In this original and extremely informative work, Kars achieves both a highly impressive breadth and a great degree of subtlety in delineating the developments and interchanges within and between a variety of negative theological approaches. Taking impetus from his doctoral dissertation on apophaticism among thirteenth-century Sufis, Kars has considerably expanded his study to provide a rich history which even takes in aspects of the permeation of Muslim negative theologies among medieval Jews. In his introduction, setting out from the doxographical categories which he translates “paths of negation” (masālik taʿṭīlihim) of the scripturalist al-Tamīmī (b. 1959), Kars problematizes simplistic definitions of Muslim negative theology, such as the identification of Ismaili or Zaydi esotericism as the Muslim apophatic tradition par excellence, or the characterization of Sufi mystical paradox as the supreme “unsaying” of God within medieval Islam. He devotes his own study to “self-negating strategies”, that is, speech-acts concerning God (wherever found) which consciously cancel themselves in performance of the unsayability of God's essence.
The work's organizing principle is the delineation of four apophatic “paths”. The double negation strategy (path one) is a fascinating approach used among Ismailis from the tenth century to achieve expression of the inapplicability of statements on God's essence. Kars provides excellent technical analysis of this strategy, which is devised to counter the problem that the simple negation of a statement concerning God's essence (“G is not X”) actually serves to affirm the “thingness” of its object, in assuming comparability. The solution is to negate the entire negative discourse: “not (G is not X)”, as in the statement that God is “not a thing (lā shay’) and not not a thing (lā lā shay’)”. Kars demonstrates the strategy's link with the peculiar cosmology of Ismailism, but also its wide circulation, arguing that thirteenth-century coalescences between Ismailism and Sufism in Iran and Central Asia are demonstrated by their common emphasis on the unknowability of the divine essence.
The second “path” is taken by Muslim philosophers. In this chapter, Kars’ delineation of negative theological strategies is a thematic thread allowing for an impressive historical overview of the development of key philosophical notions including the negational attributes of God and the epistemological distinction between discursive thought (dianoia) and non-discursive intellection (noesis). Kars posits a strong connection between early Muʿtazilī efforts at preserving divine transcendence and philosophical developments. Sufism appears here in relief to the philosophical approach, since the distinction between the philosophical belief that true knowledge of God's essence occurs only through non-discursive intellection, and the Sufi notion that it is only accessible experientially, comes to the fore.
In discussion of the third path, Kars treats paradoxical apophaticism. He demonstrates first that the earliest instances of paradox appeared not in literary contexts but among Sufis and proto-Sufis from as early as the eighth century. One fascinating insight is that Sufi paradoxical strategies offer a balanced approach to the overriding theological paradox to which all manner of negative theologies respond, namely, God's transcendence (tanzīh) and immanence as expressed in anthropomorphism (tashbīh). Unlike other strategies, the path of paradox is symmetrical, stressing that God is beyond transcendence and immanence, and further, that neither negative nor positive language defines God. Another important finding is that Sufi paradox is not anti-logical. Rather, Sufis accepted the philosophers’ principle of non-contradiction, and performed their paradox within a rule-governed, dialectical logic.
The final path is the path of amodality. Kars nullifies the equation of the notion of bilā kayf (literally, “without [asking] how”) with amodal forms of apophaticism concerning Quranic anthropomorphisms. The term bilā kayf was used both in the context of “transcendent anthropomorphism”, where God's attributes are affirmed at a level inscrutable to human eyes, and of a non-cognitive approach which affirms the form but not the meaning of relevant scriptural statements. Adding to this an interpretive approach, Kars presents an impressive history of the three. He shows that though early Iraqi Sufis followed an interpretive approach, there was a sustained “interruption” of anti-interpretivism in association with Hanbalism and scripturalist Ashʿarism, and that the amodal approach came to dominate Sufi manuals in the period of the canonization of Sufism. In the Muslim West, by contrast, Sufism was broadly unaffected by bilā kayf formulas. Ibn ʿArabī's own interpretivism finds its context in his visionary cosmology.
This study is of interest to students of Islamic intellectual history, religious studies, and beyond. It is most refreshing for the Islamicist to encounter a history which, given its thematic focus, overcomes dividing lines between the theological and philosophical groupings of the Muslim world. This is of general contemporary importance in that the enormous shared space among Muslim and other theologians is stressed over sectarian differences. For the historian, Kars’ mastery of Sufi history, and his challenge to various obsolete assumptions about that history, is of note. Beyond Sufism, Kars treats such a variety of intellectuals that his bibliography is an invaluable source in its own right. Kars’ study will also hold an important place in religious studies in its decisive challenge to various simplistic definitions of negative theology in medieval religion. Inevitable to such an expansive study are occasional instances of over-synthesis. For instance, Kars treats the notion of “suspension of judgement (tawaqquf)” as a form of negative theology. Yet this may be nuanced in that the notion of tawaqquf often arises where proofs on either side of a particular debate accumulate and convince to the extent that the mind cannot arbitrate between positions. The relationship between apophaticism and epistemological scepticism could perhaps be teased out. I found Kars’ translations of a small number of passages rather confusing; for instance, Hollenberg's translation of a passage by Jaʿfar ibn Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. 957) also translated on page 35 was to me the more understandable of the two. There are a handful of missing citations which are the exception to the general rigorousness of Kars’ referencing.
