The Legacy of Henry Corbin: Notes on Vladimir Ivanow & 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.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Notes on Vladimir Ivanow & Henry Corbin

IVANOW,Vladimir Alekseevich
(b. St. Petersburg, Russia, 3 November 1886, d. Tehran, 19 June 1970; variously spelt Ivanov and Wladimir), Russian orientalist and leading pioneer in modern Ismaili studies. See the Encyclopedia Iranica entry.

Vladimir Ivanow's edition of the Central Asian Isma'ili text the Umm'ul-Kitab (Mother of the Book) originally appearing in the journal Der Islam, no. 23 (1936), pp. 1-132 can be found HERE on Scribd.

Book Review by Todd Lawson: Correspondance Corbin-Ivanow: Lettres échangées entre Henry Corbin et Vladimir Ivanow de 1947 à 1966 by Sabine Schmidtke. Iranian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 2000), pp. 444-445.

Corbin-Ivanow Review - Lawson