position, he recognizes its falsity and is thereby warned away from the evil and falsehood it contains.

Likewise, when he learns this group’s refutation of the other group (1), he also recognizes the falsehood held by the latter and guards himself against it.

Then, if Allah makes clear to someone what the Messenger brought—whether it constitutes a third position distinct from the other two, or combines part of one group’s position with part of the other’s—and he recognizes that this is what the Companions and those who followed them in excellence adhered to, and what the Book and the Sunnah indicate, Allah has perfected His favor upon him by guiding him to the straight path and keeping him from the path of the people of transgression and error.

If it does not become clear to him, then his refusal to agree with this group in its misguidance or that group in its misguidance is itself a blessing for him. He holds fast, in general terms, to what he knows from the Book and the Sunnah, refrains from speaking about that particular question, and regards it as one of the matters he does not know. A human being does not know the truth about everything people discuss. You will find them reporting multiple views concerning Quranic exegesis, hadith commentary, questions of legal rulings, and even the Arabic language, medicine, and other subjects. Yet many people recount the disagreement without knowing the truth.

As for the disagreements among the philosophers, no one can enumerate them because of their multitude and the philosophers’ dispersion (2). The philosophy (3) current among later thinkers—such as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and those who followed their pattern—is the philosophy of Aristotle and his followers. Aristotle authored works in the disciplines of logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics (4). And what (5) al-Ghazālī relates