What is meant
The author sees the constitution as a human formulation for organizing the social contract, not as something prior to it. The covenant, however, is prior to the constitution and deeper than it, because it is tied to human values and voluntary commitment.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Distinguishing
- Argument movement: It prefers the covenant over the constitution in terms of origin and value.
- Key terms: covenant, constitution, social contract, voluntary commitment.
- Degree of centrality: Central.
It distinguishes between a human formulation for organizing governance and an earlier covenant tied to values and voluntary commitment. This ordering gives morality priority over legal formulation in founding social life.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: Religion and Authority
- The Civil State and Religion and Authority
- Covenant
- Filial piety is an innate value, and punishment for it is subject to the شرعية limits
Grounding
- Supporting text: «It establishes the idea that the constitution should be a human formulation for organizing the social contract, whereas the covenant is prior to it and deeper, and is tied to human values and voluntary commitment».
Place of grounding in the book
- Book: Religion and Authority.
- Location: In the final section of the book
- Type of grounding: Close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: duty and voluntary commitment
- Reading note: The location refers to voluntary commitment and rituals as outside coercion, which makes it close to the atom.
Degree of documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: The formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted word for word.
Its function in the book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial note
The meaning is based on the precedence of the covenant, not on a purely legal description.