Iqbal’s Theory of Knowledge Essay

Iqbal raft non be classed under both of the three schools of philosophical thought the empiricist, the keen-wittedist or the intuitionist. In his theory of familiarity, sense perception, reason and intuition, wholly ar combined in an organic self-colored. He knew safe well that light from single direction alone could not illumine the self-colored of populace in all its gentlemans gentle unvarnishedations. The onto discursive problem needs to be approached from all angles, scientific and religious, in order to warrant some articulate, luminous and well-established grounds.It is in the light of this view that he advances his theory of familiarity, which promises both direct march and indirect ascertain of theology or realitythe former by intuition or conterminous produce and the latter by reflective thought. Rationalism, though not admired, is not wholly condemned and discarded by him. On the contrary, according to him, if rationalism is not divorced from concrete r eality, it represents truth.This is visible from his own office and is withal betrayed by his admiration for prophets and occults and non- deep rationalists, whose quest and yearning for a co presentnt system of bases resting on a rational foundation and rendering religion more secure and baccate is well-known1. He admits and justifies the metaphysical methods. In his words, instanter since the transformation and guidance of mans inside(a) and come to the foreer life is the essential aim of religion, it is unequivocal that the religious truths which it embodies mustiness not remain unsettled.No one would hazard workion on the al-Qaeda of doubtful principles of conduct. Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in neater need of rational foundation of its crowning(prenominal) principles than even the dogmas of science. Science may even ignore a rational metaphysics indeed it has ignored it so far. Religion can hardly afford to ignore the search for a reconciliat ion of the opposition of construe and justification of the environment in which humanity finds itself. 2 solely rationalism, as preached by Iqbal, is not based upon discursive categories or mere abstract representations.Born of and nursed in the realism of purely abstract ideas it is not divorced from concrete, reality. It has a definite function to perform which should not, however, be over-emphasised to the detriment of early(a) familiarity-yielding elementsat the bell of sense endure and other sources of noesis. Thus, while Iqbal embraces rationalism, he is not prepared to justify it at the cost of sense become. Abstract thinking apart from the latter is of no consequence and even dangerous. He criticises Socrates, Plato, Mutazilites and other thinkers for avoiding visible reality as unreliable and misleading.Socrates restricts the field of inquiry to the human problems particularly to morality. Trees, he says, can teach me nothing. Even inwardly the human field he bel ieves familiarity is possible yet by dint of concepts. 3 Only reason could oblige true and ultimate know-ledge sensation gives only imagination or at the most belief. Plato also accuses sense-perception as capable of giving mere opinion and not real knowledge. He rests all knowledge upon pure reason and weaves the all in all fabric of Supreme and Ultimate realism out of ideas, taken as Eternal and Really Real.This attitude towards sense-perception is not without a parallel in the consequent thought. Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazali, the former while defending and the latter while attacking Greek Philosophy, take away troddden the same course of instruction as far as the avoidance of empirical reality is concerned. Iqbal attacks Ibn Rushd as well as Al-Ghazali. He contends that Ibn Rushd, by dint of and through his doctrine of Immortality of the Active Intellect, takes a view opposed to what the Quran has to say about the value and tidy sum of the human ego, and thus obscures mans vision of himself, his beau ideal and his piece.Similarly, Al-Ghazalis philosophical scepticism is held by him as an unsafe basis for religion it is also not wholly justified by the essence of the Quran4. All this shows that Iqbal is in favour of taking full congnizance of the visible and concrete reality. He does not win mans contemplative spirit to the extent that it may lead to his withdrawal from the world of matter, which. with its tempora. combine and shifting phenomena, is organically link up to Ultimate Reality. Hence, for the purposes of knowledge, it is entirely inconceivable to turn away from the material world and to withdraw into a purely contemplative circuit.There is no possibility of complete separation or independence of thought from concrete experience. On the contrary, one should take his start from here because it is the mental erudition of the concrete that runs it possible for the intellect of man to pass beyond the concrete. 