Unsaying God
Dados do Periódico
| Tipo | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Editora | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780190942458 |
| Open Library | OL21363629W |
| Total de publicações | 7 |
| Período coberto | 2019 - 2019 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Citada por | 11 |
| Fator de impacto | 0.857 |
| Índice h | 1 |
| Índice i10 | 1 |
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 explores the negative theological movements that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam. It shows 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. As an introductory work, it aims to encompass vast fields of scholarship and diverse intellectual schools and figures, in order to tell the story of negative theology and apophaticism and to become a stepping-stone for further research in the field. It is an encompassing book, accessible to a wide audience while addressing the advanced reader of religion who wants to learn about the diverse ways in which God has been unsaid for centuries
Against Discourse: Amodal Apophaticism
Since its emergence as a systematic discipline, the scholarship on prophetic traditions depicted itself as the heir of a scripturalist apophaticism, which cancels itself in favor of the unknowability of the divine nature and the incomprehensibility of the sacred Qurʾanic discourse on it. The main features of this tradition were as follows: (1) the conviction that the Qurʾan is the uncreated, eternal word of God. (2) This premise was fundamental i…
Necessarily Dissimilar: Philosophical Apophaticism
In the centuries following al-Kindī, Muslim philosophers developed a coherent family of apophatic theological positions on the divine essence and its accessibility. The recurring aspects of this philosophical apophaticism were (1) a negative theology of divine attributes that reads them as negations, (2) the unknowability of the divine essence, closely connected with an Aristotelian version of the Neoplatonic distinction between discursive though…
Conclusion
This chapter highlights the broader theoretical points that can be made on the basis of the analysis made in the previous chapters. It engages with contemporary philosophical and theological discussions beyond Islamic studies, criticizing the reduction of negative theology to paradoxicality, and the modern association of apophaticism with mysticism, critical thinking, and morality. It further argues that “negative theology” does not address a sui…
Double Negation: Ismāʿīlī Apophaticism
This chapter introduces the contours of the classical Ismāʿīlī negative theology of the divine essence. The apophatic path developed by Ismāʿīlī scholars had distinct cosmological markers and a logical structure that enabled the performative self-cancellation of discourse about the inaccessible divine essence. Respecting their diversity, and without essentializing or dehistoricizing them, we can highlight three general features that widely circul…
Dedication
“Yes and No”: Paradoxical Apophaticism and Dialectical Logic
This chapter introduces paradoxical apophaticism on the divine essence and tests the common association of paradox and Sufism, with a particular focus on the self-contradictory phrases and statements in the “X-not-X” forms. Neither the employment nor the celebration of paradoxes were uniquely Sufi phenomenon. Yet it was primarily Sufis from early on who consciously adopted paradoxical apophatic approaches to the divine essence. I argue that the e…
Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam
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 explores the negative theological movements that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam. It shows that there were multiple and often competing strategies for self-negating speech i…
Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam
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 explores the negative theological movements that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam. It shows that there were multiple and often competing strategies for self-negating speech i…
Unsaying God: Negative Theology in Medieval Islam
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 explores the negative theological movements that flourished in the first seven centuries of Islam. It shows that there were multiple and often competing strategies for self-negating speech i…
Against Discourse: Amodal Apophaticism
Since its emergence as a systematic discipline, the scholarship on prophetic traditions depicted itself as the heir of a scripturalist apophaticism, which cancels itself in favor of the unknowability of the divine nature and the incomprehensibility of the sacred Qurʾanic discourse on it. The main features of this tradition were as follows: (1) the conviction that the Qurʾan is the uncreated, eternal word of God. (2) This premise was fundamental i…
Necessarily Dissimilar: Philosophical Apophaticism
In the centuries following al-Kindī, Muslim philosophers developed a coherent family of apophatic theological positions on the divine essence and its accessibility. The recurring aspects of this philosophical apophaticism were (1) a negative theology of divine attributes that reads them as negations, (2) the unknowability of the divine essence, closely connected with an Aristotelian version of the Neoplatonic distinction between discursive though…
Conclusion
This chapter highlights the broader theoretical points that can be made on the basis of the analysis made in the previous chapters. It engages with contemporary philosophical and theological discussions beyond Islamic studies, criticizing the reduction of negative theology to paradoxicality, and the modern association of apophaticism with mysticism, critical thinking, and morality. It further argues that “negative theology” does not address a sui…
Double Negation: Ismāʿīlī Apophaticism
This chapter introduces the contours of the classical Ismāʿīlī negative theology of the divine essence. The apophatic path developed by Ismāʿīlī scholars had distinct cosmological markers and a logical structure that enabled the performative self-cancellation of discourse about the inaccessible divine essence. Respecting their diversity, and without essentializing or dehistoricizing them, we can highlight three general features that widely circul…
Dedication
“Yes and No”: Paradoxical Apophaticism and Dialectical Logic
This chapter introduces paradoxical apophaticism on the divine essence and tests the common association of paradox and Sufism, with a particular focus on the self-contradictory phrases and statements in the “X-not-X” forms. Neither the employment nor the celebration of paradoxes were uniquely Sufi phenomenon. Yet it was primarily Sufis from early on who consciously adopted paradoxical apophatic approaches to the divine essence. I argue that the e…