Paris - November 26 2016

Henry Corbin - Champion of Inter-religious Dialogue

The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism (2003)

A deep reading of Tom Cheetham's The World Turned Inside Out could have the effect of turning the reader inside out! Not only will a person discover in this book a thorough understanding of the remarkable and important vision of Henry Corbin, the great French scholar of Iranian Islam. The reader will also be engaged by a politically useful understanding of the religion of Islam generally, of mystical and negative theology, of monotheism, of the philosophy of imagination, of language and the textures of textuality, and of the nature of reading and thinking. Among other things, a careful reading of this book can inform current interpretations of the politics of terrorism, its wars and the wars against it. In short, there exists here a shaking of the foundations of human perspectives that comes to nothing short of a radical revisioning of all attempts to make sense of the life and meaning of being in the world. - David L. Miller, Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion, Emeritus, Syracuse University, Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author of Christs, Three Faces of God & Hells and Holy Ghosts.

A remarkable creative synthesis of the genius of Henry Corbin, the silent precursor of archetypal psychology. Tom Cheetham gives the gift of a metaphysics of interiority balancing pervasive, destructive, suffocating, spectator consciousness. And it is a convivial interiority, filled with spiritual presences. The soul can breathe again because it has found its homeland, the Soul of the World. - Robert Sardello, author of Freeing the Soul from Fear.

This book is a penetrating and comprehensive introduction to and survey of the remarkable work and thought of Henry Corbin. It serves an important purpose in making Corbin's work more accessible in English. - Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies
The first book in English devoted to the great French author Henry Corbin, The World Turned Inside Out is an excellent introduction to and survey of Corbin's work and thought. Corbin is unique among twentieth-century scholars of Islam in his ability to imaginatively enter the world of the Sufi gnostics, and to apply their insights to the modern world. The World Turned Inside Out provides us with a bracing and stimulating overview of this seminal author's work and its implications: this is a book for all who suspect that, to paraphrase Plato, there is more to life than that which can be grasped in one's hands. - Arthur Versluis, Editor of Esoterica and author of Wisdom's Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition.

This book does an absolutely splendid job of opening up Corbin's thought to the general reader. Corbin's work addresses our contemporary situation in a most direct way as this book shows, and the author has made an important contribution to both the philosophy of religion and the history of religions. This is an interesting, careful and important piece of work that I hope will gain the recognition that it deserves. - Charles J. Adams, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies, McGill University

L'Association des Amis de Stella et Henry Corbin has sponsored a French translation of this book. I am deeply grateful to Les Amis and to the translator, Hélène Senglard-Foreman. The book is available in French as L'Envers du Monde, published by Entrelacs. Available on their website HERE.

The Corbin Trilogy
By Tom Cheetham
Reviewed by M. Ali Lakhani
Read more ...

Buy the book from:
Spring Journal Books
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.fr
Distributed in Europe by Daimon Publishers.

Support CAIR

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Esotericism and the Scholastic Imagination: The Origins of  Esoteric Practice in Christian Kataphatic Spirituality  

- Egil Asprem

Correspondences 4 (2016) 1–34   

ISSN: 2053-7158 (Online) correspondencesjournal.com

Abstract Scholars agree that the imagination is central to esoteric practice. While the esoteric vis imaginativa is usually attributed to the influx of Neoplatonism in the Italian Renaissance, this article argues that many of its key properties were already in place in medieval scholasticism. Two aspects of the history of the imagination are discussed. First, it is argued that esoteric practice is rooted in a broader kataphatic trend within Christian spirituality that explodes in the popular devotion literature of the later Middle Ages. By looking at the role of Bonaventure’s “cognitive theology” in the popularization of gospel meditations and kataphatic devotional prayer, it is argued that there is a direct link between the scholastic reconsideration of the imaginative faculty and the development of esoteric practices inspired by Christian devotional literature. Secondly, it is argued that the Aristotelian inner sense tradition of the scholastics left a lasting impression on later esoteric conceptualizations of the imaginative faculty. Examples suggesting evidence for both these two claims are discussed. The article proposes to view esoteric practices as an integral part of a broader kataphatic stream in European religious history, separated out by a set of disjunctive strategies rooted in the policing of “orthopraxy” by ecclesiastical authorities.

and this is very worthy of note:

The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism Hardcover 

– February 20, 1981

by James Engell 

The Unseen Partner - a book not to be missed!

