plurality.
Ghazali means the philosophers’ denial that subject and attribute are
both subsistent by themselves, for from this it follows that they are
independent of each other and that both are independent gods, which is a
dualistic theory, since there is no connexion through which attribute and
subject could become a unity. And since the philosophers used as an
argument for the denial of this kind of plurality the fact that it has dualism
as its consequence, ‘ and a demonstration ought to proceed in the
opposite sense, namely, that dualism would have to be denied, because
of the impossibility of plurality, he says that their proof is circular and that
they proved the principle by the conclusion.
Their objection, however, was not based upon the facts themselves, but
on the theory of their opponents who deny dualism. And you have learned
in another place that there are two kinds of refutation, one based on the
objective facts, the other based on the statement of the opponent, and
although the former is the true kind of refutation, the second type may also
be used .
As to Ghazali’s words:
But the correct solution is to say: ‘The essence does not
need the attributes for its subsistence, whereas the attributes
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