Karim Shoaib

by Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva

Karim Shoaib

Autumn has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, with leaves adopting the most diverse and colourful shades. A similar diversity, albeit with an underlying common thread, can be appreciated in the work of Karim Shoaib, whom we are glad to feature in this month’s Small Portraits.

Karim read for a BA in Philosophy (2022) at the University of Cambridge (UK), writing his thesis on egoless solipsism and the mystical in early Wittgenstein. He remained at Cambridge for an MPhil in Philosophy (2023), focusing his research on the incomprehensibility of absolute infinity – a theme he found common to analytic philosophy (e.g., Cantor) and Neoplatonism. Karim is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Edinburgh (UK), supervised by Damian Caluori and Fedor Benevich. His dissertation explores apophaticism and the ineffable oneness of God in ancient and medieval philosophy.

The central idea of Karim’s project is that the philosophical search for a single, self-sufficient first principle of everything leads the inquirer to a divine reality lying wholly beyond the limits of reason. This overturns philosophy from the aim of explanatory system building to mystical ascent. To treat such ideas philosophically, so far as is possible, his work considers such things as the nature of predication, ontological dependence, the subject-object structure of thinking, and the nature of the self. Karim finds the resources to explore these ideas in the rich Neoplatonic tradition, where he looks primarily at Greek and Islamic thinkers. He is particularly interested in Plotinus’s views about the One and how the Ismailis conceived of God. The Ismailis are an Islamic sect, philosophically influenced by Greek Neoplatonism, known for their apophatic understanding of God’s oneness and their esoteric Quranic exegesis. In Karim’s opinion, the philosophical doctrines of the Ismailis remain understudied; hence, with his research, he aims to remedy this.

If you want to know more about Karim’s work, feel free to contact him at karimahmedshoaib@gmail.com