DIE ERKENNTNISLEHRE DES 'ADUDADDIN AL-ICI: Ubersetzung und Kommentar des Ersten Buches Seiner Mawaqif
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966. Paperback. From the personal library of noted scholar of Islamic and Jewish philosophy, Joel Kraemer, with his stamp to half-title. xv, 510 pp. + foldout chart. 8vo, sewn binding in printed wraps, deckled edges. Flimsy wrappers a bit worn as expected, very clean and sharp otherwise. 'Professor van Ess, to whose many significant researches all those interested in the history and development of Islamic theology have come to be more and more indebted, here presents us with a book which must surely stand as the most thorough and intensive single study yet to have appeared in the subject of the Kalam. The translation is based on the text of the Mawag found in the Cairo (1325/1907) edition of Gurgani's Sarh, with some fair number of corrections and emendations based on a Berlin manuscript. The translated text is divided into short topical sections each of which is furnished with a brief indication of the author's apparent sources (Fakhruddin Rizi and many others) and is followed by a detailed historical resume of the matters raised in the individual section. Van Ess' work, however, is much more than the common garden variety translation cum commentario, for the commentary, which constitutes the great bulk of this lengthy book, wanders wide and deep, meandering through a great variety of topics as they are brought up directly or by implication in al-Ici's text. The book forms, thus, not a unified study of a single subject-i.e., not a single-minded exposition of Al-Ici's philosophical outlook and its immediate background — but rather a lengthy collection of 'notes', brief studies, discussions, discursions, and digressions that follow the text's own tendeney to recapitulate many of the classical Kalam's disputed questions. Individual parts of the commentary stand as elaborate footnotes or appear as abbreviated articles on separate subjects, some of them quite significant apart from any connection, direct or tangential, that they may have with the Mawqif fi I-muqaddimat. One may note, for example, the long excursus (pp. 257-64) into the problem of uncovering the origins of the oft quoted Sumaniya, whose doctrines he relates definitively, I think-with those of the Indian 'lokayata' (pp. 264 f.) or the insightful discussion (pp. 278-80) of the role of Hasan as-Sabbah and the Shi'a in the reluctant introduction of the Aristotelian logic into the orthodox kalam. Noteworthy also is the discussion (pp. 212-18) of the kalam notion of al-ada as a kind of recognition of physical or natural 'laws' validated, as it were, statistically out of the universal experience of our common world or (pp. 326 ft.) of the almost existentialist notion of anxiety (van Ess does not make the analogy) in which the Mu'tazila try to ground their conception of the 'obligation to speculation' (wugub an-nazar). The book is 'ausgezeichnet deutsch'-compact in style, ponderous, almost overpowering by its thoroughness. In every case the author seems to have construed his writing so as to include (in parentheses) the citation of every conceivably pertinent medieval text and modern study. Control over all this is happily afforded by seventy four pages of indices, to which are added THE MOST EXTENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE KALAM YET PUBLISHED. Most importantly, however, although the commentary is almost entirely historical, one finds none of the haphazard heaping of citations and uncertain groping after superficially conceived historical parallels and origins that have marred many an attempt to investigate the real structure and significance of the kalam and uncover its historical roots. Quite on the contrary, a remarkable wealth of information has been brought to bear on many of the real historical and philosophical problems of the kalam, confidently and with consistent insight, and it is this that gives real value to and will assure the lasting importance of this study.' (R. M. FRANK, review in Journal of American Oriental Society). VERY GOOD. Item #506724
Price: $350.00