Ibn Sīnā and those who follow him, after claiming that the Necessary Existent is “the Absolute on condition of absoluteness,” could not in fact leave it free of negative and relational predicates. They therefore described it as an existence qualified by negations and relations, though not by any positive determinations. Their view is sometimes rephrased as “existence qualified by not being an accident of any quiddity,” a formulation used by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and others. Yet this wording is built on the assumption that the existence of everything else is accidental to its essence, and that a thing’s quiddity subsists externally apart from the existent individual—an unfounded principle of theirs. When the doctrine is couched in such terms, most people fail to grasp its intent; but if it is expressed in the language that its proponents themselves acknowledge as unmistakably conveying their position, the reality of their doctrine becomes plain.

By saying that the Necessary Being is “existence restricted by negative qualifications,” they fall into several errors. First, they have not made it absolute at all, for to bind it with any negative or relational condition is still a form of restriction. Moreover, that restriction does not make it more worthy of existence; it makes it, rather, more apt for non-existence. Yet it is evident that necessary existence is more entitled to existence than contingent existence—so how can it possibly be more entitled to non-existence than the contingent?