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

I say:
essence, without the knowledge of its being a principle, but
knowledge of the essence without the knowledge of the
essence cannot be imagined, since the essence is an
identical unity.
The proposition which the philosophers defend against Ghazali in this
question is based on philosophical principles which must be discussed
first. For if the principles they have assumed and the deductions to which,
according to them, their demonstration leads, are conceded, none of the
consequences which Ghazali holds against them follows. The
philosophers hold, namely, that the incorporeal existent is in its essence
nothing but knowledge, for they believe that the forms’ have no knowledge
for the sole reason that they are in matter; but if a thing does not exist in
matter, it is known to be knowing, and this is known because they found
that when forms which are in matter are abstracted in the soul from matter
they become knowledge and intellect, for intellect is nothing but the forms
abstracted from matter, z and if this is true for things which by the principle
of their nature are not abstracted, then it is still more appropriate for things
which by the principle of their nature are abstracted to be knowledge and
intellect. And since what is intelligible in things is their innermost reality,
and since intellect is nothing but the perception of the intelligibles, our own
intellect is the intelligible by itself, in so far as it is an intelligible, and so
there is no difference between the intellect and the intelligible, except in so
far as the intelligibles are intelligibles of things in the nature of which there
is no intellect and which only become intellect because the intellect
abstracts their forms from their matters, and through this our intellect is not
the intelligible in every respect. But if there is a thing which does not exist
in matter, then to conceive it by intellect is identical with its intelligible in
every respect, and this is the case with the intellectual conception of the
intelligibles. And no doubt the intellect is nothing but the perception of the
order and arrangement of existing things, but it is necessary for the
separate intellect that it should not depend on the existing things in its
intellectual conception of the existing things and of their order, and that its
intelligible should not be posterior to them, for every other intellect is such
that it follows the order which exists in the existents and perfects itself
through it, and necessarily falls short in its intellectual conception of the
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