OSWALD SPENGLER AND MUHAMMAD IQBAL: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE DISCOURSE ON CULTURAL THEORY

• Published date: 30 June 2021

He compared more realistically the weaknesses and strengths of both cultures. Iqbal didn't concede to Spengler's notion of a mutually exclusive historical origin and growth of cultures. He rather proposed in ‘Reconstruction' a historical interdependence of human culture. Ideas and concepts of cultures can be translated and diffused into another culture life-form. Iqbal has discussed that ‘religious experience' constitutes on epistemological foundation of Islamic culture. ‘Religious experience' has as much claim to be an independent source of knowledge-acquisition as ‘science' or ‘philosophy' do. The ultimate principle of Reality is spiritual which is ‘living' and reflected in temporal existence of the natural and historical world. He established this concept of Spiritual Reality by his ‘intellectual test' and ‘pragmatic test' in his lectures on ‘Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam'.

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Wittgenstein has remarked that western intellectual is engaged in an “epic,”1 in his quest for understanding the ultimate goal of Western civilization. “Our civilization,” he opines, “is characterized by the word progress but it never really makes progress in the true sense of the word. Typically, it constructs. It keeps on building even more complicated structures.” These ever increasing “complicated structures” of Western culture show their ‘epic-like' unfolding in diverse historical-cultural forms. What constitute the important characters of this epic like historical saga? It all began with Copernicus. He firstly proposed a ‘helio-centric' theory of the heavenly bodies, challenging the ‘geocentric' view of the cosmos. Copernicus asserted that it was the sun, which was the ‘centre' of our ‘universe' and not ‘earth,' as was commonly held by the Christians and believers of Ptolemaic astronomy. At first this Copernican assertion appeared a simple intellectual principle.

But it had profound cultural consequences for the commonly believed Christian religious view of the cosmos. It shattered the notion of the centrality of the mother earth in the Scheme of Natural Order of Things. It challenged a Christian dogma which constituted an article of faith for the Roman Catholic Church. Here was a first secular and rational view of the nature's scheme of things, which sent shivers down the spine of western Christianity. This was the first intellectual ‘heresy' of modern western culture. The ‘epic,' of which Wittgenstein spoke about, began to be played on a large historical scale for the entire humanity to watch. After Copernicus, comes forth Galileo, who declared, on the basis of his ‘scientific' investigations, and contrary to the Christian view that the earth moves. His scientific theory of motion challenged the idea of a static view of the world. Here was another ‘heresy.'

After this second character in the European ‘epic,' one is astonished to see the entry of Descartes, who laid the foundations of a modern ‘philosophy' by uttering the dictum of ‘cogito ergo sum,' thereby placing ‘reason' as the sole judge of human knowledge. He also dislodged ‘scholastic philosophy' forever from the philosophical outlook of the western culture. Cartesian rationalism, propounded a human metaphysic of reality, contrary to the Divine metaphysic of Christianity, in which Bible, being the world of Lord, constituted a spiritual paradigm of reality. This was questioned by Descartes, whose ‘dualism' has ever since it emerged, remained a dominant epistemological view which either inspired or reduced to heap the major philosophical outpourings of the Western philosophers. Fourth important character in European ‘epic,' happened to be an Englishman, Sir Isaac Newton. He completely revolutionized the concept of the ‘natural philosophy.'

He ushered a new stage in the development of western culture by his laws of classical physics. He proposed a mechanical view of the natural phenomena, which obeyed the principle of causality inwardly, thus paving a way out for a Prime Mover, a God to control or direct the world of Nature. Newtonian science and Cartesian rational philosophy, found its supreme synthesis in the person of Immanuel Kant. No one has been more significant and influential in the development of modern western culture, than this ‘Uncanny Scot of Konigsberg.' Born to strict Puritan parents, he bade farewell to the notion of ‘metaphysics' of Absolute Being and the place of God in the mundane affairs of human beings. His ‘Critique of Pure Reason' not only showed way to the reason to recognize its ‘limits' and ‘antinomies,' but also shrug off any claims to provide a metaphysic of reality to the modern man. The only sure knowledge was the knowledge gained by the ‘sense-perception,' on which science was built.

In his ‘Copernican Revolution' in philosophy, he endorsed Newtonian mechanics as the paradigm of new metaphysic of reality established by the instrument of human reason and rejecting a Christian metaphysic of reality and knowledge. Kantian synthesis was an epistemological metamorphosis of Western philosophy and its view of reality. This revolution also spread into political, moral, and psychological domains. In the birth pangs of ‘Enlightenment,' Voltaire was another important character of this European ‘epic.' He vehemently criticized the foundations of political and religious corruption of the ‘ancient regime.' His writings inspired generations of men and women in Europe to take their destiny in...