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

composed of genus and specific difference, and everything which is of this
description is temporal; and lastly that which is of the extreme perfection i
of existence must be unique, for if it were not unique, it could not be of the
extreme perfection of existence, for that which is in the extreme degree
cannot participate with anything else, for in the same way as one single
line cannot have two extreme points at the same end, things extended in
existence and differentiated through increase s and decrease have not
two extremes at the same side. And since Avicenna was not aware of this
nature, which stands midway between the nature of that which is
univocally predicated and those natures which participate only through the
equivocation of the term or in a distant, accidental way, this objection was
valid against him.
THE EIGHTH DISCUSSION
TO REFUTE THEIR THEORY THAT THE EXISTENCE OF
THE FIRST IS SIMPLE, NAMELY THAT IT IS PURE
EXISTENCE AND THAT ITS EXISTENCE STANDS IN
RELATION TO NO QUIDDITY AND TO NO ESSENCE, BUT
STANDS TO NECESSARY EXISTENCE AS DO OTHER
BEINGS TO THEIR QUIDDITY
Ghazali says:
There are two ways of attacking this theory. The first is to
demand a proof and to ask how you know this, through the
necessity of the intellect, or through speculation and not by
immediate necessity; and in any case you must tell us your
method of reasoning.
If it is said that, if the First had a quiddity, its existence
would be related to it, and would be consequent’ on this
quiddity and would be its necessary attribute, and the
consequent is an effect and therefore necessary existence
would be an effect, and this is a contradiction, we answer:
This is to revert to the source of the confusion in the
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