The Legacy of Henry Corbin: Sacred Web 27

"...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.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Sacred Web 27

Sacred Web 27 is now available.

It contains many things of interest to readers of this blog, on Shi'ism, the Ismailis and one piece (by yours truly) on Henry Corbin:

Barzakh, the Opened Field
by Tom Cheetham
In this essay, which was delivered as a lecture at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England, in October, 2010, Cheetham discusses in a personal way his introduction to the seminal French philosopher, Iranophile, and Islamic scholar, Henry Corbin, and deals with several of his key ideas, focusing in particular on the notion of the barzakh, the isthmus or bridge between the outer and inner worlds, the imaginal realm where the “signs” of reality can be interpreted as on opened field of meaning. The essay concludes with an exploration of the relevance of Corbin's ideas to poetics and the transformative power of language.

Full Table of Contents.