"...the Imagination (or love, or sympathy, or any other sentiment) induces knowledge, and knowledge of an 'object' which is proper to it..."
Henry Corbin (1903-1978) was a scholar, philosopher and theologian. He was a champion of the transformative power of the Imagination and of the transcendent reality of the individual in a world threatened by totalitarianisms of all kinds. One of the 20th century’s most prolific scholars of Islamic mysticism, Corbin was Professor of Islam & Islamic Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Teheran. He was a major figure at the Eranos Conferences in Switzerland. He introduced the concept of the mundus imaginalis into contemporary thought. His work has provided a foundation for archetypal psychology as developed by James Hillman and influenced countless poets and artists worldwide. But Corbin’s central project was to provide a framework for understanding the unity of the religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. His great work Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi is a classic initiatory text of visionary spirituality that transcends the tragic divisions among the three great monotheisms. Corbin’s life was devoted to the struggle to free the religious imagination from fundamentalisms of every kind. His work marks a watershed in our understanding of the religions of the West and makes a profound contribution to the study of the place of the imagination in human life.

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Monday, August 18, 2008

The Battle for the Soul of the World

"Our western philosophy has been the theater of what we may call the “battle for the Soul of the World.” … Is it a matter of a battle that has finally been lost, the world having lost its soul, a defeat whose consequences weigh upon our modern visions of the world without compensation? If there has been a defeat, a defeat is still not a refutation." – Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body & Celestial Earth, xiv.







Centrum naturae - Jacob Boehme

1 comment:

  1. Yup brother, The utopia we are living today is the detailed elaboration of western philosophy which is the leading towards the worse form of humanity .Acceptance is very difficult no doubts but modern man have lost the authenticity of the spirit and the only repair is the complete return to the place where we have lost it.We accept the common failure of not never estimating the gravity of our wrong choices and historical shifts in the beats of blind progression. The only question one can imaging is that the unfolding reveals that there was something behind it that it has got approval from the Only Lord.

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