The Unseen Partner

Love & Longing in the Unconscious

by

Diane Croft

Visit the website

Don't miss this gorgeous book! I have waited years with great anticipation for this book. 

It is even more beautiful than I expected. It's really a volume to treasure. My congratulations
to the author for the perfect completion of a long labor of love. Here's my 

contribution to the small flood of positive reviews:

"In the tradition of Jung’s Red Book and Edinger’s The Living Psyche, Diane Croft’s The Unseen Partner is a beautifully illustrated, gorgeously produced and deeply moving account of personal transformation. Croft’s presentation of her own visionary recital in the company of the invisible guide who dictated these poems will be inspiration and solace to all who find themselves suddenly strangers in the strange and often frightening realm of the autonomous psyche. We should be grateful for such a gift." - Tom Cheetham

Visit the website for more reviews and details about this book. Here is an introduction:

The Unseen Partner records one woman's descent into the collective unconscious, a universal field of reality transcending time, space, and matter. For three years, the author recorded the primordial poetry she found there. It took almost two decades of struggle to make sense of the experience and to write about it in this book.

Drawing heavily on the discoveries of C.G. Jung, as recounted in his Red Book, this book explains our human need for the transcendent -- a dimension not somewhere else, but inextricably a part of us. Her living account demonstrates that we live in both a physical world and a spiritual realm simultaneously.

It is also available on amazon.

Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam

Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam: 

Qur'an, Exegesis, Messianism and the Literary Origins of the Babi Religion

(Iranian Studies) 

by Todd Lawson

Routledge, 2011.

on amazon

From the publisher: Of the several works on the rise and development of the Babi movement, especially those dealing with the life and work of its founder, Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi, few deal directly with the compelling and complex web of mysticism, theology and philosophy found in his earliest compositions.

***

Somehow it seems I never posted a note on this when it appeared. It is replete with references to Henry Corbin. Among them:  "The whole offers a perfect dramatic example of one of Corbin’s resounding insights: in Shi‘i Islam, the angel of revelation is identical with the angel of interpretation."

Review of Todd Lawson, Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam: Qur’an, Exegesis, Messianism, and the Literary Origins of the Babi Religion by Christopher Buck

Buck's Review concludes: "The present work is a refinement of Lawson’s doctoral dissertation (1987) at McGill University, Canada. It has aged, matured and sophisti-cated like fine wine in the barrel of Lawson’s subsequent work, and is inter-spersed with insights arising in subsequent studies. Thus, it is a work of original research on an original figure prismed by an original mind. Gnostic  Apocalypse and Islam is an instant classic in Babi/Baha’ studies. It is foundational to the academic study of Babi/Baha’i history and doctrine. Not only did it take a scholar with a command of Arabic and of the history, doctrine and arcane philosophy of Shi‘i Islam to write Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam. It took a gnostic."

At Last!!! ... (Notes on Corbin & Poetry #??...)

A Curriculum Of The Soul

Volumes One & Two

edited by John Clarke and Albert Glover

Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016.

on amazon

For anyone with an interest in Olson of course this is indispensible - but also for anyone with an interest in how Corbin was read and understood by a generation of poets. Such a wonderful labor of love. And beautifully produced for a good reasonable price - these large and impressive volumes are a must have. - TC


While I have not read all the individual chapbooks in A Curriculum of the Soul Series, I have very much admired what Albert Glover is doing there and the way he is doing it.
     Donald Allen

A Curriculum of the Soul series is, in my evaluation, one of the most impressive publishing ventures now under way among American small presses. It will be valuable to contemporary poets and readers in a number of ways.
     Karl Young

The series is one of the more imaginative, certainly one of the best among scores in the small press world….Over the years A Curriculum of the Soul has included many of the major American poets, or, more particularly those whom are by now among the top voices familiar to those of us who read little magazines and keep-up with small press publications.
     Bill Katz

Albert Glover’s publishing venture is one of the most ambitious and consistent of the past decade. The series of books, A Curriculum of the Soul, serves more than one function; as a whole, it advances the provocative theoretical thinking of Charles Olson, and as individual books it produces new poetic statements and works by writers who are among the best in the country.
     Alan Davies

