 Or, as Fârâbî says in switching from the Aristotelian language of “intelligence” to the Qurʾânic and kalâm language of God’s attribute of knowledge, the First’s knowledge does not require anything other than itself for it to know, and its knowledge is identical with its essence (Walzer 1985, 72). This sounds like the Muʿtazilites in claiming to reconcile God’s knowledge with his simplicity. But while the Muʿtazilites try to show how God’s knowledge can be simple and eternal despite God’s knowing a vast plurality of things, some of which change, Fârâbî short-circuits the problem by saying that God’s knowledge is just knowledge of himself. Perhaps Fârâbî would say that the problem just cannot be solved if we assume that God is omniscient. Or perhaps he would say, with Themistius (followed by many medieval philosophers), that God in knowing himself also implicitly knows other things because he is a cause of those other things.