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Thinking in the Language of Reality: Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnavī (1207–74) and the
Mystical Philosophy of Reason [reviewed by Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford
University Press), v. 29, no...

Book · May 2018

DOI: 10.1093/jis/ety007

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Anthony F. Shaker
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BOOK REVIEWS

Thinking in the Language of Reality: Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnavī (1207–74 CE) and the Mystical Philosophy of
Reason
By Anthony F. Shaker (Philadelphia, PA: Xlibris, 2015), xiv + 337 pp. Price PB $17.30. EAN
978–1479718030.

This study focuses on a specific issue or constellation of issues infused with the tantalising,
apparently oxymoronic quality of the title, uniting mysticism and reason. It concerns a
critical point of convergence between the Sufi and philosophical currents in the history of
Muslim thought, constituted by the contribution of Ibn ʿArabī’s great disciple and son-in-
law, Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī. Shaker is no mere archivist of ideas. His approach in his book,
whose origins lie in his McGill PhD dissertation, is not really situated within the field of
Muslim intellectual history but within a wider philosophical context, drawing on more
recent European thinkers such as Hegel and Heidegger. In other words, there is a pull here
towards a ‘comparative philosophy’ framework.
The starting points of Shaker’s analysis lie in Ibn Sīnā’s thought. Qūnawī is presented as
having been challenged, at the foundational level of his epistemology, by a surprising,
somewhat neglected element of scepticism in Ibn Sīnā. Qūnawī responds to this challenge
from this great spokesman of the Greco-Arabic philosophical tradition with a set of Sufi
solutions, developed by him from Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas. To be sure, it is a surprise that Ibn
Sīnā, the arch-rationalist of Muslim thought, expressed any doubt about the scope of
reason. Yet the sceptical element has potentially far-reaching implications, pertaining as it
does to nothing less than the ‘realities (ḥaqā’iq) of things’. For we may come to know,
claims Ibn Sīnā in the Taʿlīqāt, the constitutive differentiae of things but never their
essential realities (p. 41): ‘On the question of science one never searches for essential and
constitutive things’ (p. 23, quoting from Ibn Sīnā’s Ishārāt). The impact of this position on
Ibn Sīnā’s view of cause-effect relations is even likened by Shaker to Hume’s view; i.e., Ibn
Sīnā seems to have been acutely conscious of the vulnerability of establishing cause-effect
relations empirically and inductively. Although Ibn Sīnā held effects to be ontologically
necessary (‘by another’) in their causation, coming to know the underlying causal
sequences with certainty was quite another matter. Ibn Sīnā had put forward a searching
criticism of Galen’s probabilistic logic.
… The step-by-step process by which sensory experience may yield comprehension is
presented in Ibn Sīnā’s Taʿlīqāt as follows. The individual begins by distinguishing ambiguous
from stable aspects; he thereby gleans concomitants and properties; he thence approaches a
kind of ‘synoptic’ (mujmala) knowledge whilst certain concomitants remain inevitably
unknown. Ibn Sīnā crucially adds: ‘his way of knowing is the reverse of what it ought to be’. Ibn
Sīnā is thus sensitive to the gap in induction from experience of particulars. This seems very
 intriguing to me—his wider epistemology seems subject to the same concern of a conclusion-
thesis gap addressed in his proof of God, the Burhān al-ṣiddīqīn. He states explicitly here that
knowledge should ideally proceed top–down, not vice versa.
… If the obstacle to apprehending the simple, unitary realities of things is the
compositeness of our facultative, sensorial perceptions, this can be countered through a
reversion to our own simplicity: ‘the oneness of the object called for an exfoliation of one level
from another’. Shaker adds the following decisive statement: ‘Qūnawī described this removal,
in mystical terms, as the person’s confirmation in a state which began with God’s words, ‘I was
his hearing and his sight,’ and beyond that level. For, all knowledge was God’s. God, not some
deductive sleight of hand, freely bestowed limited knowledge on us. Only those able to surpass
what veils there were through the ‘captivating holds of divine providence’, at every level of
realization, could see the form of the world as a reflected ‘image of the world of incorporeal
meanings and realities’, every form of which was a locus of exteriorization and a reflected
image of the hidden incorporeal reality’ (p. 166).
This is a challenging, ambitious book which sometimes makes infuriating demands on its
audience…Shaker presents this brilliant, highly individual thinker, Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, with a
formidable dynamism and analytical verve, and exposes the richness and overarching unity of
his thought. His approach to this major Sufi thinker is strenuously philosophical and his book
constitutes a noteworthy contribution to the growing body of modern research on the school
of Ibn ʿArabī.

Toby Mayer
The Institute of Ismaili Studies E-mail: TMayer@iis.ac.uk
doi:10.1093/jis/ety007
Published online 30 January 2018

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