
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.
This book investigates the diverse strategies of negative theology—the practice of defining God through negation—within the first seven centuries of Islamic intellectual history. Aydogan Kars, a scholar of Islamic thought, utilizes a wide array of Arabic and Persian primary sources to challenge the traditional view of these movements as isolated or opposing orthodoxies. He proposes a framework that categorizes negative speech into four distinct, interconnected paths, arguing that these intellectual practices transcended sectarian and religious boundaries to include Jewish thinkers as well.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars recognize this work as a significant contribution to the field, noting that it provides the first book-length study of negative theology in the Islamic tradition. Readers frequently highlight the author's ability to synthesize complex, multi-lingual sources into a cohesive intellectual history.
Page Count:
336
Publication Date:
2019-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190942460
ISBN-13:
9780190942465
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