5 He invites us to take l ook of and to be fully awake to the material phenomena with all their passing and changing scenes and sightsheaven and earth, sun and stars, clouds and mountains, desolate and oceans.They are the signs of the Ultimate Reality and it is the duty of- one to reflect on these signs and not to pass by them as if one is like the deaf and the filmdom, for one who does not see these signs in this life result remain blind to the realities of the life to come. 7 They are the manifestations of Divine Effulgence and reflective observation into their ultimate spirit reveals the secret of Divine Reality8. As a matter of feature, Iqbal takes an eclectic view of the upstanding question. He preaches incomplete reason nor sense-perception exclusively. Sensation creation a pell-mell jumble, upholds Iqbal, cannot lead to knowledge.It is reason that im move harmony, organisation and coherence to this chaotic jumble and moulds it into a knowledge-yielding pattern. He pleads for reflective observ ation and scientific experiment. He takes full advantage of ripe empirical science, though he never stops short at the visible scenery of Reality as the last word in the res publica of existence. The sensible Reality is only a symbolization of the Ultimate Reality, and the empirical attitude would bring us into receive with it. Quran also takes both the conceptual and non-conceptual attitude towards existence.It recognizes the rationalistic attitude as the cause of the superiority of man over angels, and goes on to say that man has the ability to name things which endows him with the power of capturing them intellectually and at that placeby rising in the level of existence. But concepts here are not abstract logical entities. They are based on facts of sensation and are indissolubly linked with the sensible and observable aspect of Reality. In other words, the knowledge of things is described by Quran as the knowledge of names. 9 Again, Quran repeatedly invites man to take a count of the physical phenomena.As lqbal puts it, the Quran sees in the humble be a recipient role of Divine Inspiration and constantly calls upon the reader to observe the perpetual change of the winds. the alternation of day and night, the clouds, the starry heavens, and the planets limpid through space post10. Iqbal fully agrees with the non-classical attitude of Quran and develops his own theory in consonance with it. Quran has a place for both metaphysics and empirical sciences. And it is through metaphysical search-light that Iqbal examines scientific researches and develops his own theory.But Iqbal is fully existent to the limitations and short comings of knowledge gained through the normal channels. Firstly, scientific investigation and analytic thought have entire limitations which are unavoidable. Scientific compendium is never complete and perfect(a) in its nature. Reality is an organic whole. Its split are united by vital internal connections. This underlying rel ationship confers a wholeness in the diversities and pluralities. Analysis would select a part of reality which, when taken apart, would become lifeless, shorn of the qualities it has by virtue of its integral position within a whole.It is rendered meaningless apart from its relations, as a part unconnected from its pattern, a single dot or line taken out from the whole picture. Besides, analysis because of the spacious complexity of its object can never attain ideal completeness. The ideal analysis involves the description of all the constitutive elements of a subject. It fails if any single element escapes notice or the units reached in the process are not ultimate. However, much(prenominal) an ideal cannot be accomplished, hampered as we are by our limitations.If we go a footstep further we find that the defect of analysis would also distort implication which is based upon it. In synthesis those elements only are combined that are discovered in the process of analysis. Thus the incompleteness of analysis results in the incompleteness of synthesis. It is obvious that an object discovered in this manner is not what it actually is besides merely what it is mentally cons-trued. Even if the completeness of analysis is taken for granted, what we cannot afford to overlook is the importance of the vital inner connections underlying the whole reality, which are at sea through the analytic procedure.Spaulding, who believes that the whole is nothing but the part and their properties and the relations relating the parts and the possibly specific properties of the whole,11 has tried to remedy this defect of analysis. He asserts that the knowledge of the parts when accompanied with the knowledge of their relations could give the knowledge of the whole. This assertion carries some truth in the automatonlike realm but is futile in its application to the knowledge of an organic whole. The properties of the whole can be known from the observation of the behaviour o f the whole as a whole analysis does not recrudesce them. 12 Iqbal has kept this fact in view and does not over-emphasise the role of the analytic method, though he assigns to it a legitimate place in the practical domain. According to him, empirical sciences give a sectional and fractional knowledge of reality which, though trust worthy, verifiable and even useful so far as the prediction and control of events of nature go, does not explain Ultimate Reality in its entirety.Glorify as they do in an artificial, selective and sectional process which uses concepts relatively applicable to different levels of experience, they fail to give the complete view of Reality. 13 It is an irony that our analytic thought first puts a veil on the guinea pig of Reality14 and then endeavours to penetrate through it. Its path is zigzag and complex its approach and progress are inert and slow. 15 Yet another difficulty besets the knowledge of ultimate reality. The subjective element, as the consti tuent element in the sensible Reality, has rendered the really Real unknowable.Kant goes so far as to reduce even space and term to subjective modes or forms of apprehending Reality they are no more objective realities, empirical concepts or outbound intuitions. They are merely the constructions or forms of inner sense, the necessary a -priori representations under-lying all outermost intuitions. 