Ivan Illich

Readers of my work will know that I think Ivan Illich was, like Henry Corbin, one of the great religious thinkers of the 20th century. And also like Corbin, Illich's work is relatively little known. I have tried in some of my writing to suggest some common themes the two shared - in spite of profound differences in their personalities and their theologies. Illich's thought is provocative and deeply important. Perhaps the best introductions to his work are the two books of interviews with David Cayley: Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992) and The Rivers North of the Future (2005). A superb collection of essays is The Challenges of Ivan Illich (2002), edited by Hoinacki & Mitcham. Also essential is the Thinking After Illich website. And I have just discovered the new Journal devoted to Illich's life and work (providing free online access) which is a treasure trove of information and cogent thinking:

"The International Journal of Illich Studies is an open access, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication dedicated to engaging the thought and writing of Ivan Illich and his circle.  Articles/Reviews/Reflections are invited on any subject that intersects with the wide range of IIlich’s ideas, or that represent a version of the social critique for which he became famous on matters such as modern developmentalism, industrialized "progress," institutional bureaucratization, the heuristic role played by historical consciousness, the moral life, and/or the privatization/publicization of the lay commons."

Berdyaev, Jung, Corbin

C.G. Jung and Nikolai Berdyaev: Individuation and the Person
By Georg Nicolaus, Routledge, 2010 (google books)

Many thanks to Hadi Fakhoury for alerting me to this book. He suggests that Berdyaev was a major influence on Henry Corbin.  Nicolaus notes (p. 7) Corbin's recognition of the link between Jung's "sophiology" and Bulgakov's - and by implication that of Berdyaev who Corbin knew in the 1930's. As Fakhoury points out, Corbin's interest in Berdyaev's work was life-long and he was elected President of the Berdyaev Association in 1974.

"Georg Nicolaus' writing leaps beyond mere comparison of systems of Depth Psychology and spirituality, establishing a foundation for a true Spiritual Psychology. Depth psychology has long needed a balancing of the dark interior sufferings of the psyche with the soul’s openness to the truth of Divine radiance. Here it is!" - Robert Sardello, author of Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness and Director of The School of Spiritual Psychology, USA

"Jung and Berdyaev were self-consciously modern thinkers with very different backgrounds: Swiss Protestantism and Russian Orthodoxy. Central to them both was the notion of the person, not as a given, but as a creative opportunity. Dr Nicolaus’ thoughtful book is the first to bring their ideas into dialogue." - Andrew Louth, Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham University, UK

Living Forms of the Imagination

Living Forms of the Imagination by Douglas Hedley. T&T Clark, 2008, (with multiple significant references to Corbin)

Explores the necessity of enabling the imagination to prevail as part of an anti-reductionist approach, to philosophical theology, if we are to engage with God’s action in the world.

Douglas Hedley is Reader in Hermeneutics and Metaphysics and Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge, UK. A past President of the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion, he has been visiting Professor at the Sorbonne and holder of the Alan Richardson lectureship at Durham University. He has delivered the Teape Lectures in India in 2007. His former publications include Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge University Press).

"Living Forms of the Imagination is a compelling, erudite articulation and defense of the indispensable cognitive value of the imagination in the philosophy of nature and God. Elegantly written, this book draws on Platonic and Romantic traditions to create a brilliant challenge to contemporary, reductive naturalists and those who, following Ryle, advance a deflationary account of the imagination. This book is essential reading for those interested in the imagination, epistemology, naturalism, and the philosophy of religion." -Charles Taliaferro, Professor of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, MN, USA

“This is an impressively learned book. Imagination is a central component of humanity’s encounter with the world. Imagination can lea to conversion of heart and empowerment for action. While the author’s retrieval of Platonism and Romanticism may not answer fundamental contemporary issues in belief, it is very suggestive of new avenues of how to deal with the crisis of belief and unbelief.”–Lucien J. Richard, OMI, Catholic Library World

le bulletin de l'IISMM janvier 2011

IISMMBulletinJanvier2011

Apocalypse in Islam

Apocalypse in Islam, Jean Pierre Filiu, University of California Press, 2011  (with a few references to Corbin)