I find it difficult to imagine a more admirable project, one which is of value not only to us who read the fascicles as issued, but to the laymen and scholars of the future who will attempt to unravel this complicated age. …Such is the destiny of A Curriculum of the Soul, which is a work of art, gigantic in its conception, yet wonderfully accessible in its execution.
     John Nomland



Reviewed by William Farrar on amazon:

After over 50 years, the Curriculum of the Soul has come out in an affordable trade copy. This work is an homage to the poet Charles Olson. Olson, who is known mainly for being a “Black Mountain” poet influenced by the style of Ezra Pound, was also known for creating the idea of projective verse, which discussed the centrality of breath as an organization structure of poetry. In the past decades, Olson’s reputation has taken some hits. A biography by Tom Clark (Allegory of a Poet) and the editing of Olson’s masterwork, the unfinished The Maximus Poems by George Butterick, created the image of a person whose muse was like Melville’s Ahab in Moby Dick: a dark, obsessed character whose life ended in the wreckage of an incomplete, unfulfillable vision. The Curriculum of the Soul, which was edited by Albert Glover and Jack Clarke points toward a different, more positive role of Olson in the American artistic landscape.

Glover and Clarke chose 28 words taken from a typescript by Olson called Curriculum of the Soul and assigned each one to a different poet or writer associated with Olson in some way, who produced a fascicle on one of the words. Contributors include poets such as Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, and Joanne Kyger. These fascicles have been combined together and the individual contributors' name have been backgrounded.

The Curriculum exemplifies the ideals of a different Olson than can be found in Tom Clark’s biography. The Olson evoked by the contributor to these volumes is the Olson who dreamed of a “nation of nothing but poetry” and who mythologized his own vision Greek ideal of polis, an artist and teacher who imagined individuals coming together to create a collective work that transcended the individuality of a single creator’s ego. The Curriculum achieves this by presenting a work that has the feel of a single epic meditation composed of multiple voices. In a sense, the work functions like the poetic equivalent of the free jazz of the 60s.

Like free jazz- or any collective project- the work is uneven. There are notable moments in the work: moments of beauty and insight that capture the vibrant spirit that Olson’s writing and ideas point towards. But, there are also weaker, less committed contributions that provide very little to the whole. In addition, the work reveals some of the limits of the main era of its composition: it has a viewpoint that is predominantly male, white, and 70s in its consciousness (think of those old photographs with bell bottoms). In spite of these limitations, the work is valuable. It serves as a document of the evolution of poetry in 20th century America, a memorial to an influential post-WWII American poet. It is also an homage of perseverance, commitment and care on the part of its editors.

Volume One

Charles Olson

Albert Glover

Duncan McNaughton

John Wieners

Michael Boughn

Lisa Jarnot

Fred Wah

John Clarke

Robert Duncan

Alice Notley

Robin Blaser

Robert Dalke

George F. Butterick

Edward Kissam

Edgar Billowitz

Volume One

 i THE MUSHROOM

 ii DREAM

 iii WOMAN

 iv MIND

 v LANGUAGE

 vi EARTH

 vii BLAKE

 viii DANTE

 ix HOMER’S ART

 x BACH’S BELIEF

 xi NOVALIS’ SUBJECTS

 xii THE NORSE

 xiii THE ARABS

 xiv AMERICAN INDIANS

Volume Two

Harvey Brown

Lewis MacAdams, Jr

Ed Sanders

Michael Bylebyl

David Tirrell

Danny Zimmerman

Drummond Hadley

James Koller

Gerrit Lansing

Joanne Kyger

Robert Grenier

John Thorpe

Anselm Hollo

Michael McClure

Volume Two

 xv JAZZ PLAYING

 xvi DANCE

 xvii EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS

 xviii ISMAELI MUSLIMISM

 xix ALCHEMY

 xx PERSPECTIVE

 xxi VISION

 xxii MESSAGES

 xxiii ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY

 xxiv PHENOMENOLOGICAL

 xxv MATTER

 xxvi ATTENTIION

 xxvii SENSATION

 xxviii ORGANISM

New from OUP

The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy

Edited by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke

Oxford University Press, 2016

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that, unlike other reference works, the Oxford Handbook has striven to give roughly equal weight to every century, from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook is also unique in that its 30 chapters are work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered, in particular taking advantage of recent new editions and translations that have renewed interest and debate around the Islamic philosophical canon. 

