Interpretation of Human Life and Criticism of Modern Reason from the Perspective of Immanuel Kant and Iqbal Lahori

Subject Areas : The History of Political Thought in Islam

Mohammad Nasiri ¹ , Garineh Keshishyan Siraki ² , Seyed Ali Mortazavian Farsani ³

1 - PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, Political Thought, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2023-09-06 Accepted : 2023-11-10 Published : 2023-12-22

Keywords: Interpretation of the world, Human life, Iqbal Lahori, Immanuel Kant, Rationality,

Abstract :

Kant is one of the most important philosophers of the West who, by expressing the limitations of rational thinking while showing reason in a disciplined way, challenges the fundamentalism that had dominated Western philosophical thinking for some time. He believes that reason is incapable of interfering in all fields. In Kant's philosophy, reason is the highest power of the soul and rational knowledge is the highest level of knowledge. So, the most basic human characteristic is rationality or wisdom, which is the basis of his innate generosity and honor. But Iqbal considers intelligence to be a divine blessing and intends to interpret the world and find out the meaning of life based on a coherent religious thought system consisting of three sources of knowledge, i.e., nature, history and experience. In this article, an attempt was made to determine the commonalities and differences of their thoughts about the interpretation of human life by examining the meaning network of each thinker. The findings indicate that by separating the practical reason from the theoretical reason in the first step, Kant evaluates it as capable of distinguishing morality and action from morality, and it gives mankind the possibility to establish a universal and valid morality. slow and prevents morality from becoming a relative thing, and so that reason does not make mistakes in recognizing morality, it introduces criteria based on which it is possible to distinguish moral behavior from immoral behavior. On the other hand, the most important feature of Iqbal's thought is his critical and tradition-breaking side. He does not consider the human intellect alone to be able to understand the nature of existence, and he considers the need for human connection with life to interpret the world, and the highest level of awareness and thinking of philosophers comes from their ultimate instincts.