Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Lecture VII: IS RELIGION POSSIBLE?

Lecture delivered in a meeting of the fifty-fourth session of the Aristotelian Society, London, held on 5 December 1932 with Professor J. Macmurray in the chair, followed by a discussion by Professor Macmurray and Sir Francis Younghusband - cf. ‘Abstract of the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for the Fifty-Fourth Session’, inProceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), XXXIII (1933), 341.

The Lecture was published in the saidProceedings of the Aristotelian Society , pp. 47-64, as well as inThe Muslim Revival (Lahore), I/iv (Dec. 1932), 329-49.

1. This is a reference to Allama Iqbal’s own father, who was a devout Sufâ; cf. S. Sulaim«n Nadvâ, Sair-i Afgh«nist«n, p. 179; also S. Nadhâr Niy«zâ,Iqb«l ke Àëîur , pp. 60-61. This bold but religiously most significant statement, I personally feel, is Allama’s own; it has been attributed here to an unnamed ‘Muslim Sufi’ perhaps only to make it more presentable to the orthodoxy; see M. Saeed Sheikh, ‘Philosophy of Man’,Iqbal Review , XIX/i (April-June 1988), 13-16, found expression in Allama’s verse, viz.Kulliy«t-i Iqb«l (Urdë),B«l-i Jibrâl , Pt. II, Ghazal 60, v. 4:

Unless the Book’s each verse and part

Be revealed unto your heart,

Interpreters, though much profound,

Its subtle points cannot expound.

2. Cf.Critique of Pure Reason , Introduction, section vi, pp. 57-58; also Kemp Smith’sCommentary to Kant’s ‘Critique’ , pp. 68-70. Metaphysics, if it means knowledge of the ‘transcendent’, or of things-in-themselves, was rejected by Kant as dogmatic, because it does not begin with a critical examination of human capacity for such knowledge. Reference may here be made to one of the very significant jottings by Allama Iqbal on the closing back page of his own copy of Carl Rahn’sScience and the Religious Life (London, 1928), viz. ‘Is religion possible? Kant’s problem’; cf. Muhammad Siddiq,Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library , pp. 21-22 and Plate No. 7.

3. The ‘principle of indeterminacy’ was so re-christened by A. S. Eddington in hisNature of the Physical World , p. 220. Now more often known as ‘principle of uncertainty’ or ‘uncertainty principle’, it was ‘announced’ by the physicist philosopher Heisenberg inZeitschrift fü r Physik , XLIII (1927), 172-98. Broadly speaking, the principle states that there is an inherent uncertainty in describing sub-microscopic process. For instance, if the position of an electron is determined, there remains a measure of uncertainty about its momentum. As in a complete casual description of a system both the properties must needs be accurately determined, many physicists and philosophers took this ‘uncertainty’ to mean that the principle of causality had been overthrown.

4. Cf.Fusës al-Hikam (ed. ‘Afâfâ), I, 108, II, 11-12 - the words of ‘the great Muslim Sufâ philosopher’ are:al-khalqu ma’qël-un w’al-Haqqu mahsës-un mashhëd-un . It is noteworthy that this profound mystical observation is to be found in one of Allama Iqbal’s verses composed as early as 1903; cf.B«qây«t-i Iqbal , p. 146, v. 2.

5. For the Sufi`doctrine of plurality of time and space stated in Lecture III, pp. 60-61 and Lecture V, pp. 107-10 on the basis of the then a rare Persian MS:Gh«yat al-Imk«n fi Dir«yat al-Mak«n (The Extent of Possibility in the Science of Space) ascribed by Allama Iqbal to the eminent Sufâ poet (Fakhr al-Dân) ‘Ir«qâ, see Lecture III, note 34; cf. also Allama’s letter to Dr M. ‘Abdull«h Chaghat«‘â in Iqbalnamah, II, 334.

6. Cf. John Passamore,A Hundred Years of Philosophy , p. 98. In fact both these pronouncements on metaphysics are to be found in Hans Vaihinger’s work referred to in the next note. Vaihinger in his chapter on Nietzsche tells us that ‘Lange’s theory of metaphysics as a justified form of ‘poetry’ made a deep impression upon Nietzsche’ (p. 341) and he also alludes to Nietzsche’s patiently asking himself: ‘Why cannot we learn to look upon metaphysics and religion as the legitimate play of grown ups?’ (p. 346, note). Both these passages are underlined in Allama’s personal copy of Vaihinger’s work (cf. M. Siddiq,op. cit ., p. 6).

7. This is a reference to the title: The Philosophy of ‘As If’ (1924), translation ofDie Philosophie des Als Ob (1911), a work of the German Kantian philosopher Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933). The ‘as if’ philosophy known as fictionism is an extreme form of James’s pragmatism or Dewey’s instrumentalism; it, however, traces its descent from Kant through F. A. Lange and Schopenhauer. It holds that as thought was originally an aid and instrument in struggle for existence it still is incapable of dealing with purely theoretical problems. Basic concepts and principles of natural sciences, economic and political theory, jurisprudence, ethics, etc., are merely convenient fictions devised by the human mind for practical purposes - practical life and intuition, in fact, are higher than speculative thought.

