the refutation of the Mu'tazilīs’ argument. Others seek to establish that it is possible to see what is not a body, and that no impossibility follows from supposing such vision.
As for their objections to the Mu'tazilīs’ assertion that everything seen lies in a direction relative to the viewer, some of them say that this applies only to the observable realm, not to the unseen, and that this is not one of the cases in which a judgment concerning the observable must be extended to the unseen. They also maintain that a person can see something that lies in no direction if it is possible for a person to see through the visual faculty itself, without an eye.
These people have confused intellectual apprehension with visual perception. It is the intellect that apprehends what lies in no direction—that is, in no place. As for visual perception, it is evident that one of its conditions is that the object seen must lie in a direction relative to the viewer—that is, in a place—and not just in any direction, but in a particular direction. Thus, vision is not possible from any position whatsoever relative to the object seen, but only from certain definite positions and under certain definite conditions. These are three: the presence of light, a transparent body intervening between the faculty of sight and the object seen, and that