Second Station
The Affirmative Standpoint on Definitions and Conceptions

The question here is whether things can in fact be conceived through definitions.

The accomplished investigators among dialecticians know that the benefit of a definition lies in distinguishing the defined object from everything else—just as a name does. Its function is not to depict the object or disclose its very essence. The view that a definition should portray the true reality of the thing is held only by the practitioners of Greek logic, the followers of Aristotle, and by those Muslims and others who imitated them. The great majority of researchers and theologians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, hold the contrary opinion.

This idea entered the discourse of those who wrote on the principles of religion and jurisprudence only after Abū Ḥāmid, toward the end of the fifth century AH and the beginning of the sixth. As for Abū Ḥāmid himself, he placed a logical prologue at the opening of al-Mustasfā and claimed that anyone who had not mastered it could place no trust in any of