Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Muhammad Iqbal on Human Consciousness and Sociality: A Critical Comparison
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study is a comparative analysis of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Muhammad Iqbal focused on how the themes of consciousness and sociality are developed and interconnected in their respective worldviews.Research efforts sought the exposition of these themes throughout the oeuvres of both authors and in letters and journals, published and archival.Taking a short article by Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch as inspiration, this study is the first sustained comparison of Iqbal and Teilhard de Chardin and the only sustained comparative study of Teilhard with any Muslim thinker.The scope of research in this project has also brought numerous primary and Chapter One: Introduction Sharing an interest in a dynamic worldview and the thought of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Muhammad Iqbal and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ask many of the same questions.Ursula King describes Teilhard's life's work as an "attempt to relate the Divine and the world in the most intimate manner, expressed through his efforts in seeing science and religion as part of the same quest for ultimate unity." 1 Of science and religion, Teilhard says, "The same life animates both." 2 Iqbal was not himself a scientist but he respected the spiritual dimension of scientific research, "The truth is that all search for knowledge is essentially a form of prayer.The scientific observer of Nature is a kind of mystic seeker in the act of prayer." 3 I am not the first to note the resonance between these two thinkers.It is mentioned by Ursula King, and Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, the translator of Iqbal's work into French, published a short article on the topic.4 She notes their shared sense of the modern human predicament, "the desolation of man in the twentieth century within a universe where he feels isolated and lost" and the need for a humanism marked by a "change of optics that must be made . . .a consideration of man 'not as the static center of the world, as has been long believed, but as the axis and arrow of evolution-which is much more beautiful.'"5 This is the only published comparison of Teilhard with a Muslim thinker I am aware of and it is an invitation for deeper analysis.I believe a sustained comparison of Teilhard and Iqbal will illuminate stengths, deficiencies, and 1 Ursula King, Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions: Spirituality and Mysticism in an Evolutionary World (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2011), 24.
Author: Joshua Canzona
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2809024218