Iqbals The Development of Metaphysics in Persia [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

CHAPTER
III

THE RISE
AND FALL OF RATIONALISM IN ISLAM

I. THE METAPHYSICS OF RATIONALISM

MATERIALISM

The Persian mind, having adjusted itself to the new Political
environment, soon reasserts its innate freedom, and begins to retire from the
field of: objectivity, in order that it may come back to itself and reflect upon
the material achieved in its journey out of its own inwardness. With the study
of Greek thought, the spirit which was almost lost in the concrete, begins to
reflect and realise itself as the arbiter of truth. Subjectivity asserts itself,
and endeavours to supplant all outward authority. Such a period, in the
intellectual history of a people, must be the epoch of rationalism, scepticism,
mysticism, heresy - forms in which the human mind, swayed by the growing force
of subjectivity, rejects all external standards of truth. And so we find the
epoch under consideration.

The period of Umayyad dominance is taken up, with the process of
co-mingling and adjustment to new conditions of life; but with the rise of the
Abbasid Dynasty and the study of Greek Philosophy, the pent-up intellectual
force of Persia bursts out