Fourteen Evidences of the Permissibility and Necessity of Referring to Intellect in Quran Interpretation

As one of the trends, the movement of rationalism proposes different theories and views. All the theories agree on the principle of the effectiveness of intellect in the process of interpretation but they disagree about its details and conditions. According to this movement, referring to intellect and the data suggested by intellect for understanding and interpreting the Qur’an are not only permissible, but they are also necessary. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this paper seeks to offer the most important proposed evidences supporting the mentioned claim. Some of these evidences have to do with the principle of the permissibility of using intellect in interpretation and some support and confirm the idea of the necessity of using intellect in the process of interpretation. The research result shows is that, in spite of the existence of conclusive intellectual and transmitted proofs, the interference of the intellect, as a faculty of inference and using perceptual data, as presumption are necessary for understanding the meaning of Qur’anic verses as it is intended by God, and doing without intellect in the interpretation of the meaning of the Quran makes the access to the meaning which is intended by God impossible in some of the verses and leads to the wrong interpretation of the meaning of the other verses.