at all, because the very nature of a request differs from the mind’s judgment that predicates one matter of another, and that difference is self-evident; for this reason, affirmation and denial apply to one of the two but not to the other (1).
He said (2): “If we turn to the theory of the ḥāl, we must ask (3) whether many distinct essences can possibly share a single existence or not.
If you say: ‘They can,’ then it would follow that one and the same attribute could comprise several different realities; otherwise the entire position collapses. Up to now I have found no decisive proof either negating or confirming this.
As for what is said to show its impossibility: were we to posit one thing that possessed (5) two essences, and then something occurred that contradicted one of those essences [but not the other] (6), it would follow that the attribute would be annihilated (7) from one perspective (8) while remaining (9) from the other.
He said (10): This carries no weight, for we have already quoted the Muʿtazilah (11) and how they argue
(1) In Nihayat al-ʿUqul: “If we say that the proposition that every utterance is khabar (a report) amounts to nothing…”
(2) Al-Rāzī, Nihayat al-ʿUqul, fol. 157.
(3) Omitted from Nihayat al-ʿUqul.
(4) In the original text, manuscript S reads fa’in qulna yajūz (“if we say it is permissible”), while manuscript T reads fa’in qulna bi-jawāz (“if we say with permissibility”). The reading confirmed in Nihayat al-ʿUqul, since al-Rāzī is refuting his opponents.
(5) In all manuscripts: “waḥidan lahu yakun lahu.” This reading is established in Nihayat al-ʿUqul. The passage makes sense without the word “lahu.”
(6) The text between the quotation marks is an addition from Nihayat al-ʿUqul.
(7) In manuscripts S and T: nuqaddim. This is a scribal error.
(8) In manuscript T: iḥdā.
(9) In manuscripts S and T: nuqaddim; in Nihayat al-ʿUqul: wa-in lam taʿdum.
(10) The speaker is al-Rāzī in Nihayat al-ʿUqul. The phrase is an addition by the Shaykh (may God have mercy on him) for clarification, and it is continuous with the preceding text.
(11) In Nihayat al-ʿUqul: on the Muʿtazilah regarding the affirmation of the nonexistent.