Relying on Human Normative Knowledge in Developing and Understanding Jurisprudential Concepts in Two Schools of Thought with Special Reference to Imam Khomeini's Viewpoint

Relying on human normative knowledge to develop and understand jurisprudential concepts is one of the helpful methods in jurisprudence and its dynamism. Attention to rational knowledge of the norms and social understanding of the texts is a very necessary method. Jurisprudents and lawyers should consider norm as a referee for inference and legislation as well as religious speeches. The refereeing of norm is not merely confined to realization of real referent, rather it also has an eye on the legislating of decrees and accredits the newly emerged issues. Norm has conventional instrument at its disposal. Since verbal language of the holy Sharia is like the verbal language of the rational people’s norm, the subject of the decree is understood by the norm with regard to its concept and referent while the decree to transform the subject and its related elements is somehow a function of human norm, which is known as normative transformation and tries to organize and consolidate the society and preserve understanding and compromise among them. There are some clear examples in Imam Khomeini’s fatwas, which indicate a kind of new system in approach to jurisprudence and jurisprudential inference as well as paying attention to normative knowledge. However, the turn of normative and social understanding of the text and jurisprudential reason begins when the verbal understanding of the text ends. A jurisprudent in the first place determines the verbal message of the text and then loads cognition, normative and social understanding on it.