an essential attribute is one without the prior conception of which the subject itself cannot be conceived is false, even if they are content with a merely summary notion; for whoever entertains the bare idea of “man” has thereby encompassed all of his attributes. A fuller elaboration of this belongs elsewhere.

What concerns us here is their attempt to distinguish between the self-evident first principles (al-awwaliyyāt) and the widely accepted propositions (al-mashhūrāt), claiming that in the first principles there is no middle term between the subject and its predicate in external reality, whereas other propositions differ. This distinction has been shown to be untenable both directly and inversely: there are necessary predicates that admit of no intermediate in reality yet still require evidence, and there are others for which they demand an intermediate whose truth is known without any evidence at all. Hence, dividing necessary propositions on the basis of a supposed intermediate in reality is baseless. The “intermediate” that functions as evidence varies with people’s intellectual states and is in no sense intrinsic to the propositions themselves. These are several arguments derived from the first line of rebuttal.

Second avenue:

There is no proof for their contention that the widely accepted propositions are not among the certitudes.

Indeed, by the mashhūrāt they mean all evaluative judgments—such as that justice is good and injustice evil, knowledge praiseworthy and ignorance blameworthy, truthfulness good and lying vile, beneficence good, and the like—questions over which people have disputed whether their goodness or badness is known by reason.

Those who affirm and those who deny rational good and evil:

Most doctrinal groups affirm rational good (ḥusn) and evil (qubḥ), though not in the manner espoused by the deniers of divine decree, such as the Muʿtazilites. Rather, the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah—both early and later—who uphold taḥsīn and taqbīḥ, including authorities from the four Sunni legal schools and others, affirm predestination, the divine attributes, and similar doctrines in which they differ from the Muʿtazilites, while at the same time affirming rational good and evil. This is the position of the Ḥanafis, who trace it back to Abū Ḥanīfah himself, and it is likewise held by many Mālikis, Shāfiʿis, and Ḥanbalis, such as Abū’l-Hasan al-Tamīmī, Abū’l-Khaṭṭāb, and others.