…and the jinn among you were to possess the most God-fearing heart of any single one of you, that would not add the least thing to My dominion. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the humans and the jinn among you, to possess the most wicked heart of any single one of you, that would not diminish My dominion in the least. O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the humans and the jinn among you, to stand together on one plain and ask of Me, and I were to give every person what he asked for, that would not lessen what I possess any more than the sea is lessened when a needle is dipped into it. O My servants, it is only your deeds that I record for you; then I shall recompense you for them. Whoever finds good, let him praise Allah, and whoever finds other than that, let him blame no one but himself.”

The point is that the whole of practical wisdom rests upon these propositions. The soul has two faculties, the cognitive and the volitional, and action must be guided by knowledge. If these propositions were not known, nothing of practical wisdom would be known, nor would any of the praiseworthy or blameworthy deeds and character traits be recognized. Besides the contradiction this involves with what they themselves—and other rational people—affirm, it is a blatant act of obstinate denial. Moreover, in this discussion our aim was not to establish a proof of the unsoundness of their claim; rather, we simply described it so that its reality might be understood, and we then demanded from them evidence that these commonly accepted judgments are not certain. They produced no evidence whatsoever. We shall now examine what they imagined to be an argument under

Section Three:
Clarifying that the commonly accepted propositions are among the judgments that must be accepted.

Their assertion is that these propositions are not primary, on account of the distinction they draw between the primary propositions…