The Legacy of Henry Corbin: Resid Hafizovic on Henry Corbin

"...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.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Resid Hafizovic on Henry Corbin

Professor Resid Hafizovic, Ph.D.
Faculty of Islamic Studies, Sarajevo University
54 Cemerlina Street, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina.CV & Bibliography here.

October 2009: Dr. Resid Hafizovic, professor at Sarajevo University has been selected as best researcher in Islamic human sciences and will be awarded this year’s Farabi award for his book “Human face in the mirror of mystic literature”. See this article.

- "Henry Corbin’s Anti/philosophy of anti/history," Afterword to Henry Corbin’s En islam iranien, I-IV, Bemust, Sarajevo 2001. (in Bosnian)
- "Philosophy of exile," Afterword to Henry Corbin’s La philosophie iranienne islamique – XVIIè et XVIIIè siècle, “Ibn Sina Institut”, Sarajevo 2002. (in Bosnian)

It's interesting to note that Corbin's 4 volume masterwork is now available in Bosnian, but not (yet) in English.

It would be wonderful if someone would translate these pieces by Hafizovic for us.