"...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.

Search The Legacy of Henry Corbin: Over 800 Posts

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Shi‘i Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times - Now Available

Bibliotheque Iranienne -72
Shi‘i Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times (XVIIIth-XXth centuries) Courants et dynamiques chiites à l´époque moderne
(XVIIIe-XXe siècles)
- Denis Hermann et Sabrina Mervin
(HERE - scroll to the bottom of the page)
ISBN 978-2-909961-48-4
co-édition OIB/IFRI 2010

Souvent dépeints comme une période de déclin de la civilisation islamique, les 18e et 19e siècles furent, tout au contraire, une phase de d’effervescence fructueuse pour les doctrines chiites. Ce volume vise à rendre compte du dynamisme intellectuel et religieux qui vit le développement des courants akhbâri et osuli, puis la primauté de ce dernier, ainsi que la naissance de la shaykhiyya et le succès populaire du soufisme confrérique. Les contributions rassemblées s’articulent en trois grandes parties, qui envisagent ces développements, les débats qu’ils suscitèrent et le contexte sociopolitique où ils s’inscrivirent. Les faits marquants qui traversèrent l’histoire de la pensée philosophique et mystique au 19e siècle font l’objet de la première partie de l’ouvrage. La deuxième partie se focalise sur les discussions et les nouvelles élaborations en matière de droit islamique chiite, au 19e siècle et au début du 20e siècle. Débats doctrinaux et théories politiques sont repris et approfondis dans la troisième partie, notamment dans le cadre du mouvement constitutionnaliste.

This contains Todd Lawson's very fine and useful essay "Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsāʾī and the World of Images." Shi‘i Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times (XVIIIth–XXth centuries). Ed. Denis Hermann and Sabrina Mervin (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2010). Pp. 19–31.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Peter O'Leary on the Spiritual in Poetry

Peter O'Leary on the spiritual in poetry - in the Chicago Review : Apocalypticism - A Way Forward for Poetry. (pdf)

Another indication of the continuing influence of Henry Corbin - this time explicitly in the work of Joseph Donahue. This is a fine essay, well worth the attention of admirers of Corbin's work.[See this review of Donohue's Terra Lucida.]

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Corbin Texts in French Online

I have this excellent addition to the list of Corbin texts online from Daniel Proulx who promises more in the future. I will eventually add these all to the page devoted to Corbin Texts Online but for now, here they are. (There are some things here that have appeared in earlier posts, but many new ones as well).
1932 - « Philosophes », Hic et Nunc 1, nov. 1932, pp.19-23
1933 - « Quand nous nous réveillerons d’entre les morts », Hic et Nunc 2, mars 1933, pp. 43-51.
1933 - « Philosophia crucis »,  Hic et Nunc 3/4, juill. 1933, pp. 86-94

1934 - « Note sur Existence et Foi », Hic et Nunc 6, avr. 1934, pp. 51-57
1934 - « La Théologie dialectique et l’Histoire », Recherches philosophiques, t. 3, 1934, pp. 250-284
1961 - Extrait de l'homme de lumière dans le soufisme iranien
1963 - « Nécrologie Massignon », Annuaire de l’ Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences Religieuses, t. LXXI, pp.30-39
1963 - « Manichéisme et religion de la beauté », Cahiers du Sud, avr. 1963, 7 p. (repris dans Henry Corbin, L'Herne, 1981, pp.168-171)
1976 - « De Heidegger à Sohravardî », dans Henry Corbin, L'Herne, 1981, pp.23-37
1976 - « Quelques aspects islamiques de la christologie », communication faite à la séance du 20 mai 1976 de la Société Ernest Renan, Bulletin de la Société Ernest Renan 25, 1976, pp. 115-117.
1977 - « De la théologie apophatique comme antidote du nihilisme », conférence donnée à Téhéran le 20 octobre 1977 lors d’un colloque organisé par le Centre iranien pour l’étude des Civilisations sur le thème « L’impact de la pensée occidentale rend-il possible un dialogue réel entre les civilisations ?», publié dans Le paradoxe du monotéhisme, L'Herne, 1981.
http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/francais/apopathique.htm
      Le texte de cette conférence est aussi disponible en format audio. Le fichier comporte toutefois quelques coupures et une qualité de sononore très moyenne.
1978 - « Post-scriptum biographique à un Entretien philosophique », dans Henry Corbin sous la direction de Christian Jambet, L'Herne, 1981, pp.38-56

Textes inédits
1950 - Une heure avec Henry Corbin. Traduction effectuée dans les années 1950 par Stella Corbin d’un interview en persan, retranscrit par Maria Soster et supervisé par Pierre Lory. 
http://www.amiscorbin.com/textes/francais/heureavechcDEF.htm
1978 - Lettre inédite d’Henry Corbin à David Leroy Miller : Sur le nouveau polythéisme
1978 - « Derniers souvenirs de Henry Corbin, Novembre 1978 »
~1982 - « Souvenirs d'enfance d'Henry Corbin », texte rédigé par Stella Corbin.

