The Legacy of Henry Corbin: The Visionary Dream in Islamic Spirituality

"...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.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Visionary Dream in Islamic Spirituality

The Visionary Dream in Islamic Spirituality

by
Henry Corbin

From:

The Dream and Human Society
University of California Press
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES
Edited by
G. E. VON GRUNEBAUM and ROGER CAILLOIS
1966

Based on the proceedings of the international

Colloquium on "Le Reve et les societes humaines,"
sponsored and organized by the Near Eastern Center,
University of California, Los Angeles,
and held at the Cercle Culturel de Royaumont,
Abbaye de Royaumont, Asnieres-sur-Oise,
June 17 to June 23, 1962

(This document was scanned and printed using OCR software.
I apologize for the lack of diacrits and any
typographical errors that I may have missed. - TC)

The Visionary Dream in Islamic Spirituality