This page explains a conceptual relationship between two elements within Shahrur’s thought, and how this relationship works in constructing meaning.
Within a broader family
This relationship falls within the field of the function of the Qur’anic narratives in Shahrur’s thought. Its witness highlights a specific aspect, and the family brings together moral insight, knowledge, and the uncovering of historical laws, while rejecting the transformation of the narratives into a direct source of legislation.
Meaning of the relationship
This relationship means that the Qur’anic narratives are not presented as a scattered account of events, but as a single framework that brings the earlier narratives together into a broader meaning: understanding the formation of the human being and society in a gradual and cumulative way. What is meant is that it offers a vision that sees human and social development as a cognitive process with stages, not merely as separate facts.
The two terms of the relationship
- First term: the Qur’anic narratives
- Relationship: presents
- Second term: a cumulative evolutionary vision of the formation of human beings and society
Evidence
- The Qur’anic Narratives, vol. 1 via The Qur’an presents a cumulative development of the human being
- Witness: The Qur’an presents a cumulative development of the human being The Qur’an presents a cumulative development of the human being brings together the earlier Qur’anic narratives within a single framework that reads the Qur’anic discourse as a cognitive construction of the stages of the formation of human beings and society
Its effect on the conceptual map
This relationship gains its importance because it links the Qur’anic narratives to a comprehensive interpretive level that makes them a tool for understanding the emergence of human beings and society within a single structure. In this way, the narratives remain not merely storytelling material, but become a central element in the conceptual map that explains how Qur’anic accounts gather to produce a coherent vision of the historical and cognitive formation of human beings and society.