In the final paragraph of his summary of Asrar-e Khudi, Iqbal addresses one of his favorite themes—the ideal human personality whose manifestation on a large-scale would represent the culmination of millions of years of spiritual evolution. While Iqbal tends to talk about that ideal personality as if it were a single (male) individual, this is…
I can no longer recall exactly how or why I started commenting upon Iqbal’s philosophical summary of Asrar-e Khudi. Regardless of the original motivation, the whole exercise has benefited me tremendously. For instance, I have become much more aware of the significance of believing in an afterlife. Among the three Western monotheisms, Islam certainly has the most to…
Finally, Iqbal turns to practical ethics. We have already seen that the summum bonum for Iqbal is the integrity of khudi. There is nothing more important than strengthening the ego, which is precisely what allows it to achieve genuine freedom as well as immortality. Moral virtues and vices are to be distinguished on the standard…