As for basing this on whether a thing’s existence is identical with its essence or is not identical with the existence of its essence, this is an error attributed to Ibn al-Khatīb. For 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 other things merely equivocally.
This holds for all generic terms. Thus, “blackness” is predicated univocally of this instance of blackness and that instance, although the two instances are not identical. The term signifies what they have in common, namely, the unrestricted universal. Yet this exists as unrestricted, subject to the condition of being unrestricted, only in the mind.
This does not entail denying what concrete entities in external reality have in common. Otherwise, there would be no “univocal terms,” which constitute the majority of terms found in languages. These are “generic terms in linguistic usage”: terms applied to a thing and to other things resembling it, whether they denote an entity or an attribute, whether they are underived or derived, and whether they designate a genus in logic or jurisprudence, or neither. Indeed, generic terms in linguistic usage encompass genera, classes, species, and the like. All these terms are univocal, while the individual things they denote are distinct in external reality.
Al-Dhahabī said:
“It was then agreed that this is a sound creed in accordance with that of the early generations (*).”