Unsaying God

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

AAR Academy Series

Presents a broad analysis of various disciplines and schools to unearth diverse negative theological trends that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam
Features significant conceptual and methodological interventions to the modern approaches to negative theology and apophaticism at large, making it relevant to a broad audience beyond Religious Studies
Sheds light on the theological osmosis that took place between scholars of different schools, sects, and religions-Jews and Muslims in particular. It demonstrates that negative theologies were an integral component of a shared, interconfessional intellectual heritage

Unsaying God

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

Description

What cannot be said about God, and how can we speak about God by negating what we say? Traveling across prominent negators, denialists, ineffectualists, paradoxographers, naysayers, ignorance-pretenders, unknowers, I-don't-knowers, and taciturns, Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam delves into the negative theological movements that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam.
Aydogan Kars argues that there were multiple, and often competing, strategies for self-negating speech in the vast field of theology. By focusing on Arabic and Persian textual sources, the book defines four distinct yet interconnected paths of negative speech formations on the nature of God that circulated in medieval Islamic world. Expanding its scope to Jewish intellectuals, Unsaying God also demonstrates that religious boundaries were easily transgressed as scholars from diverse sectarian or religious backgrounds could adopt similar paths of negative speech on God.
This is the first book-length study of negative theology in Islam. It encompasses many fields of scholarship, and diverse intellectual schools and figures. Throughout, Kars demonstrates how seemingly different genres should be read in a more connected way in light of the cultural and intellectual history of Islam rather than as different opposing sets of orthodoxies and heterodoxies.

Unsaying God

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

AAR Academy Series

INTRODUCTION
Why Sufism, and Why the Thirteenth Century?
A Guide to Negative Theology: Are the Mu'tazilites Negative Theologians?
Can We Still Speak of Negative Theology Tout Court?
Moving Forward
Coming to Terms: "Apophasis", "Performance", and God's Gender
Compass
PATH ONE. DOUBLE NEGATION: ISMAILI APOPHATICISM
The Background: "Radicals of All Radicals"
Thingness of God?
Double Negation: the Repetitive Form
Permutations and Performances
Disseminations: Ismaili Apophaticism beyond Ismailis
Later Developments
Tusi: Sufi Paths of Ismaili Apophaticism
Dimension of Apophatic Theology in Later Sufi and Ismailli Connections
Summary
PATH TWO. NECESSARILY DISSIMILAR: PHILOSOPHICAL APOPHATICISM
Beginnings: the End-less
The Kindian Dilemma in the Tenth Century
Discursive Thought and Non-Discursive Intellection
Protectors of the Divine Oneness: al-Tawhidi's Circle in Baghdad
Philosophical Apophaticism in Andalusia: Ibn Masarra
Twelfth-Century Andalusia: From Philosophy to Sufism
Aristotle in Andalusia: al-Batalyawsi, Maimonides, and Ibn Sab'in
Jewish Mysticism and Arabic Philosophical Apophaticism: Eyn Sof and Lam Yazal
Sufis and Genies: Philosophical Apophaticism within Sufi Epistemology
Summary
PATH THREE. "YES AND NO": PARADOXICAL APOPHATICISM AND DIALECTICAL LOGIC
Paradox in Literature and Sufism: an Overview
Paradox of Human Apotheosis: from Sufism to Philosophy?
Paradoxes of Late Antiquity in Philosophy
Paradox in Theological Questions
The Divine Paradox: When Incomparability and Immanence are Balanced
Symmetrical Approach to Language, and Dialectical Logic
Logic and Nomenclature in Paradoxical Apophaticism
Healing with Opposites: Performativity in Paradoxical Apophaticism
Summary
PATH FOUR. AGAINST DISCOURSE: AMODAL APOPHATICISM
The Background: "Bila Kayfa" as a Theological Concept
Divine Nature Uninterpreted: Between Anthropomorphism and Apophaticism
Bila Kayfa Apophaticism and Early Hanafism
Early Ash'arism: From Anti-Interpretivism to Anti-Anthropomorphism
Anti-Interpretivism among Early Sufis?
Anti-Interpretivism during the Formalization of Sufism
Interpretivism in Persian Sufism
Hanbali Sufism and the Qadiriyya
The Emergence of the Rifa'iyya
Suhrawardiyya and the State-Sponsored "Sunni Bila Kayfa" Project
Kubrawi Interpretivism
Bila Kayfa Mysticism in Andalusia: the Background
Sufism and Bila Kayfa in the Thirteenth-Century Muslim West
Summary
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Unsaying God

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

AAR Academy Series

Author Information

Aydogan Kars, Lecturer, Centre for Religious Studies, Monash University

Aydogan Kars earned his Ph.D. in Religion at Vanderbilt University. His primary research field is medieval intellectual history with a focus on Sufism and theology. He has been serving as a Lecturer in the Centre for Religious Studies and the Coordinator of the Islamic Studies Program at Monash University.

Unsaying God

Negative Theology in Medieval Islam

Aydogan Kars

AAR Academy Series

Reviews and Awards

"Unsaying God is an illuminating survey of the 'via negativa' in Islam with a special emphasis on thirteenth- century Sufism. This fascinating book presents the various apophatic approaches of philosophers, theologians, mystics, savants of esoteric knowledge, and traditionalists. The book's in-depth discussions ponder key themes like 'oneness', 'thingness,' and 'the negation of all discursive possibilities, including this very negation itself.' Unsaying God is thought-provoking, extremely informative, and a pleasure to read." - Livnat Holtzman, author of Anthropomorphism in Islam: The Challenge of Traditionalism 700-1350

"Unsaying God is an innovative, theoretically-informed attempt to understand Islamic thought through the prism of negative discourses about the nature of the divine. It is the first serious attempt to analyze apophatic discourses ranging across philosophy, mysticism, and theology in Islam. Kars's work, a major contribution to the study of Islam, will prove to be essential reading for those seeking to locate Islamic studies in wider debates on the study of religion and literature, not least on the theme of apophasis." - Sajjad H. Rizvi, Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History, University of Exeter

"At once historical and phenomenological, Aydogan Kars's Unsaying God unveils the great subtlety with which pre-modern Muslims of various intellectual and spiritual persuasions articulated their experience of the divine, both within and without the confines of language. As such, this book represents a timely intervention in an age where God-talk is often reduced to simplistic binaries by its supporters and detractors alike" - Mohammed Rustom, author of Inrushes of the Spirit: The Mystical Theology of 'Ayn al-Qudat