has no agent that causes it to exist. Thus, if it is an essence endowed with attributes, both its essence and its attributes fall within this meaning.

It may also mean that which, in addition, subsists by itself; in this case, the essence is included, but not the attributes.

It may mean the originator of contingent things; in this case, only the essence endowed with attributes is included.

It may mean an isolated entity that is neither an attribute nor something possessing attributes. Such a thing cannot exist, and they have not grasped any proof of its existence, let alone of its being a necessary existent.

If they say:
“By ‘necessary’ we mean that whose essence does not admit nonexistence, and by ‘contingent’ that whose essence admits nonexistence,”

they are told:
“Establish the existence of a contingent thing whose essence admits nonexistence, so that it requires a necessary existent.”

When this was put to them, they established it only by establishing the existence of temporally originated things, which exist at one time and do not exist at another. This is correct: temporally originated things are observable, and their dependence on an originator is self-evident.

But they did not follow this path, for it establishes only the existence of a beginningless being that brought temporally originated things into existence. In their terminology, however, ‘contingent’ encompasses both the beginningless and the temporally originated. Thus, in their view, something eternal and beginningless can be contingent, admitting both existence and nonexistence.

Ibn Sīnā advanced this view, and these thinkers followed him, thereby opposing all rational thinkers—even Aristotle and his followers. They even contradicted themselves. For Ibn Sīnā and his followers explicitly stated in more than one place that the contingent, which admits existence