From the Publisher:  This is an eye-opening exploration of a troubling phenomenon: the fast-growing belief in Muslim countries that the end of the world is at hand—and with it the “Great Battle,” prophesied by both Sunni and Shi`i tradition, which many believers expect will begin in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands. Jean-Pierre Filiu uncovers the role of apocalypse in Islam over the centuries, and highlights its extraordinary resurgence in recent decades. Identifying 1979 as a decisive year in the rise of contemporary millenarian speculation, he stresses the ease with which subsequent events in the Middle East have been incorporated into the intellectual universe of apocalyptic propagandists. Filiu also shows how Christian and Jewish visions of the Final Judgment have stimulated alarmist reaction in Islamic lands, both in the past and today, and examines the widespread fear of Christian Zionist domination as an impetus to jihad. Though the overwhelming majority of Muslims remains unpersuaded, the mounting conviction in the imminence of apocalypse is a serious matter, especially for those who are preparing for it.

Jean-Pierre Filiu is Associate Professor at the Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po) in Paris. Formerly a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, he has extensive experience working with NGOs and as a diplomat in the Middle East. His writings about the Muslim world have been translated into a dozen languages.

Corbin Online

Readers Please NOTICE that the updated list of Corbin's work available online can now be found HERE.  It is now a "Page" accessible at the upper lefthand corner of the Blog.

Angelologie et politique chez Henry Corbin

JUSTER, Alain, « Angelologie et politique chez Henry Corbin », dans CEMOTI [Cahiers d'études sur la Méditerranée orientale et le monde turco-iranien], 1989, Janvier, no.7, pp. 95-107. (Thanks to Daniel Proulx)

Alain Juster on Henry Corbin

Logos and Revelation

Logos and Revelation: Ibn 'Arabi, Meister Eckhart and Mystical Hermeneutics, Robert J Dobie.
(Multiple references to Corbin)
From the Publisher: 
What is "mysticism" and, most importantly, how do the great mystical writers understand it? Logos and Revelation seeks to answer this question by looking closely at the writings of two of the most prominent medieval mystical writers: the Muslim, Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) and the Christian Meister Eckhart (1260-1328).

Through his careful examination of the writings of these men, Robert J. Dobie discovers that mystical reflection and experience are intrinsically and essentially tied to the "mystical" or "hidden sense" of the sacred text. Mystical reflection and experience are, therefore, at their roots interpretive or hermeneutical: the attempt by the mystical exegete to uncover through "imaginative reading" or philosophical analysis the inner meaning of revelation. What emerges is a theology of the Word (logos, verbum, ratio, kalima) in which it is the task of the mystical exegete to appropriate inwardly the divine Word that speaks in and through both the sacred text and all creation. What the mystical writer discovers is an increasingly fitting harmony between the text of revelation, properly interepreted and understood, and the inner dynamic of the soul's reaching out beyond itself toward the transcendent.

In contrast to modern notions of the phenomenon, Dobie argues that mystical reading is not about cultivating extraordinary personal experiences. Nor does it take readers doctrinally outside of, or beyond, religious traditions. Rather, mystical reading and listening should take us deeper into the sacred text and sacred tradition.

Most strikingly, strong analogies emerge between how Christians and Muslims appropriate inwardly this divine Word, which forms a real and solid basis for interfaith dialogue founded on a mutual listening to the divine logos.

Robert J. Dobie is associate professor of philosophy at LaSalle University. His specialized areas of interest are medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophy; comparative philosophy; and metaphysics.

Praise for the Book:

"There is simply no book-length comparative work on these two axial figures, nor one which compares with this book for its thorough grasp of each figure. Dobie has mastered the texts of each, doing so with admirable clarity."--David Burrell, C.S.C., Hesburgh Professer Emeritus of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame

"Logos and Revelation is a rich, exhilarating book on two notoriously difficult and elusive thinkers. It is also a daring venture into the treacherous field of comparative mysticism. It succeeds on all counts. It is a major contribution."--Donald F. Duclow, professor of philosophy, Gwynedd-Mercy College

The H.D. Book - Robert Duncan - NOW AVAILABLE

The H.D. Book
The Collected Writings of Robert Duncan, Volume 1.
Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman; University of California Press, 2010

Readers of this blog will know of Duncan's debt to Corbin, especially to Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. This volume is the source for many of Duncan's comments on Corbin.

