From Self to Self-ness: A Reading of Muhammad Iqbal's Khudi as a Moral Ontological Vision

Muhammad Iqbal is often read as a poet and philosopher, but very seldom as moral thinker. Taking help from new developments in Religious Ethics, this dissertation explores Iqbal's moral vision, and its theological underpinnings and ontological framework. In addition, it gives a robust and detailed overview of Iqbal's normative dimensions, which span the individual person, the social collective, and the natural universe. These normative dimensions all organically come together in the ocean of Iqbal's "big idea", i.e. "khudi" or "self-ness". Thus, this dissertation argues that there is much more to Iqbal than the overdone dichotomy of "emotive poet" vs. "systematic philosopher".