Another Look at Iqbal’s Reconstruction Nauman Faizi’s Analytical Approach to Iqbal’s Philosophy

Abstract

Nauman Faizi’s God, Science, and the Self (2021) is a powerful and philosophically robust exploration of Muhammad Iqbal’s masterpiece Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. In this book, Faizi’s reading of Iqbal takes an analytic approach. He argues that Iqbal uses two distinct epistemic tendencies, which he terms “Representational” and “Pragmatic.” In tracing these tendencies, Faizi posits that Iqbal’s pragmatic tendency serves as a correction for his representational tendency, that the presence of both tendencies causes confusions in Iqbal’s work, and that these are understandable and expected markers of Iqbal writing within epistemological conflict. Faizi’s analytical approach helps explicate Iqbal’s arguments but appears to be in tension with Reconstruction’s non-analytical methodology.