From the Publisher: This magisterial work, long awaited and long the subject of passionate speculation, is an unprecedented exploration of modern poetry and poetics by one of America's most acclaimed and influential postwar poets. What began in 1959 as a simple homage to the modernist poet H.D. developed into an expansive and unique quest to arrive at a poetics that would fuel Duncan's great work in the 1970s A meditation on both the roots of modernism and its manifestation in the work of H.D., Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, Edith Sitwell, and many others, Duncan's wide-ranging book is especially notable for its illumination of the role women played in creation of literary modernism. Until now, The H.D. Book existed only in mostly out-of-print little magazines in which its chapters first appeared. Now, for the first time published in its entirety, as its author intended, this monumental work—at once an encyclopedia of modernism, a reinterpretation of its key players and texts, and a record of Duncan's quest toward a new poetics—is at last complete and available to a wide audience.

Imaginary Muslims

Readers of Corbin's Creative Imagination will know of his fondness for the Uwaysi Sufis. This book is as far as I know the only one in English that discusses these people:

Baldick, Julian. Imaginary Muslims: The Uwaysi Sufis of Central Asia. Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, 1993.

Reviews of the books can be found here:

Review by Robert Irwin, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 58, No. 1 (1995), pp. 139-140.

Review by Alexander Knysh, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Apr., 1995), pp. 103-106.

See also Baldick's later work:

Baldick, Julian. Animal and Shaman: Ancient Religions of Central Asia. New York: New York University Press, 2000

6ème Journée Henry Corbin, samedi 18 décembre 2010, ENS Paris

La Hiérohistoire
Le samedi 18 décembre 2010
à l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris
amphithéâtre Rataud

Matin :
Président de séance : Leili Anvar-Chenderoff  (INALCO)
9h 30 : Philippe FAURE (Université d’Orléans), « Des "évènements dans le Ciel" - Hiérohistoire et mystère liturgique dans la tradition chrétienne médiévale. »
10 h 30 : Jaume FLAQUER (EPHE) « Un Souffle qui venait de Dieu : l’histoire du Fils de Marie d’après Ibn ‘Arabî »
11 h 30 : Denis GRIL (Université de Provence) « Herméneutique et hiérohistoire dans le commentaire de la Fâtiha chez Ibn ‘Arabî ».

Après-midi :
14 h 30 : Jean CLERGUE (chercheur indépendant) « En quête de Henry Corbin, franc-maçon chevaleresque »
15 h 30 : Pierre LORY (EPHE – IFPO) « Les animaux ont-ils une part dans l’histoire sacrale des humains ? Réflexions sur l’Epître 22 des Frères Sincères (Ikhwân al-Safâ’) » 16 h 30 : Stéphane RUSPOLI (chercheur indépendant) " Les Evangiles et les Esséniens"

A partir de 17h30, réception amicale à l’Hôtel Claude Bernard, 43 Rue des Ecoles, 75005 Paris

Notez dès maintenant les références du livre de Katayoun Roudhi : « L’ontologie du lieu ; voyage au pays du non-où », avec une préface de Christian Jambet (l’Harmattan, 2010). Il ouvre un horizon artistique contemporain sur l’oeuvre de Corbin.

New York Times: December 12, 2010, 6:00 AM

In Amsterdam, a Rich Survey of Islamic Art

By VALERIE GLADSTONE

Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. (c) Nour Foundation. Courtesy of the Khalili Family Trust“Panoramic View of Mecca,” circa 1845, painted by Muhammad Abdallah.

Amsterdam

POSTS | CITY GUIDE

A globally renowned collection of Islamic art is on view at De Nieuwe Kerk (Dam, International Exhibition Centre, Gravenstraat 17; 31-20-626-8168;www.nieuwekerk.nl) through April 17. Assembled by Prof. Nasser D. Khalili, a well-known scholar and benefactor, it includes over 500 objects, among them illuminated Korans and manuscripts, paintings, gold, jewels, textiles, ceramics, glassware, lacquerware, metalwork and wood carvings.

“The exhibit shows that Islamic art is a masterly expression not of a single national culture or civilization,” said Vincent Boele, curator of exhibitions for the museum, “but of many peoples joined by Islam for more than 1,400 years.”

The collection includes works originating from around the globe — China, Spain, India, Tunisia — many of them masterpieces. They include manuscripts dating from the 10th to the 19th century, jewelry set with precious stones, as well as vibrant enamels that belonged to India’s Mughal rulers and exquisite miniatures from India and Iran.

