attributes that involve a relation to something else, such as an act’s being beneficial and harmful, loved and disliked. What is beneficial brings pleasure, while what is harmful brings pain. Likewise, what is loved brings joy and pleasure to the one who loves it, for example, while what is disliked brings pain to the one who dislikes it. Thus, rational goodness and badness mean benefit and harm, whereas commands and prohibitions concern what is desired and what is disliked. The former is an attribute of the act in relation to its agent or someone else; the latter is an attribute of the act in relation to the one who commands and prohibits.

For this reason, I have said more than once that an act’s goodness sometimes derives from the act itself, sometimes from the one who commands it, and sometimes from both together. The Mu'tazilah and those jurists who agree with them, whether from our school or others, who rule out abrogation before there has been an opportunity to perform the act, affirm only the first. The Ash'arīs and those jurists who agree with them, whether from our school or others, who recognize no attribute of an act beyond its relation to the divine address that applies to it, affirm only the second.

The correct view is to affirm both. There is also an additional quality that the act acquires, of the same order as the divine address’s relation to it but distinct from that relation, which arises in the act after the ruling. Thus, the divine address sometimes reveals a quality, sometimes produces it, and sometimes does both. A fuller discussion of this belongs elsewhere.

This being so, we understand through reason and find through experience that a single act, whether performed by a person himself or by someone else, can bring him both benefit and harm. A man may have two enemies