The Legacy of Henry Corbin: Leonard Lewisohn 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, September 16, 2010

Leonard Lewisohn on Henry Corbin

Below is an excerpt from Leonard Lewisohn's Review of MatthijsVanden Bos, Mystic Regimes: Suﬁsm and the State in Iran, from the Qajar Era to the Islamic Republic (Leiden:Brill 2002). I have selected the most pertinent section on Henry Corbin. The full citation is as follows:

Lewisohn, Leonard (2009) 'Theoretical Extremes of the Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran: Review Article', Iranian Studies, 42: 2, 285 — 310.
From Lewisohn - Theoretical Extremes of the Study of Mystic Man in Modern Iran_ Review