While the general perception of Islamic art is that it is always religious and without representations of humans and animals, this exhibition shows otherwise, including in miniature paintings. It also features many pieces with the calligraphic decoration and geometric patterns that have come to characterize Islamic art.

Professor Khalili has strong links with Oxford University, where he established a research fellowship in Islamic Art and endowed the Khalili Research Center for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East. This is the first time his collection has been shown in The Netherlands.

Open Friday to Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Admission is 15 euros (about $19.50).

The Sophia Center

Dear Sophia Centre friends, The Sophia Centre is now at the renamed University of Wales Trinity Saint David and has a new URL: http://www.tsd.ac.uk/en/sophia/ This is just to let you know about 3 Sophia Centre conferences in 2011 On 4th-5th June 2011 our ninth annual conference, 'Sky and Symbol', will be held in Bath UK, and will address the role, nature and function of celestial symbolism. The keynote speakers will be Liz Greene  (University of Wales Trinity Saint David and University of Bristol), Kristin Lippincott (The Exhibitions Team), Ilana Wartenburg (University College, London), Gary Wells (Ithaca College) and Elliot Wolfson (New York University). The web site is at http://www.historyofastrology.org.uk/conferences/symbolism/ We are also holding two promotional conferences for the MA in in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology, one in Zurich and one in Mansfield, Massachussets, the latter in easy reach of Boston and New York. Both will appeal to potential students but, we should stress, all are welcome. The details are: 13th-15th May 2011, 'Origins: the Babylonian and Egyptian Contribution to Western Astrology', with Nick Campion and Bernadette Brady, Mansfield, Massachusetts, USA. More details at http://www.historyofastrology.org.uk/Events/Origins/ On 8th-10th April 2011, 'Maps of the Psyche', with Liz Greene, Nick Campion and Bernadette Brady, in Zurich.Further details are at   http://www.historyofastrology.org.uk/Events/Psyche/index.html  Also, a reminder that the Proceedings of the 2009 conference on 'Cosmologies' are for sale at   http://www.sophiacentrepress.com/NewPublications.html best wishes, Nick Campion, Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. http://www.tsd.ac.uk/en/sophia/

Philosophy & Politics

I mentioned Massimo Cacciari's The Necessary Angel in an earlier post. Thanks to JMS for pointing out this  Interview with Massimo Cacciari: “‘I am many’, says Europe. We have to be capable of being many”

The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom - Ali Lakhani

The Timeless Relevance of Traditional Wisdom
By M. Ali Lakhani
Foreword by Reza Shah-Kazemi
Introduction by William Stoddart
World Wisdom Books, 2010

(The author, editor of Sacred Web, has kindly reprinted his reviews of my Corbin Trilogy in this volume.)

Table of Contents:

Part One: The Sacred Web Essays

What is Tradition?

An Introduction to Sacred Web

The Importance of Spiritual Literacy

Pluralism and the Metaphysics of Morality

"What Thirst is For"

Of Detachment and Spiritual Curiosity

Consecrated to the Sublime

“Fundamentalism”: A Metaphysical Perspective

Reclaiming the Center

Understanding “Tradition”

On Faith and Intellect

Umberto Eco, Fascism and Tradition

Towards a Traditional Understanding of Sexuality

On Translation

The Principle of Verticality

The Quest for Moral Certainty

On Cultivating Awareness

What is Normal?

The Problem of Evil

The Secular and the Sacred

“Standing Unshakably in the True”: A Commentary on the Teachings of Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998)

“A Single Principle”: On Faith and Pluralism

Striving for “Wholeness” in the Kali Yuga

The Secularization of Faith in the Modern World

Of “Longing” and “Belonging”

Papers on Metaphysics

Excerpt from “The Metaphysics of Human Governance”

The Metaphysics of Poetic Expression

Section One: Traditional Metaphysics—A Phenomenological Approach

Section Two: What is “Poetry”?

Section Three: “Poiesis” and “Logos”

Section Four: Poetic Vision—Seeing with the Eye of the Heart

Section Five: Poetic Expression—Saying the Unsayable

Section Six: Conclusion

“Neither of the East nor of the West”: Universality in Islam

Education in the light of Tradition: A Metaphysical Perspective

Part Three: Book Reviews

Review of Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, by William C. Chittick

Review of Conversations with Wendell Berry

Review of the Henry Corbin Trilogy by Tom Cheetham

New Book on Tarot

Tarot in Culture
Emily E. Auger, Ed.