Éléments audio
« Schiisme et Ismaélisme » (1957), dans La philosophie islamique, Frémeaux et associés, 3CD, 2006, 10'13''  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbX5S-gz73A
Pour écouter toute l'anthologie audio de Henry Corbin

Et finalement, une petite curiosité.

Une rue Henry Corbin à Téhéran

IFRI de Téhéran -  Le phénomène Henry Corbin en Iran - 
Le 27 juin 2005, au cœur de Téhéran et en présence de M. NICOULLAUD, Ambassadeur de France en Iran, et de nombreux officiels iraniens, une plaque commémoratrice en français et en persan a été dévoilée sur le mur de la rue, rebaptisée en janvier dernier, « rue Henry Corbin » du nom du grand iranologue. C’est la première fois depuis la révolution qu’une rue porte le nom d’une personnalité scientifique occidentale. Sur la plaque est inscrit : « Henry Corbin (1903-1978), philosophe, islamologue et iranologue français a consacré son oeuvre à la connaissance et à la diffusion de la philosophie, de la gnose et de la mystique iraniennes.  En 1947, il fonda l’Institut Français d’Iranologie de Téhéran. » Institut duquel est né l’IFRI en 1983. Son oeuvre a nourri la culture iranienne au point que ce savant fait désormais partie des grandes figures intellectuelles du pays. Un quart de siècle après sa disparition, on peut parler d’un véritable « phénomène Corbin » en Iran, dont il est intéressant de saisir l’origine et de relever les indices. Non seulement beaucoup de ses ouvrages ont été traduits, mais il est le seul Occidental dont les travaux sont étudiés et font autorité jusque dans les écoles théologiques. Les 18 ouvrages qu’il a publiés dans la Bibliothèque Iranienne entre 1950 et 1975 ont été régulièrement réédités en Iran. Depuis l’an dernier,  l’IFRI et les éditions Tahoori entreprennent la réédition des volumes de la collection iranienne, désormais complétés par des versions françaises et persanes des introductions rédigées par Henry Corbin. 

source : La Lettre HERMES 
Lettre électronique des instituts français de recherche à l’étranger
Juillet-Août-Septembre 2005 numéro : 3

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

"Henry Corbin's Understanding of Ismailism"

Zayn Kassam on "Henry Corbin's Understanding of Ismailism" in SIMERG

Zayn Kassam is Professor of Religious Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.  She received her Ph.D. from McGill University in the History of Religions in 1995, with a specialization in Islamic and Indian Philosophy.  She teaches courses on women in Islam, Islamic mysticism, Islamic philosophy, as well as contemporary Muslim literature.  More recently, she has also been teaching courses on religion and the environment.
Editor’s Note: This article was published in an earlier revision in Hikmat, July 1991, Vol III No. 5, pages 46-52.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Henry Corbin on Nicolas Berdiaev

« Allocution d’ouverture », colloque Berdiaev tenu le 12 avril 1975 à la Sorbonne, Bulletin de l’Association Nicolas Berdiaev 4, mars 1975 (paru en 1978 sans date).

Henry Corbin Opening Remarks - Berdiaev Colloquium

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

More on Robert Duncan

I have mentioned several times that Robert Duncan was one of the major American poets to draw on Corbin's work. This essay from Jerome Rothenberg's blog  Michael Palmer on “Robert Duncan and Romantic Synthesis" will be of interest. (Also see Eric Mottram's essay on Ta'wil and American Poetry.)


[From article originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of American Poet, the biannual journal of The Academy of American Poets. Copyright © 1997 by Michael Palmer.]

An excerpt:


Robert Duncan grew up, the adopted son of a theosophical family, in the town of Bakersfield, California. As Michael Davidson has noted in his book, The San Francisco Renaissance, the interpretive methods of theosophical reading of both text and world deeply influenced the poet's sense of the ways meanings inhere and things correspond:

"This charged, participatory act of reading gains definition through contemporary theories of 'open field verse,' to be sure, but for Duncan its origins can be found in the theosophical tradition that he inherited from his adopted family. For his parents, 'the truth of things was esoteric (locked inside) or occult (masked by) the apparent . . . .' Within this environment every event was significant as an element in a larger, cosmological scheme. Although Duncan has never practised within any theosophical religion, he has easily translated its terms into works like Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. . . . Within both theosophical and Freudian hermeneutics, story is not simply a diversion or fiction, but an 'everlasting omen of what is.'"
(from The San Francisco Renaissance, p.132) READ THE ENTIRE ESSAY

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Imaginal Cosmos - Online Course

The Imaginal Cosmos - Taught by Dr. Angela Voss through the online Phoenix Rising Academy

Registration for the April course is now open - [see this page]