The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy gives both the advanced student and active scholar in Islamic philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, a strong sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like and a deep view of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at stake. Most importantly, it provides an up-to-date portrait of contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy.

Todd Lawson at the Ibn Arabi Symposium, 2016

The Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society 33rd Symposium 'Light & Knowledge' 

Wolfson College, Oxford March 2016. 

Video by Ayman Saey

Water and Light pervade the writings of Ibn 'Arabi as they do the Quran itself. In the poetic literalism of Ibn 'Arabi's discourse, these everyday realities are frequently involved in specific events of knowing. Knowledge appears to be built upon water and light. Water and Light are also essential "hormones of the imagination" – they are elements of the natural realm that lead us beyond nature. The living "natural" cosmos and everything in it, according to Ibn 'Arabi, is the imaginal (not imaginary) projection of the divine. Imagination is the single most powerful divine activity and it issues in what is frequently referred to in scripture as "creation". Humankind participate in this activity through the imagination. As Ibn ‘Arabi frequently has it, God describes the cosmos to us through us (laná biná). This issues in the most stirring and transformative instances of knowing. The light of the imagination draws us together to the primal scene of our collective beginning on the Day of the Covenant (Q 7:172), the birthplace of time, history and consciousness where we were all gathered in peace in the divine presence – in Quranic language much loved and venerated by Ibn 'Arabi, where "all are created from the same water " (Q 21:30). The poetic dynamics of water and light in the Quran and Ibn 'Arabi's writings generates a noetic and experiential music of remembrance, recognition and knowledge through which the revelation of our common humanity is nourished, our sense of our common dependence upon the Real is articulated and deepened, and our common engagement with the imaginal realm illumined and guided.

The purpose of this talk is to explore what appear to be similarities among three different Quranic elements which acquire significant importance in the writings of Ibn Arabi and to speculate on the nature of knowing, how it comes to be and what are its proper focii. Through considering the poetics of the Quran and the poetics of Ibn Arabi we hope to deepen our understanding of his teaching and, of course, the teaching of Islam. In this we will try to explicate how these three elements “hang together” to communicate something essential about the nature of the world we live in and the nature of the instrument we use to consider that world. Furthermore, we will offer some suggestions about the relationship between the dynamics of water, light and knowledge in conjunction with the imaginal activity of the Real and learning from Ibn ‘Arabi that the circulation of these metaphorical realities throughout the cosmos is the very life of the world and those in it. Some focus, toward the end of the talk, will fall on the “immutable entities” and their role in the ecological toning of the imagination.

Dr. Todd Lawson

Professor Emeritus

University of Toronto

1509 Sherbrooke St W

Apartment 34

Montreal, Quebec

H3G1M1

Canada

http://www.toddlawson.ca

Call for information

I have an email from someone trying to contact Hugo van Woerkom with regard to his translation of V.2 of En Islam iranien which can be found on Scribd here. There is apparently a possibility of publication. If anyone knows how he can be contacted I will pass along the information. Many thanks. - Tom Cheetham tcheetham@gmail.com

Items of interest

Perception of Western Modernity from the Gaze of Ṣadraism: 

Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī’s and Murtaḍā Muṭahharī’s 

Critique of Modern Western Philosophy

Urs Gösken

International Journal of Persian Literature

Vol. 1, No. 1 (2016), pp. 142-163

Abstract

Among the many Iranian thinkers who dealt with Western intellectual systems and concepts, Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā’ī (1903–81)1 and Murtaḍā Muṭahharī (1920–79),2 two of the leading religious scholars of their time, stand out as the first to attempt to subject crucial teachings of modern Western philosophy to critical discussion by assessing the intellectual quality of their reasoning and questioning their claim to superiority to premodern philosophical systems.3 The doctrines they mainly engaged in the wake of their project were Cartesianism, empiricism, Kantian criticism, positivism, and Hegelianism. Their intellectual enterprise, going back to the 1950s, comes after a period when Iranian intellectuals’ contact with Western philosophy had been mainly receptive, based on the premise that doctrines of modern philosophy such as positivism and materialism were indispensable for intellectual and cultural progress.4 In the nineteenth century—and up to the 1950s—Iranians who grappled with Western philosophy often did so under the impact of the then-current philosophical teachings in Europe like positivism, scientism, naturalism, and empiricism5 and later, with the growing influence of Marxism on political thinking in Iran, dialectical materialism.6 In selecting the doctrines they came to adopt, they were less guided by purely intellectual interests, and more, perhaps, by intellectual, political, and ideological tendencies. LINK HERE. (jstor)

