[Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary]

I say:

One might ask: When he says, “The totality cannot exist without its parts existing,” does he mean that its parts exist together with it, or that its parts exist, even if successively?

The former is untenable, because the parts of something assumed to be successive cannot exist together with it. It has no collective existence at a single moment such that its parts could coexist with it. Rather, for its parts to exist together with its totality while it is successive would combine two contradictories.

If he means that its parts exist in whatever manner, he may be told: This is correct. What is denied, however, is only that any of its parts exists from all eternity. An individual part’s not having existed from all eternity does not entail that it does not exist. Thus, if the existence of the totality depends on the existence of its parts, the parts of a successive totality can indeed exist.

If he says:

“The existence of a kind whose instances succeed one another, and which is beginningless and everlasting, depends on one of its individual instances being beginningless or everlasting,”

then this is precisely the point in dispute.

It is thus clear that the reply contains a fallacy. In substance, the reply asserts that the same judgment must be applied to the totality as to its individual members. He and others have already demonstrated the invalidity of this