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

This objection can be summarized in two parts: In the first Ghazali
concedes that the human will is such that it is unable to differentiate one
thing from a similar one, in so far as it is similar, but that a rational proof
forces us to accept the existence of such a quality in the First Agent. To
believe that such a quality cannot exist would be like believing that there
cannot exist a being who is neither inside nor outside the world. According
to this reasoning, will, which is attributed to the First Agent and to man, is
predicated in an equivocal way, like knowledge and other qualities which
exist in the Eternal in a different way from that in which they exist in the
temporal, and it is only through the prescription of the Divine Law that we
speak of the Divine Will. It is clear that this objection cannot have anything
more than a dialectical value. For a proof that could demonstrate the
existence of such a quality, i.e. a principle determining the existence of
one thing rather than that of a similar, would have to assume things willed
that are similar; things willed are, however, not similar, but on the contrary
opposite, for all opposites can be reduced to the opposition of being and
not being, which is the extreme form of opposition; and opposition is the
contrary of similarity. The assumption of the theologians that the things to
which the will attaches itself are similar is a false one, and we shall speak
of it later. If they say: we affirm only that they are similar in relation to the
First Wilier, who in His holiness is too exalted to possess desires, and it is
through desires that two similar things are actually differentiated, we
answer: as to the desires whose realization contributes to the perfection of
the essence of the wilier, as happens with our desires, through which our
will attaches itself to the things willed-those desires are impossible in God,
for the will which acts in this way is a longing for perfection when there is
an imperfection in the essence of the wilier; but as to the desires which
belong to the essence of the things willed, nothing new comes to the wilier
from their realization. It comes exclusively to the thing willed, for instance,
when a thing passes into existence from non-existence, for it cannot be
doubted that existence is better for it than non-existence. It is in this
second way that the Primal Will is related to the existing things, for it
chooses for them eternally the better of two opposites, and this essentially
and primally. This is the first part of the objection contained in this
argument.
In the second part he no longer concedes that this quality cannot exist in
the human will, but tries to prove that there is also in us, in the face of
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