And from 2002 in the Journal of the Ibn 'Arabi Society XXXII:

A Counter-History of Islam:

Ibn al-'Arabl within the Spiritual Topography of Henry Corbin 

Vahid Brown 

Henry Corbin was one of the most brilliant and sometimes un­ usual minds to rise to prominence in the western study of Islam during the twentieth century. At his death in 1978 he left behind a remarkable legacy of text editions and translations, studies and synopses, ranging over astonishingly wide areas of time and space within and beyond the Islamic world. While primarily dedicating his prodigious labors to the study of Iranian Islam, he also wrote about and translated texts from such varied fields as German existentialism, Rhenish mysticism, and Swedenborg's theology.1 The critical response to Corbin's scholarship has been similarly diverse, and runs a spectrum from ardent devotion to equally ardent objection.2 Among the reservations and notes of caution that are to be found in this critical reception, Corbin's idiosyncratic conception of Iran as the spiritual homeland of Islam's esoteric core is never far from the center of the argument. After examining this and related criticisms, it will be my purpose here to train their light onto one area of Corbin's interests and the object of constant reference in his work - the life and thought of the Andalusian mystical philosopher, Muhyi'd-DIn Ibn al-'Arabl (d.1240) - as embodied primarily in the independ­ ent study, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi. It will be argued that Corbin's situating of Ibn al-'Arabl within the "spiritual topography" of Iranian gnostic spirituality led to a dis­ tortion and misrepresentation of the Shaykh al-Akbar in Islamic history and thus within the history of religions. FULL TEXT PDF.

Zoroastrians in New York

A Rare Glimpse Inside A Zoroastrian Temple In New York

Take a look inside Pomona, New York’s new Dar-e-Mehr temple.

Full article in The Huffington Post

HERE

Recent Citations

Disorientation and Inferred Autonomy: Kant and Schelling on Torture, Global Contest, and Practical Messianism

FS Scribner - Rethinking German Idealism, 2016

... As the great French Sufi scholar Henry Corbin notes, the polestar is the axis of metaphysical
geography; the quest for the mystical Orient is not achieved by traveling east: 'This mystic Orient,
the Orient-origin, is the heavenly pole, the point of orientation of the spiritual ascent. ...

[PDF] Asceticism, Mysticism, and Messianism: A Reappraisal of Schechter's Portrait of Sixteenth-Century Safed

ER Wolfson - Jewish Quarterly Review, 2016

... In my scholarship, I have employed the locution imaginal body, borrowed from the work of Henry
Corbin on Islamic esotericism, in order to convey this sense of embodiment that is not material
flesh but which is nevertheless a concrete phenomenon and not merely a figure of ...

[HTML] Ontology and the Aesthetics of Cinematographic Bodies

JY Heurtebise

... in the ontological reality of the body. This ontological reality is essentially, as Henry
Corbin says, “imaginal.”[9]. 4. Plato and Bresson: the refusal of sensibility and the
hand of the devil. The question of the representation of the ...

[PDF] Fernando Pessoa and Islam

F Boscaglia - Oriente e Orientalismo

... In fact, these references to the Arab and Persian imaginary and cultures are particularly related
to a line of thought about the ontology of imagination, which I have read in comparison with Henry
Corbin's studies about the Creative Imagination [Imagination Créatrice] (1958) in ...

This Fall in Washington DC

The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts

October 15, 2016–February 20, 2017

HERE

In recognition of one of the world’s extraordinary collections of Qur’ans, the Freer|Sackler is hosting a landmark exhibition, the first of its kind in the United States. Some fifty of the most sumptuous manuscripts from Herat to Istanbul will be featured in The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, opening this fall. Celebrated for their superb calligraphy and lavish illumination, these manuscripts—which range in date from the early eighth to the seventeenth century—are critical to the history of the arts of the book. They were once the prized possessions of Ottoman sultans and the ruling elite, who donated their Qur’ans to various institutions to express their personal piety and secure political power. Each manuscript tells a unique story, which will be explored in this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.

