whereas the other view is that of the Mu'tazilah: that the existence of every thing is something additional to its essence. Each of the two was correct in one respect. The correct position is that these names are predicated univocally, as I have established elsewhere, and I have answered the objection concerning composition with the two well-known responses.
As for making this depend on whether a thing’s existence is identical with its essence, this is one of the errors attributed to Ibn al-Khatīb. Even if we say that a thing’s existence is identical with its essence, it does not follow that the term must be predicated of it and of another like it only equivocally, as is evident with all generic terms. The term ‘blackness’ is predicated univocally of this instance of blackness and that instance of blackness, yet the one instance is not identical with the other. The term denotes the feature common to both, namely the unrestricted universal. But it exists as unrestricted, on condition that it remain unrestricted, only in the mind. This does not entail denying the common feature shared by particular things existing in external reality. Otherwise, univocal terms would cease to exist, although they constitute the great majority of terms generally encountered.
(These are generic terms in the linguistic sense: a term applied to a thing and to everything resembling it, whether it names an entity or an attribute, whether it is non-derived or derived, and whether or not it denotes a genus in logic or jurisprudence. Indeed, generic terms in language encompass genera, classes, species, and the like. All are univocal terms, while the particular things they denote in external reality are distinct.)”
Some of them asked for the hadiths mentioned in the creed to be read again, in order to impugn