16 The manifold of senses when it reaches us, has lost its purity in order to reach us it has to fulfil the formal conditions and is bound to pass through the coloured glasses of space and metre. The thing in itself is only the limiting idea.Its function is merely regulative. If there is some actuality corresponding to the idea it falls outside the boundaries of experience and consequently its existence cannot be rationally demonstrated. 17 Iqbal also believes that serial time and space are subjective and not objective realities. 18 But he disagrees with Kant in so far as the acquisitio n of the knowledge of Ultimate Reality is concerned. The Ultimate Reality lies outside the normal level of experience, inaccessible to sense-perception and pure reason.But the normal level is not the only knowledge-yielding level. 19 Though Iqbal is convinced that serial time and space ate subjective, he departs from the view that they are the final exam and inflexible mental forms determining and limiting all knowledge. He takes the view that our intuitive experience is not determined and systematised by space and time. When we dive within our own self and pass from sense-perception to intuition of the self, we distinguish Reality, not as a concept or intellectual onstruction, not as a hearty block or substratum underlying or holding together all experience, but as a dynamic and original flow living in pure while in which time is divested of spatiality and appears in its organic wholeness. However, it is no less true that this stage is attainable only through profound meditatio n, when the appreciative self gets the upper hand and all its potentialities are propagateed. It is now that the psychological experience expands into the intuition of Ultimate RealityGod.It discloses Ultimate Reality as a flux, a dynamic and creative flow that involves a progressive synthesis of various stages, in which life, thought and purpose all broadcast to form an organic whole. 20 Iqbal identifies intuition or immediate experience with go to bed. learning or love would unfold to him new spheres of illumination, wherein unroll vistas of Reality comprehending Divine Presence itself. In contrast, the knowledge yielded by intellect is sectional, piece-meat and fragmental because it is involved in the labyrinth of space and time.The knowledge through intuition is not imparted partially and byinnuendo. It is grounded in the deeper and higher self of man. It is incorporeal and eternal and leads directly to the incorporeal and the eternal. 21 Knowledge through love or intuition means knowledge through the heart, wherein we have change but no succession, pure duration but no serial time. 22 It comes with a surer step, has a higher and more profound air of mandate about it and is born out of direct and immediate luminousness. But it should not be construed that intuition is ill-sorted to analytic thought or intellect.Love and intellect both aim at the knowledge of reality and differ only in the courses they adopt. The intellect grasps and views certain parts of reality as abstracted from the whole it gives only the temporal aspect of reality. Intuition reveals the reality in its wholeness and fulness. It is the method which takes things as a whole without waiting for analysis. Through a comprehensive grasp it gives the deepest truth. It forms that point of vantage which affords a vista of the whole domain of Reality. Rather, it is the gateway at which Truth and Reality rap and knock and enter our soul. Intuition and intellect together may be visualised as a double-edged sword in mans hand. With one edge he invades the Ultimate Reality with file other he invades the Universe. In other words, the ego has two eyes with one eye he sees and approaches the inner and infrared Reality, with the other, the visible Reality. If the ego sees with one eye, it commits a great sin if it uses both eyes it reaches its destination. 23 Neither of them constitutes the consummate(a) method or the only road to truth. Both should be employed and potentiated in the pursuit of exhaustive knowledge.They have a common source and are complementary to each other. Intuition is only a higher developmental state of intellect, and in order to view Reality as a whole it is necessary that we supplement intuition with intellect. 24 Intellect, when it is fused with love, becomes, as it were, illuminated by Divine Light similarly, love when buttressed by intellect becomes more powerful and potent. 25 Knowledge based entirely upon reason and intellect, the intricate l abyrinth of abstract reasoning, can lead to that articulation of beliefs which constitutes proof and demonstrated knowledge.But unless intellect is supplemented with intuition, this knowledge would become narrow, partial and lifeless and would lead to stagnation and pedantry. Intuition is its life and spirit it is its ruh ul-qudus without which it would be reduce to a mere magic show, too impotent and crippled to lead us on to fruitful results. 26 Intellect, if not guided by love, becomes devilish or satanican evil force. It generates darkness and leads the world to blind power, chaos and destruction. Unanimated by love it is dead and lifeless, and its arrow, unguided as it is, flies without aim. 27 Let it be quickened and guided by intuition, love, yearning, and it shall yield knowledge par excellencegood, rounded and indispensable knowledgeknowledge which is power, encompassing heaven and deriving light from the stars, which contains the description of the whole existence and to which is related the destiny of the whole of existence. Intellect infused with intuition gives celestial and divine knowledge. 