On Franz von Baader

Sophia, Androgyny and the Feminine in Franz von Baader’s Christian Theosophy

J. Glenn Friesen

Religions, V. 216

Full text available online

with references to Corbin

PROCES VERBAL DE L’ASSEMBLEE GENERALE...

PROCES VERBAL DE L’ASSEMBLEE GENERALE DE L’ASSOCIATION DES AMIS DE HENRY ET STELLA CORBIN,

tenue le 20 mai 2016 à l’EPHE

Salle 121, 190 avenue de France, 75013 Paris

Présents : Daniel Gastambide (président), Marc Gastambide (trésorier), Pierre Lory (secrétaire).

Mmes et MM. Catherine Aubriot, Jacques-Hubert Aubriot, Mireille Demun, Anne Gastambide, Martine Gastambide, Christian Jambet, Anilia Mezquida, Daniel Proulx.

Excusés : Mmes et MM. Michel Cazenave, Françoise Bonardel, Philippe Faure, Elizabeth Pena Velasco, Hélène Vetch.

La séance est ouverte par M. Daniel Gastambide, président de l’AAHSC, à 18 heures.

            Le rapport d’activités : M. Pierre Lory, secrétaire de l’AAHSC, fait le bilan de la dernière Journée Corbin du 28 novembre 2015 « Raison philosophique et expérience mystique ». Les échos quant à son contenu ont été favorables. Le moment choisi (novembre plutôt que décembre) semble plus approprié pour beaucoup de monde. Quant au lieu, l’Auditorium de l’EPHE, il a été adéquat, suffisamment vaste, et bien situé dans Paris.

M. Daniel Proulx, webmestre, expose le rapport des activités liées au site, à savoir :

 Archives Henry Corbin

De septembre à décembre, j’ai catalogué les archives Henry Corbin dans une base de données nationale, la description de la moitié des archives Henry Corbin est disponible à cette adresse http://www.calames.abes.fr/pub/#details?id=FileId-2016.

IFEA

Avec la collaboration de Jean-François Pérouse, récupération de documents administratifs de l’Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes (IFEA), anciennement Institut français d’archéologie d’Istanbul concernant la gérance de Corbin (1940-1945).

Martin Buber

Avec la collaboration de Dominique Bourel, vérification dans les archives Buber si des documents relatifs à Corbin s’y trouvent, car Corbin a eu l’intention de traduire Je et Tu de Buber.

Facebook

Un compte Facebook de l’AAHSC a été créé le 8 septembre, pour le moment il n’y a que moi qui l’administre, mais ce serait bien si une autre personne me donnait un coup de main. En date d’aujourd’hui, 284 personnes suivent le compte. Généralement une dizaine de personnes s’ajoute chaque semaine. Environ 50 publications y ont été créées depuis septembre. Seules des publications directement en lien avec Henry Corbin y sont diffusées. Environ le tiers des publications consiste en la reprise des actualités du site.

Site web

Le site a été reconstruit complètement. Ce qui a demandé un immense travail. Je suis toujours le seul à l’entretenir, le mettre à jour et l’améliorer. Plusieurs documents PDF ont été ajoutés. Consulter la bibliographie (https://www.amiscorbin.com/bibliographie/ ) ou les articles sur Henry Corbin (https://www.amiscorbin.com/articles-henry-corbin/ ). À noter par exemple ces 4 textes de 1946 :https://www.amiscorbin.com/textes-de-1946/

L’objectif de cette année est de compléter le processus d’adhésion en ligne et par carte de crédit sur le site et en lien avec cette amélioration rendre disponibles les PDF uniquement aux membres de l’association afin de pérenniser les adhésions et l’association. Il faudra aussi travailler l’aspect multi langues.

Statistiques

Statistiques sur l’année : du 18 avril 2015 au 18 avril 2016

Sessions 13 370 / Utilisateurs 9 342 / Pages vues 28 672 et sur cela 4115 ont visité au moins deux fois le site, il y a aussi une centaine de personnes qui ont visité 10 fois ou plus le site. À noter que le site a été inactif environ 1 mois ½ à cause de sa reconstruction. Les pages les plus visitées :

1. Accueil 6379 vues, 22,25%

2. /textes-de-1946/ 1 086 vues, 3,79 %

3. /bibliographie/ 967 vues, 3,37 %

4. /journee-henry-corbin/ 800 vues, 2,79 %

5. /livres-de-henry-corbin/ 742 vues, 2,59 %

6. Accueil anglais /en/ 572 vues, 1,99 %

7. /biographie/de-heidegger-a-sohravardi/ 567 vues, 1,98 %

8. /articles-henry-corbin/ 436 vues, 1,52 %

9. /ressources-documentaires/mediatheque/ 395 vues,1,38 %

Communications

Je reçois plusieurs demandes par années concernant les archives ou plus généralement l’œuvre de Henry Corbin. Je réponds consciencieusement à toutes ces demandes, accompagne et aide les personnes pour les recherches en Archives.

