A Question on the Philosophers’ Conception of tawḥīd
answered by our shaykh, the imam, the erudite scholar, Shaykh al-Islām Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah sanctify his soul and illumine his resting-place. Āmīn, Lord of the worlds.
In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Bestower of Mercy.
What do the venerable scholars—may Allah be pleased with them all—say regarding the philosophers’ doctrine of tawḥīd and the proof they advance for it? The sum of their argument is stated thus:
Entities that differ in their individual essences yet share some constitutive element must fall under one of four alternatives:
- The element they share is a necessary concomitant of the features by which they differ.
- Conversely, the features by which they differ are necessary concomitants of the element they share.
- The shared element is merely incidental and separable from the features by which they differ.
- Conversely, the features by which they differ are merely incidental and separable from the element they share.
As for the first alternative, it is admissible, just as species differ in their specific realities while the genus necessarily applies to them all.
The second alternative is inadmissible, because one and the same nature does not, of itself, entail mutually diverse attributes. Do you not see that a genus, by definition, does not entail different characteristics in and of itself? For were it to necessitate disparate attributes, those attributes would be present wherever the genus occurred—and that is manifestly not the case.
The third alternative is admissible, for things that differ in their very realities can still coincide in certain respects