28 Intuition or love is thus the very faithfulness of life and regulative power. It expands and enriches spirit, and confers vision.At the same time, it is corrective of intellect and abstract thought, of science and common sense. If the above analysis is correct, the unqualified dismissal of the role of intuition or love in the achievement of knowledge as unscientific by the apostles of reason would appear to be highly unreasonable. Though intuition is a mode of dealing with Reality in which sense-perception has no part to play, yet it gives knowledge, which is as concrete as that yielded by any other experience. 29 Intuition has its peculiar characteristics which differentiate it from intellect and sense-perception.They can be enumerated as follows 1. It gives the direct and immediate experience of Aboslute Reality or God. God is not a mathematical enti ty or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience. 30 Intuition gives the experience of God as sense-experience gives the experience of perceptible reality. And as regions of normal experience are subject to rendition of sense-data for our knowledge of the foreign world, so the region of mystic experience is subject to interpretation for our knowledge of God. 312. abstruse experience is characterised with un-analysable wholeness.It gives reality as an indivisible organic unity, not as broken segments with many wanting links. The reason is that it does not entangle itself in a sectional treatment of reality, which would allow only a selective study of certain parts of its visible aspects. This modus operandi is the de-light of rational consciousness, which specialises in analysis and synthesis as dictated by the practical needs of adaptation to our environment. 32 As for example, out of the innumerable sense-data in a room, our ration al consciousness selects only that which on synthesis would yield us the single experience of a table. 33In mystic experience which includes the cognitive element in its minimum degree, there is no possibility of such analysis.It is unique in so far as it ranges beyond these frontiers and brings us into contact with the total transportation system of reality, in which all the diverse stimuli run into one another forming a single un-analysable unity, and in which the so-so(predicate) distinctness of subject and object does not exist. 34But we should not run away with the idea that mystic experience is some mysterious faculty35 having no continuity with usual consciousness, as maintained by William James.3. God or Ultimate and Perfect Reality is both immanent and transcendent. He not only permeates and encompasses the conception but also His domain rolls beyond it. He is the unique Other Self that transcends and encompasses the private personality of the finite individual Self. My stic experience brings the mystic into direct communion with God, momentarily suppressing36 his own individuality. He is for the time being submerged in Supreme Reality and loses consciousness of himself as a distinct and private personality.But he emerges from his experience all the richer for in this brief moment of intimate friendship with God he has perceived Him as an Independent Other Self and as a concrete Individual. It is, therefore, erroneous to presume that the mystic state is a mere retirement into the mists of pure subjectivity. 37 Far from being so the contents of this experience are as objective as the knowledge yielded by an ordinary affectionate experience. This may sound strange because we tend to believe that all objective experience must necessarily stem from sense-perception. But it is an extremely fallacious view.For, if it were true, we could never be sure of the reality of our social experience in so far as we know others as conscious beings. Granted that t he knowledge of visible reality is based on sense-perception. granted also that the knowledge of our own inner and outer self is based on inner reflection and sense-perception, but when it comes to the knowledge of other conscious beings as such we are undergoing immediate experiencewe are inferring the existence of a similar consciousness in them on the analogy of our own emotional states, which are exhibited by the two of us by similar physical movements.We do not tarry to work out or belabour the analogy in our daily lives but the knowledge that the individual before us is a conscious being floods our reason as an immediate experience, which is further supplemented by his response to our signals a fact which gives completeness to our fragmentary meanings. We never have got any doubt about the validity of this knowledge because of its inferential quality. In the ultimate analysis the mystic and the social experience are parallel to each other and they- therefore belong to the sa me category.4. The mystic experience is direct and immediate and hence does not lend itself to communication as such. it is feeling alternatively than thought, but like all other feelings it has a thought element which gives it direction and shapes it into an idea. it has two aspects non-temporal and temporal. The non-temporal aspect is feeling, whereas the temporal aspect is idea. The non-temporal aspect is also not without a sense of direction. Feeling is outward-pushing as idea is outward-reporting.Feeling is ever directed towards something that is feeling, some objective which transforms its characteristic instability into stability. It gives the direct vision of reality, But mystic experience, unswayed as it is by discursive intellect, would not lend itself to transmission in logical forms. Nevertheless it seeks expression in thought and can be conveyed as interpreted by the prophet or the mystic who has experienced it. 395. The mystic eperience reveals Reality as an eternal whole unbounded by past and future, as a single eternal now. nd establishes the unreality of the serial character of space and establishes the unreality of the serial character of space and time. But this state does not abide. It gives the vision of reality and shortly fades away leaving a sense of authority behind it. 40 Both the mystic and prophet gift to the normal levels of experience but with this difference that the return of the prophet may be fraught with infinite meaning for mankind. 