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

But the knowledge of the Creator operates on existents, and the existents
receive the activities of His knowledge.
Once this is established, the whole quarrel between Ghazali and the
philosophers comes to an end in regard to this chapter as well as the next
two. We shall, however, give an account of these chapters and mention in
them both what is particular to them and those arguments which have
been already discussed above.
THE TWELFTH DISCUSSION
ABOUT THE IMPOTENCE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS TO
PROVE THAT GOD KNOWS HIMSELF
Ghazali says:
We say that when the Muslims understood that the world
was created through the will of God, they proved His
knowledge from His will, then His life from His will and His
knowledge together, ‘ then from His life, according to the
principle that every living being knows itself, they proved that
He too must know His own essence, since He is alive. And
this is a rational procedure of extreme force. For you
philosophers, however, since you deny the divine will and
the world’s coming into existence, and since you affirm that
what proceeds from Him proceeds in a necessary and
natural sequence, why should it be impossible that His
essence should be of such a nature that only the first effect
proceeded from it, and that then the second effect followed
the first till the whole order of existents was completed, but,
notwithstanding this, the First would not know itself, just as
neither fire from which heat proceeds, nor the sun from
which light proceeds, know themselves or anything else? For
only that which knows itself knows what proceeds from itself,
and therefore knows other things besides itself. And we have
already shown that, according to the theory of the
philosophers the First does not know other things, and we
have forced those who do not agree with them on this point
to acknowledge this consequence which follows from their
353