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

consequences which follow from his first act; and Ghazali says to his
opponent this is a fact which concerns voluntary acts, but how is it when
one assumes an agent whose acts are not voluntary? And he only says
this because he means that the affirmation of God’s knowledge implies the
affirmation of God’s will.
And therefore Ghazali says:
I say:
To this again the philosophers have no answer.
Ghazali means that it does not follow that the First according to Avicenna
thinks anything but the act which proceeds from it primarily, and this act is
the second cause and the first effect. Neither is there an answer to the
other difficulty which he states that if the First thinks only itself and nothing
else, man would be more noble than it. And the reason why Ghazali’s
words carry a certain conviction is that if one imagines two men, one of
whom thinks only his own self, whereas the other thinks his own self and
other things besides, the latter intellect is regarded as superior to the
former. However, as the term ‘intellect’ is applied to the human intellect
and to this Divine Intellect in a purely equivocal way, since the latter is an
agent and not a patient and the former a patient and not an agent, this
analogy does not hold any longer.
Having given as Avicenna’s argument the maxim which Avicenna applies
to every intelligent being, ‘ that the more knowledge an intellect possesses
the nobler it is, and having affirmed that, according to him (Ghazali), it is
just the philosophers’ denial of God’s will and of temporal creation which
forces them to deny to God a knowledge of anything but Himself, since the
conscious agent knows his effect only in so far as it differs from himself by
being an object of his will, he says that this reprehensible assertion, i. e.
the assertion that the effect which is man must be nobler than the cause
which is the Creator, is a consequence for the philosophers only, sincc as
the philosophers deny the coming into being of the world, they deny the
Divine Will, as he affirms, and as they deny the Divine Will, they deny that
God knows what proceeds from Him. But all this, namely the denial of
God’s will, has been shown previously not to be true; for they deny only
His temporal will. And having repeated Avicenna’s arguments, which he
regarded as being applicable both to the knowledge of the temporal and
351