Arguments of Rationalists and Their Status in Jurisprudential Works of Seyyed Hassan Bojnourdi and Imam Khomeini

Abstract

With respect to the significance of the arguments of rationalists in inference of religious instructions, particularly in the case of new issues, a review of the jurists’ works on quality of applying the arguments of rationalists will help its understanding better. A restudy of jurisprudential works of Seyyed Hassan Bojnourdi and Imam Khomeini, as the two jurists with immense influence on perfection of jurisprudence, will be important and worthy in proving the point. To that end, we have reviewed the deductive and doctrinal jurisprudential texts of the two jurists based on content analysis methodology to analyze their claims. Findings of this paper indicate that both jurists have abundantly made use of the arguments of rationalists. In the meantime, both of them believe in its validity with no need to endorsement of the legislator, taking into consideration only lack of prohibition or rejection by the legislator. In particular, they have independently used the arguments of rationalists in invoking valid and important jurisprudential codes in deducing religious instructions. Given the effect of time and space on jurisprudential issues, the important and practical arguments of rationalists can be used for comparing and contrasting jurisprudence with modern-day issues and conditions toward rationality in settling modern-day problems.

Keywords

• arguments of rationalists
• style of rationalists
• status of conduct of the rationalists
• seyed hassan moosavi bojnourdi
• imam khomeini
• deduction of religious instructions