Kant, Bergson, and Iqbal on the Concept of Time and its Effect on Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Freewill

Abstract

Philosophy should be understood with its accumulative structure. Thus, when one strives to understand a philosopher’s thoughts, he/she should not isolate the philosopher from the previous and contemporary theories in his/her era; and should take into account this accumulative and continuous structure. In this context, Kant’s, Bergson’s, and Iqbal’s understandings of time seem to have continuity in themselves, even if they might be seen as having incompatible points. Kant’s understanding of time can be considered in two periods as pre-Critical and Critical. In the former, Kant accepts the own-reality and existence of time itself, outside of the human mind. But he also sows the seed of an understanding of time as a prior intuition to all sensations, while he is still in his pre-critical period. Hence, his focus seems to have shifted to a subject-centred approach. In his critical period, subject-centrality becomes more obvious and Kant claims that time is prior to any externality. According to him, time locates things in simultaneity and succession for the perception of mind as a sensible intuition. Bergson, on the other hand, clearly exploits Kant, even though he criticizes Kant in many aspects. Bergson’s understanding of time is comprised of two components: Pure duration and homogenous time. Pure duration is affected by the Kantian conception of time in the sense of being subject-centred. It is the time that each consciousness has individually as a combination of one’s past and present in a whole; and it is, in its essence, heterogeneous, unorderly successive, and indivisible. Homogenous time has its roots, again, in Kant’s thoughts in the sense of being serial and simultaneous. It is the impersonal common ground for individuals on which pure durations can work in a harmony. When it comes to Iqbal, he benefits from both Kant’s time as a form of sensible intuition and Bergson’s pure duration. Iqbal, by using both of these concepts of time, reconstructs the Divine Time in Islamic thought, and thus, freewill. By means of pure duration and creativity, mechanical understanding of the universe is refused by Bergson and Iqbal. By doing so, Iqbal allows freewill to permeate through pure duration of the God, namely the Divine Time, and to penetrate into pure durations of all egos. Throughout this article, we mainly intend to retrace Iqbal’s reconstruction of freewill by having use of the concept of pure duration, and the Divine Time as pure duration of the God.