The absolute, when taken as unconditioned by either positive or negative predicates, has no existence outside the mind. Even those who countenance the Platonic Forms—a notion whose falsity is itself well-known—do not claim that universal quiddities are stripped of every limitation; rather, they maintain that these quiddities exist, that they are not nonexistent, but that they subsist apart from sensible particulars. The error of such a view is recognized by the great majority of rational people. How, then, can anyone affirm an utterly absolute entity divested of every positive and negative qualification?
Moreover, it is evident that what is defined solely by negative qualifications is even more deserving of non-existence than what is defined by the simultaneous negation of both contradictories. For in the latter case the impossibility of non-existence is no more applicable than the impossibility of existence: it is impossible for such a thing to be, just as it is impossible for it not to be, so one can say neither that it exists nor that it does not exist. By contrast, when something is bound only by negative predicates, non-existence is more appropriate to it than existence; in fact, it is nonexistent, not existent. Such a description declares it to be nonexistent, renders existence impossible for it, and makes its non-existence necessary.
It is therefore clear that this view is in even sharper conflict with existence—let alone necessary existence—than the assertion that a thing is impossible both to exist and to be nonexistent. The latter contradicts existence as much as it contradicts non-existence, whereas the former contradicts non-existence without contradicting existence. Now whatever conflicts with something without conflicting with its opposite is more antagonistic to it than what conflicts with both it and its opposite. Your enemy and the enemy of your enemy harms you less than an enemy who is not also the enemy of your enemy, for the latter harms you from every direction, whereas the former harms you from one side and benefits you from another.
Hence the claim of those who attribute to the Lord (Exalted is He) nothing but negative qualities is more at variance with His very existence than the claim of one who refrains from attributing to Him either negative or positive qualities. Such, indeed, is the doctrine of those philosophers—like Ibn Sīnā and his ilk.