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

a book on philosophy

a book on philosophy

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I say:

white for the knowledge of black, for they are two different

things. ‘ Besides, these species and genera and universal

accidents are infinite and they are different, and how can

different sciences fall under one science? Again, this

knowledge is the essence of the knower without any

addition, and I should like to know how an intelligent man

can regard the unity of the knowledge of one and the same

thing, when this knowledge is divided through its relations

with the past, the future, and the present, as impossible, and

uphold the unity of the knowledge which is attached to all

genera and all different species! For the diversity and the

distance between the genera and the remote species is far

greater than the difference which occurs in the conditions of

one thing which is divided through the division of time; and if

the former does not imply a plurality and differentiation, why

then does the latter? And as soon as it is proved that the

diversity of times is less important than the diversity of

genera and species, and that the latter does not imply a

plurality and a diversity, the former also will not imply this.

And if this does not imply a diversity, then it will be possible

that the whole universe should be comprehended in one

everlasting knowledge in everlasting time, and that this

should not imply a change in the essence of the knower.

This sophistry is based on the assimilation of Divine Knowledge to

human and the comparison of the one knowledge with the other, for man

perceives the individual through his senses, and universal existents

through his intellect, and the cause of his perception is the thing perceived

itself, and there is no doubt that the perception changes through the

change in the things perceived and that their plurality implies its plurality.

As to his answer that it is possible that there should exist a knowledge

the relation of which to the objects known is that kind of relation which

does not enter into the essence of the thing related, like the relation of

right and left, to that which has a right and a left his is an answer which

cannot be understood from the nature of human knowledge. ‘ And his

second objection, that those philosophers who affirm that God knows

366

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