تصوریت اور اثباتیت کے تناظر میں فلسفہ اقبال- روحانی حقیقت، سائنسی تجربے اور عمل کی ترکیبی تعبیر

Iqbal’s Philosophy in the Context of Idealism and Positivism: A Synthetic Interpretation of Spiritual Reality, Scientific Experience, and Action

Abstract

This research examines Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s philosophical position in relation to idealism and positivism, with particular emphasis on his understanding of reality, knowledge, selfhood, science, religion, and human action. The study argues that Iqbal cannot be adequately classified within any single conventional school of philosophy. His thought displays a clear affinity with idealism because he affirms the spiritual nature of reality, the significance of the self, the validity of intuition, and the importance of religious experience and transcendent values. However, he does not accept the traditional idealist reduction of the external world to mere appearance, illusion, or a projection of consciousness. For Iqbal, matter, life, and consciousness are interconnected levels of reality, while the universe itself is dynamic, creative, and continuously evolving. The research further evaluates Iqbal’s response to positivism, particularly its emphasis on observation, experience, logical clarity, scientific method, and verifiability. Although Iqbal recognizes the value of empirical inquiry and insists that neither religious nor scientific knowledge can be entirely separated from concrete experience, he rejects the positivist claim that only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful. In his view, such a restrictive criterion excludes metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, religion, purpose, and value from the domain of genuine knowledge. Iqbal therefore maintains that sense perception, reason, intuition, religious experience, and creative action are complementary rather than mutually exclusive modes of access to reality. The study also highlights the central role of selfhood, action, freedom, and creative evolution in Iqbal’s philosophical system. His critique of static idealism, mechanical materialism, excessive rationalism, and narrow empiricism leads him toward a dynamic form of spiritual realism. In this framework, metaphysics interprets reality as a whole, science investigates its observable dimensions, religion discloses its inner and moral significance, and action enables the individual to participate in the creative process of existence. The research concludes that Iqbal does not merely reconcile idealism and positivism; rather, he reconstructs their useful insights within a Qur’anic, scientific, and action-oriented philosophy. His thought thus offers a comprehensive intellectual framework in which spiritual reality, empirical knowledge, rational reflection, intuition, and moral action become integrated dimensions of a living and evolving universe.