Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of the Shariʿa
Essays first published 1988–90: religion is not identical with human understanding of it, and that understanding changes with philosophy, science and the questions of each age.
Introduction
The essays appeared from 1988 to 1990 in the Tehran journal Keyhan-e Farhangi and were published as a book in 1990. Soroush argues that religion itself is unchanging but that human understanding of religion is a form of knowledge like any other: historical, fallible and in constant exchange with philosophy, science and the questions of each age. As other knowledge expands or contracts, religious knowledge does so too. The essays provoked a long debate in Iran and became the founding text of the religious reform movement.
Connections
Taken up in
- The Expansion of Prophetic Experience1999 · Abdolkarim Soroush
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