The Association for Tarot Studies is pleased to be able to announce the forthcoming collection of important essays from a variety of well-known authors and researchers.

This volume is expected to total over 900 pages and includes 24 colour plates.

[This looks to be a very interesting volume - be sure to look over the impressive Table of Contents. - TC]

L'ONTOLOGIE DU LIEU

L'ONTOLOGIE DU LIEU: Voyage au pays du "non-où"
Rouhi Katayoun
Preface de Christian Jambet
Arts et Sciences de l'art
BEAUX ARTS PEINTURE, DESSIN, 2010

L'ontologie du lieu, Voyage au pays du "non-où" comme le titre l'indique, est une initiation au voyage, au sens avicénien du terme. Une tentative de répondre au pourquoi de l'acte de création en général et en peinture en particulier, ceci en invitant le lecteur à s'interroger sur le sens premier du lieu où l'indicible de l'art habite. L'espace de l'acte créateur est mis en résonance avec le "monde imaginal", fondement de la pensée du philosophe iranien du XIIe siècle Sohravardi.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS

A Conference in Istanbul - 9-11 Dec.

On Sunday, in the 6th Session:

Hadi Fakhoury (Islamic Institute, McGill University)

Henry Corbin's Hermeneutics of Visionary Experience

IstanbulConference Programme 8Oct10

the music of silence - descends to visibility

In Avicenna and the Visionary Recital Henry Corbin writes, "... the symbol is mediator because it is silence, it speaks and does not speak; and, precisely thus, it states what it alone can speak." (260) The Angel is "  'hermeneut of the divine silence' —that is, [the] annunciation and epiphany of the impenetrable and incommunicable divine transcendence." (55)

Jerome Rothenberg has posted his introduction to Murat Nemet-Nejat's forthcoming book The Spiritual Life of Replicants. (excerpt here)  He begins,

"The poem The Spiritual Life of Replicants is infused with Sufi ideas, and this infusion results in a poetry which consists of movements of thought in a visual field. The reader experiences the movements as he or she is ensnared by them reading the poem. The thought patterns are arabesque, circuitous, tangential, reflecting the Sufi sense that reality is not stared at directly; but it can only be touched, glimpsed at reflectively, as fragments, the way, for instance, the reality of the wind can be seen (or heard) in the traces it leaves on the movements of branches. In this way the infinite - the invisible, the music of silence - descends to visibility."  READ THE ENTIRE PIECE 

An Introduction to the Vision of Henry Corbin

The Prophetic Tradition and the 

Battle for the Soul of the World

An Introduction to the Spiritual Vision
of Henry Corbin
by
Tom Cheetham

presented at the conference
Henry Corbin, Islam and the Imagination
Saturday 9 October 2010
Rewley House, Oxford, England

Access the pdf version of this talk at
Les Amis de Henry et Stella Corbin
HERE

Review: Henry Corbin y la imagen del alma

Review: Henry Corbin y la imagen del alma by Victoria Cirlot. in: Revista de libros de la Fundación Caja Madrid, No. 83 (Nov., 2003), pp. 30-31

Henry Corbin y la imagen del alma, Victoria Cirlot

The Role of the Grail in Henry Corbin's Thought - Online Audio

I am delighted to announce that this superb lecture by Dr. John Carey can now be heard online at the Temenos Academy website here. The lecture has been presented in London and in Oxford. All students of Corbin will find it of the greatest interest. Carey's scholarship is first rate, and his analysis most penetrating.

The Role of the Grail in Henry Corbin's Thought

"Henry Corbin, one of the twentieth century's greatest scholars of the inspired Imagination, is best known for his studies of Shi'ite and Sufi spirituality; but his dedication to that dimension of reality which he called the mundus imaginalis led him to explore many other traditions as well. One theme which particularly captured his imagination was the image of the Grail. This lecture will look at what the Grail was for Corbin: at the versions of the story to which he refers, at the contexts in which he speaks of it, and at the hints of what he may have believed its essential significance to be."

John Carey is a Statutory Lecturer in the Department of Early and Medieval Irish, University College, Cork, Ireland, and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy. His publications include King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings, A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland, and Ireland and the Grail. A love of Arthurian legend drew him into Celtic studies early in life and has never left him.