Publications

Daniel PROULX, « La figure de la sophia chez Henry Corbin », dans Femme, Erôs et Philosophie édité par Elen-Dania DIOTTE-BESNOU, Daniel PROULX et Jean-Michel COUNET, Bruxelles, EME, coll. « Religions des philosophes » no. 5, 2016, p. 289-317.

Daniel PROULX, « La “philosophie islamique” : enjeux d'une perspective transnationale et non confessionnelle de l'islam », dansL'islam regards en coin édité par Samia AMOR, Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 2015, p. 99-114.

Publications en cours

Deux articles sur Corbin et l’imagination seront publiés. Le projet de publication des Écrits théologiques de jeunesse est toujours sur ma table de travail. En fait, la découverte du manuscrit des cours de Corbin sur Luther et Hamann (488 p.) va demander un travail de fond, de même pour le mémoire de fin d’études sur Luis de Léon.

            Le rapport financier est présenté par M. Marc Gastambide, trésorier de l’Association : sur les 12 derniers mois, les dépenses se sont
montées à 4.327,23€ (frais de tenue du site, travaux de recherche, frais de
déplacement, frais de banque), et les recettes à 9.436,25€ (cotisations et
droits d'auteurs). Le solde du compte de résultat est donc de +5 109,02€.

Le rapport d’activité et le rapport financier sont adoptés à l’unanimité.

Les questions diverses portent sur :

-  L’organisation de la Journée Corbin du 26 novembre 2016. Le thème choisi : « Imagination et imaginal ». Elle aura lieu comme en 2015 à l’Auditorium de l’EPHE. Le programme provisoire, à compléter, est le suivant :

Christian JAMBET : sur l'usage du concept du monde imaginal par les philosophes ishrâqiyyûn de l'école d'Ispahan, Mullâ Sadrâ et Qâzî Sa'îd Qummî (titre à préciser).

Daniel PROULX : « Les racines théologiques et philosophiques cachées derrière l’imaginal ».

Hady FAKHOURY : sur lien entre la sophiologie russe (ainsi que ses sources philosophico-théologiques byzantines et allemandes) et le concept de l'imaginal chez Corbin (titre à préciser).

Vincent DURAND-DASTES : (titre à préciser : sur les représentations du surnaturel dans la littérature narrative chinoise du XIIe au XIXe siècle)

Audrey FELLA : sur les visions de Hildegarde de Bingen (titre à préciser).

- La publication des « écrits de jeunesse » de Henry Corbin. M. Christian Jambet, qui vient de publier à CNRS Editions son livre Le gouvernement divin, nous signale que cette maison serait intéressée par la publication de textes de Corbin, et celui-ci pourrait tout à fait leur convenir. Il s’agirait d’achever la présentation du manuscrit avec un appareil de notes minimal, et d’y joindre une présentation. Daniel Proulx se propose de compléter l’édition de ce manuscrit, déjà bien avancé, après la soutenance de sa thèse à l’automne.

- L’organisation d’une ou plusieurs conférences visant à présenter la pensée et l’œuvre de Henry Corbin à un public plus vaste. La demande d’une telle présentation est en effet ancienne, et insistante. Elle pourrait prendre la forme de l’explicitation d’éléments de la pensée de Corbin, à partir de textes précis. Ainsi, on pourrait partir du texte « Pour une charte de l’imaginal », placée en prélude à la 2^eédition de Corps spirituel et terre céleste. Les conférences laisseraient une place large aux questions. Coordination : Pierre Lory, date proposée : le 5 novembre, à l’EPHE.

Autres questions diverses :

Proposition par M. Jambet d’une initiative consacrée à Stella Corbin, spécifiquement.