41 The path to intuition, according to Iqbal, lies through religion.The intuition of the self as a psychological experience is approach-able to all even at the normal level. But the higher intuition or the intuition of God is achieved gradually through a definite course only as the religious consciousness expands in intensity and richness. It consists of three stages, faith, thought and discovery. The first is the outcome when the individual, through his adherence to the unconditional comman d, cultivates self-discipline. Here we have the undemurring surrender to Divine Law without the interference of reason or logical demonstration.It enables man to find his ecological niche in the set-up of political and social life. But so far as the evolution of mans inner self is concerned it is of no consequence. This stage leads to the next where reason and rational understanding manifest themselves as the source and ground of the authority of discipline, thus basing religion on metaphysics or philosophy.This is followed by the terzetto and highest stage where philosophy gives place to psychology and the individual develops a yearning to attain direct contact with Divine Reality. It is here that religion becomes a matter of assimilation of life and power and the individual achieves a free personality, not by releasing himself from the fetters of the law, but by discovering the ultimate source of the law within the depths of his own consciousness. 42 The Book is not imposed as s omething external but is revealed to a prophet. It is the period of discovery or intuition. The climax of religious life, however, is the discovery of the ego as an individual deeper than his conceptually describable habitual self-hood.It is in contact with the Most Real that the ego discovers its uniqueness, its metaphysical status and the possibility of service in that status. Strictly speaking, the experience which leads to this discovery is not a conceptually manageable intellectual fact it is a vital fact, an attitude consequent on an inner biological transformation which cannot be captured in the net of logical categories. It can embody itself only in a world-making or world-shaking act and in this form alone the content of this timeless experience can diffuse itself in the time-movement, and make itself effectively visible to the eye of history.It seems that the method of dealing with Reality by means of concepts is not at all a serious way of dealing with it. Science does n ot care whether its electron is a real entity or not. It may be a mere symbol, a mere convention. Religion, which is essentially a mode of actual living, is the only serious way of handling Reality. 43 Science deals with concepts, factual reality or the causality-bound aspect of nature, but the physical, sensible and external causality-bound aspect of nature does not exhaust the realm of Reality.The other aspect of reality is not less important than the visible one. It invades consciousness from another direction. untouched by rational thought dealing with the optically present universe. This broad path can be opened through religion only, because religion concerns itself with deed, which is the outcome of the constant attitude of mans whole personality or structure to reality. The deed, i. e. the control of mans physiological and psychological processes, is dynamically related to reality and prepares the finite self for immediate association with Infinite Ego. 44Hence, religion, as lqbal would have it, is not a mere collection of dogmas or theological formulae Conservatism is as bad in religion as in any other department of human activity. It destroys the egos creative freedom and closes up the paths of gratifying spiritual enterprise. 45Religion in its highest manifestation does not imply the life-denying and fact-avoiding attitude. It does not work as an external imposition on the free and spontaneous expression of human personality. On the contrary, it is the open sesame to zippy and mere fruitful directions to communicate with the Ultimately Real.It awakens and actualizes the level lying close to the normal level, directing ones vision to the inner side of the self. It regenerates the inner powers and possibilities of the human self. It expands and enriches the fields of human thought and emotion. It unlocks fresh spiritual sources. During this period man gets the power to overcome his intellectual reconstruction and to penetrate the crust of causal seq uence and spatio-temporal manifold. He comes into contact with the everlasting and eternal source of life and power.Here we have a picture of Iqbals theory of knowledge in which he endeavours to give us a confidential information to the Ultimate Reality. Whether the perfect knowledge of the actual and The Ultimate Reality, of the final nature and essence of things is possible is a very subtle question. Iqbals answer to it is an unhesitating, bold and optimistic affirmation. Reality can be known, grasped and grasp not only in its partial and fragmentary aspect but also in its completeness. The great merit and virtue of his theory lies in the fact that he does not adopt and exalt any one method at the cost of the others.