Selfhood in action
Dawn · Dr Saad Malook ·
A human is not only a thinker but also an actor and a creator.
THE world we inhabit advances through human endeavours. To be human is to act. Idleness is a cardinal sin of humanity that causes pessimism, dehumanisation, and procrastination — postponing today’s work to tomorrow, which never comes. Idleness tends to stagnate, while action moves the world.
What causes developments in the world? Bergson believes in elan vital, Schopenhauer in the will to live, Nietzsche in will to power, and Iqbal in selfhood, each of which explains differently how humanity is driven into the future. Iqbal argues that selfhood in action causes changes in the world.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal, a philosopher of human development and action, primarily defends self-development as a means of transforming the potential for action into capability, enabling human agency to be rational, creative, productive, and moral. Iqbal’s philosophy of ‘self-development’ is actually ‘human development’, meaning people have a natural potential to develop, think, and act. To develop is to act. Surprisingly, scholars have not explored Iqbal’s philosophical oeuvre, particularly from the perspective of human development, which Pakistan desperately needs.