Course Description: To introduce the imagination as the faculty of perception and knowledge of the soul, through studying key texts and images of the Western esoteric traditions; to learn about specific historical and cultural contexts, but also to consider the relevance of an imaginal perspective for our own life, work and creativity, and to gain an understanding of transpersonal and participatory approaches to research. In neoplatonic understanding, soul or psyche is envisioned as the mediator between two modes of being called ‘divine’ and ‘human’. Taking this as our central image, we will begin with Plato, whose creation myth in the Timaeus establishes the soul as the intelligent, primary substance of the cosmos, and the human being as partaking of this intelligence. We will then discover how the image of the anima mundi and revelation of the divine order develops through neoplatonic cosmology and ritual, the early Christian hermeneutic of the four senses of interpretation, the Sufi tradition as interpreted by Henry Corbin, the revival of Platonic and Hermetic mysteries in the Renaissance, and finally through the 20th century rebirth of soul-based knowledge in archetypal and depth psychology. Each theme will give rise to the question of the relationship of cosmos and consciousness, the nature of revelatory knowledge as opposed to human reason, and the role played by ritual, visual image and active imagining in accessing modes of understanding beyond the rational. Of central concern will be the question of academic and scholarly approaches to this material, for example, how can one study the ‘experiential’ moment of revelation or realisation, and bring such experience to bear on rational discourse ‘about’ it? Is creative engagement with poetic or art forms a bone fide research method? Is it possible to combine contemplative and critical modes in research? How can the integrity of individual participation and practice be incorporated into historical or cultural models? MORE DETAILS HERE

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Review of Robert Duncan's HD Book

Magnum Opus - The Book that Could Save American Art

by Jed Perl (in the New Republic)

"I am besotted with a new book that is also an old book. This is The H.D. Book, by Robert Duncan, a wild, dazzling, idiosyncratic magnum opus that the poet composed between 1959 and 1964 and that is only now being published in its complete form, by the University of California Press. What began with a request for a brief birthday homage to the American poet known as H.D.—she had been born Hilda Doolittle—morphed into one of the greatest of all meditations on the nature not only of modern poetry but of the modern artistic imagination in its bewitching complexity. Art, Duncan exclaims, makes “what is not actual real.” I am glad to be reading Duncan’s text as we head into 2011—the second decade of the century after the modern century. There is no nostalgia in The H.D. Book. Duncan’s modernism is at once lofty, optimistic, activist, and open-minded. Published a half-century after it was written, The H.D. Book reads like a clarion call. At a time such as ours, when artists are either embattled or co-opted, either locked away in some ivory tower of their own invention or overtaken by market forces and political forces, Duncan argues for the most strenuous artistic ambitions as a dynamic democratic possibility..." READ THE WHOLE ESSAY

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Sacred Web 26 Now Available

SACRED WEB 26 is now available.

Including:
Coming Into the World: Henry Corbin & the Exegesis of the Soul. 
Part Two: The Visionary Recital (pp. 17-40)
by Tom Cheetham
This essay—the second of two parts—continues a reading of Henry Corbin's "Cyclical Time in Mazdaism and Isma'ilism" and Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. The first part of Cheetham's essay appeared in volume 25 of Sacred Web, and focused on Corbin's view of cyclical time. The second part focuses on the concept of taw'il (or hermeneutics) and on the phenomenological and hermeneutic vision (the rendering of the Presence of transcendent reality through sacred dramaturgy and angelology) that constitutes the pluralistic foundation of Corbin's work.

The link above connects to the full table of contents AND online links to poetry, interviews and book reviews. Don't miss the review of Peter Kingsley's new book.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Daryush Shayegan on Henry Corbin

HENRY CORBIN Penseur de l'Islam Spirituel
by Daryush Shayegan
Albin Michel 2011

Henry Corbin (1903-1978), qui a renouvelé en profondeur les études islamiques, en particulier iraniennes et mystiques, est un penseur multiforme et encore trop méconnu. Premier traducteur en France de Heidegger, il a puisé aux sources de la "philosophie prophétique" une pensée riche et profonde qui mérite sa place aux côtés des plus grands systèmes.

Daryush Shayegan, lui-même Iranien et qui fut son élève, livre ici la première synthèse complète de son œuvre. Métaphysique de l’imagination, prophétie et initiation, shî’isme, ismaélisme, Avicenne, Mollâ Sadrâ, Sohrawardî, angélologie, théophanie, religion de l’amour : autant de thèmes qui dessinent un paysage spirituel plein de promesses pour la réflexion contemporaine et où peut s’amorcer un réel dialogue
entre l’Occident et l’Orient.

[Thanks to Daniel Proulx for alerting us to this book. I believe that this is a new edition of SHAYEGAN, D., Henry Corbin : la topographie spirituelle de l'islam iranien, Paris, De la Différence, 1990. - TC]

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Most Read Essays on Scribd

It is perhaps worth noting that of the nearly 90 documents I have posted on Scribd in the last year, the three most read by a large margin are these essays by Henry Corbin:
The Visionary Dream in Islamic Spirituality
Theory of Visionary Knowledge in Islamic Philosophy
and this essay of mine:
The Test of the Veil