On Iqbal’s Intuitive Experience

The purpose of Iqbal’s epistemology is to defend the validity of religious experience. His epistemology is a Unification Epistemology in which include sense experience, intellect and intuition. Iqbal is neither empiricism nor rationalism, even not intuitionalism, because he did not belittle any of these cognitive abilities. For him different cognitive abilities should be used for different objects,but intuition has the superiority to acquire the wholeness and essence of entity. There tow origins for Iqbal’s intuitive experience : the first one is the response of intuitionism to positivism.The philosophy of intuitionism prevailed in the western in the end of 19 th and the beginning of 20 th century which claimed the scientific demonstration is not the only way to obtain the truth, among these thoughts Iqbal inherited French philosopher Bergson’s thought well; The second one is the traditional thought of Islamic Sufism,Iqbal defend religious experience the truth is defend the mystical experience of Sufism. Iqbal’s intuitive experience is based on his concept of time and the critique of Kant’s epistemology. Iqbal divided time into "the Real Time" and "the Serial Time",the real time is the basis of intuitive experience, and Kant’s epistemology can take effect only in the serial time. Unlike Kant, for Iqbal the reason of human can beyond the serial time, then in the field of the real time reason can cognize infinite. Iqbal declare that the characteristics of intuitive experience include: indubitability,immediacy, objectivity, wholeness, incommunicability, integrity, objectivity, in addition intuitive experience is escaping from “clock-time” and “qalb” is the seat of it. Iqbal’s intuitive experience is in essence reason which beyond serial time. There are some difference between Iqbal’s intuitive experience and the intuition of western philosophers. firstly the main object of Iqbal’s intuitive experience is Allah; Secondly for Iqbal’s intuitive experience there are several stages need to be finished for recipients before they own the experience; Thirdly Iqbal’s intuitive experience is passive. In real life, Iqbal advocated sense experience, intellect actively because they are the foundation of modern science. He believes that it is Islam bred the modern science, so for muslin to learn the modern science from the western is in essence getting back their Islamic traditions. Science is the way we understand the world,intuitive experience is the way to cognize Allah, they are not contradictory. Like science come from scene experience and the intellect, the religious knowledge come from intuition is also effective and objective, it also belong to the scope of our knowledge. By showing the effectiveness of intuitive experience Iqbal try to finish the knowledge-ization of Islam, for him that is the reconstruction of religious thought in Islam.