The Incoherence of the Incoherence
According to the reading , Ghazali has his own viewpoint about God. He disagrees that God is the agent . According to Ghazali an agent must be willing, choosing and knowing and God does not will(5). Therefore, God cannot be taken as an agent.
Ghazali also states that from one thing only one thing can be produced and the world is not made of one thing but of several components (10) and therefore, God cannot bed regarded as an agent as the world is diverse.
Rushd does not accept Ghazali’s definition of an agent. He breaks agent into two parts: Natural agents, and Voluntary and Selective agents. The natural agent produces exclusively only one thing, example, warmth produces heat (15). Rushd somewhat agrees with Ghazali that it is not clear that God is an agent but it cannot be denied that God acts at all (26).
Philosophers believe that there are four causes : agent, matter, form and end.
Rushd and Ghazali further discuss about the philosophers definition of agents. Ghazali says answering in defense of Philosophers:
“If philosophers say, we do not mean anything by God being an agent, and he is the cause of every existent besides himself, and that the world has its subsistence through him, and if the creator did not exist, the existence of the world could not be imagined (106 -109). Ghazali and Rushd further comment on agents as existents. If there is an agent, there be existence and an agent performs an act.
The first principle of essence is also mentioned in the reading. According to the first Principle of essence it can think only its own essence and according to the first principle if it knows its essence God cannot be an agent (Rushd – Online – Mediawiki).
According to the philosophers, philosophers mean that the man in which it thinks its own essence includes the existents in their noblest mode of intellect, in intellect is the cause of existents -and that it is not an intellect which is the cause of existents and it is not an intellect which think the existents ( Rushd – Mediawiki).
For example when we look at the meaning of words, it may not be same for all to think them alike, but each of us will have a different definition or thinking of each word is very well summed up , as Ghazali, Rushd and Philosophers all have a different definition of agent, and god as an agent and providing an act.