One meets quite a few observations bearing on Vaihinger’s doctrine in Allama’s writings, for example, the following passage in ‘Note on Nietzsche’: ‘According to Nietzsche the ‘I’ is a fiction. It is true that looked at from a purely intellectual point of view this conclusion is inevitable; Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason ends in the conclusion that God, immoratality and freedom are mere fictions though useful for practical purposes. Nietzsche only follows Kant in this conclusion’ (Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal , ed. S. A. Vahid, pp. 239-40).

Also in ‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’: ‘Not William James but Kant was the real founder of modern pragmatism’ (ibid., p. 119).

8. For a comparative study of Indian, Greek, Muslim and modern theories of atomism, cf.Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , II, 197-210, and for a more recent account of modern atomism Niels Bohr’s article: ‘Atom’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, II, 641-47.

9. A. Eddington,The Nature of Physical World , chapter: ‘Science and Mysticism’, p. 323.

10. N«nikr«m Vasanmal Thad«nâThe Garden of the East , pp. 63-64. Cf.Mathnawi , iii, 3901-06, 3912-14, for Rëmâ’s inimitable lines on the theme of ‘biological future of man’ whichThad«nâ has presented here in a condensed form. Thada`ni`in the Preface to his book has made it clear that ‘The poems . are not translations of renderings . .; they are rather intended to recreate the spirit and idea of each master . .’

11. Cf.The Joyful Wisdom , Book V, where Nietzsche denounces ‘nationalism and race-hatred (as) a scabies of the heart and blood poisoning’, also The Twilight of the Idols, chapter viii where he pronounces nationalism to be ‘the strongest force against culture’.

12. Cf. pp. 145-46.

13. Reference here is to the misguided observations of the orientalists to be found in such works as A. Sprenger,Des Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed (1861), 1, 207; D.S. Margoliouth,Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1905), p. 46; R. A. Nicholson,A Literary History of the Arabs (1907), pp. 147-48; and D. B. Macdonald,Religious Attitude and life in Islam (1909), p. 46.

14. C. Jung, Contribution to Analytical Psychology, p. 225.

15. Idem, Psychology of the Unconscious, pp. 42-43.

16. Cf. Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindâ,Maktëb«t-i Rabb«nâ , vol. I, Letter 253, also Letters 34, 257 and 260. In all these letters there is listing of the five stations, viz.Qalb (the ‘heart’),Rëh (the ‘spirit’),Sirr (the ‘inner’),Khafiy (the ‘hidden’), andAkhf« ; together they have also been named as in Letter 34Jaw«hir-i Khamsah-i ÿlam-i Amr (‘Five Essences of the Realm of the Spirit’). Cf. F. Rahman,Selected Letters of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi , chapter iii (pp. 54-55).

17. Cf.Stray Reflections , ed. Dr Javid Iqbal, p. 42, where Nietzsche has been named as a ‘great prophet of aristocracy’; also article: ‘Muslim Democracy’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , pp. 123-24), where a critical notice of Nietzsche’s ‘Aristocracy of Supremen’ ends up in a very significant rhetorical question: ‘Is not, then, the democracy of early Islam an experimental refutation of the ideas of Nietzsche?’

18. Cf.Kulliy«t-i Iqb«l (F«risâ),J«vâd N«mah , p. 741, vv. 4 and 3.

Compare this with Allama Iqbal’s pronouncement on Nietzsche in his highly valuable article: ‘McTaggart’s Philosophy’:

A more serious thing happened to poor Nietzsche, whose peculiar intellectual environment led him to think that his vision of the Ultimate Ego could be realized in a world of space and time. What grows only out of the inner depths of the heart of man, he proposed to create by an artificial biological experiment’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , p. 150).

Again in ‘Note on Nietzsche’: ‘Nietzsche’s Supreman is a biological product. The Islamic perfect man is the product of moral and spiritual forces’ (Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal , ed. S. A. Vahid, p. 242).

19. Allama Iqbal wished that Nietzsche were born in the times of Shaikh Ahmad of Sirhind to receive spiritual light from him seeKulliy«t-i Iqb«l (F«risâ),J«vâd N«mah , p. 741, v. 10:

Would that he had lived in Ahmad’s time

so that he might have attained eternal joy. (trans. Arberry)

And he himself could be Nietzsche’s spiritual mentor, were he be in Iqbal’s times; seeKulliy«t-i Iqb«l (Urdë),B«l-i Jibrâl , Pt. II, Ghazal 33, v. 5.

If that Frankish Sage

Were present in this age

Him Iqbal would teach

God’s high place and reach (trans. S. Akbar Ali Shah).

20. Cf. A. Schimmel, ‘Some Thoughts about Future Studies of Iqbal,’Iqbal , XXIV/iv (1977), 4.

21. Cf. pp. 145-46.

22. Cf. Bertrand Russell, ‘Relativity: Philosophical Consequences’, Section: ‘Force and Gravitation’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, XIX, 99c.

23. Cf.Kulliy«t-i Iqb«l (F«risâ),J«vâd N«mah , p. 607, vv. 10-15 and p. 608, vv. 1-7.

Commenting on Allama’s translation of this passage A. J. Arberry in the Introduction to his translation ofJ«vâd Nam«h observes that this ‘affords a very fair example of how close and how remote Iqbal was prepared to make his own version of himself’. And he adds that for comparison, in addition to the translation of this passage offered by him, the reader may like to consider its verse-paraphrase by Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad inPilgrimage of Eternity , II, 230-256.