"...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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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi in NYC

IbnArabiConfPressRelease2(1)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Cusanus & Eriugena

Though not too closely linked to Corbin, I think it's worth posting a note about a book that will be of interest to some readers & that might otherwise slip under the radar:

The proceedings from the 2009 Eriugena-Cusanus conference in Lublin.

A very interesting Table of Contents.


Painting of Nicolas here.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Corbin & L'Herne

Publiés à L'Herne :
Cahier Henry Corbin
Le Paradoxe du Monothéisme (Essais)
Le Livre des sept Statues (Essais)
L'Imam Caché (Essais)




Friday, July 15, 2011

Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, University of Amsterdam
Cambridge University Press - January 2012



"Academics tend to look on 'esoteric', 'occult' or 'magical' beliefs with contempt, but are usually ignorant about the religious and philosophical traditions to which these terms refer, or their relevance to intellectual history. Wouter Hanegraaff tells the neglected story of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have tried to come to terms with a cluster of 'pagan' ideas from late antiquity that challenged the foundations of biblical religion and Greek rationality. Expelled from the academy on the basis of Protestant and Enlightenment polemics, these traditions have come to be perceived as the Other by which academics define their identity to the present day. Hanegraaff grounds his discussion in a meticulous study of primary and secondary sources, taking the reader on an exciting intellectual voyage from the fifteenth century to the present day and asking what implications the forgotten history of exclusion has for established textbook narratives of religion, philosophy and science."

Thanks to Heterodoxology for this news.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

En Islam Iranien in Persian

From the Iran Book News Agency:

Corbin's Iranian Islam travels to Iran
5 Jul 2011 13:22


Two volumes of the four-volume "Iranian Islam" of Henry Corbin are rendered into Persian. According to the translator, the work encompasses different aspects of the culture and spirituality of Islamic Iran from the beginning to the moment. READ THE ARTICLE

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Corbin, Goethe, Hydrodynamics...

Here is a remarkable new context for Corbin... This is an abstract of an upcoming paper. (Scroll down to read it - first page is blank).

HAMBUR~2