M. Jambet signale également l’intérêt qu’il y aurait à songer à une brochure sur Henry Corbin qui serait publiée à l’occasion du 150^eanniversaire de l’EPHE.

La séance est close à 19 h 30.

On Suhrawardi & Corbin

From the Teheran Times:

Suhrawardi promoted philosophical methodology that gave central place to divine illumination

A very short interview with Charles Taliaferro

On Philosophical Diversity

If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

Garfield & Van Norden in the NYTimes

Don't miss this!

A Title of Interest

The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity

Guy G. Stroumsa

Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions

Launches the new Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions series

Shows how religious history of late antiquity informs our understanding of the genesis of Islam

Examines the main developments in religious trends in the Near East (in particular in Christianity) from the first to the seventh century

Shows how the end of blood sacrifices represented one of the most significant transformations of religion in late antiquity.

God is Beautiful

God is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quran

Navid Kermani, Tony Crawford (Translator)

ISBN: 978-0-7456-5167-5

400 pages

February 2015, Polity

Reviewed by Todd Lawson:

J Am Acad Relig (2016)

doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfw015

First published online: April 7, 2016

"... Though he does not mention it, the pioneering and prolific French scholar of Islamic thought,

Henry Corbin (d. 1978), was the first “Westerner” to have noticed, in several publications,
the literary-cum-existential power of this mode of reading/being and its instrumentality in ... "

Todd Lawson on Ibn 'Arabi - May 7 in Berkeley

Ibn 'Arabi Society Lecture Series: An afternoon with Todd Lawson

Northbrae Community Church, Berkeley, CA
Saturday, May 7, 2016
3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Water, Light, Knowledge: Towards an Ecology of Imagination

Todd Lawson is emeritus professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Toronto where he taught for 25 years. He has published widely on Qur’an commentary (tafsir) the Qur'an as literature, Sufism, Shi'i Islam and the Babi and Bahai traditions. His book on Jesus in Islamic thought, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an was published in 2009 (Oneworld), his Gnostic Apocalypse and Islam in 2011 (Routledge). The article, "Qur'an and Epic" appeared recently in The Journal of Qur’anic Studies (2014: 16.1). This and other of his publications are available at www.toddlawson.ca. He is now writing a book on the Qur'an as sacred epic. He lives in Montreal.

"Water and Light pervade the writings of Ibn 'Arabi as they do the Quran itself. In the poetic literalism of Ibn 'Arabi's discourse, these everyday realities are frequently involved in specific events of knowing. Knowledge appears to be built upon water and light. Water and Light are also essential "hormones of the imagination" – they are elements of the natural realm that lead us beyond nature..."

Read the full description of Professor Lawson's talk and register today!

The talk will be followed by discussion, and will take place in the Parlor Room at Northbrae Community Church, Berkeley.

La figure de la sophia chez Henry Corbin

La figure de la sophia chez Henry Corbin

by Daniel Proulx

now available on Academia.edu

Abstract

Henry Corbin's loving devotion to wisdom, to sophia, englobes the three terms of this conference. Without dealing directly with the notion of women and erös, this text explores the notion of sophia — philosophically feminine par excellence — in Henry Corbin's opus. This text is a first attempt to understand the Sophianic world as conceived by Henry Corbin. The axis chosen in undertaking this exploration is to rearticulate the influences on Corbin's thought in showing that the emphasis on Heidegger dissimulates the importance of sophia. This axis will also highlight an influence that has remained veiled, the Russian sophiologist Sergei Bulgakov's. In the course of this rearticulation, we will also encounter the sophiologies of Carl Gustav Jung and Nicolai Berdyaev - completing the picture of Western sophiologies present in Corbin's thought.

Book Review via Taylor & Francis online

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics and Epistemology, edited by Torrance Kirby, Rahim Acar, and Bilal Bas, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, xniv + 445 pp., E54.99/$92.99 (cloth)

Chapter Twenty Two: Henry Corbin’s Hermeneutics of Scripture by Hadi Fakhoury

Book Review:

On Methodology and Metaphysics, or What Does Philosophy Have to Do with Religion?

Brayton Polka

Department of Humanities, York University, 

226 Vanier College, 4700 Keele St., 

Toronto M3J 1 PS, Canada

The European Legacy - Towards New Paradigms

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2016.1161274

An interesting citation...

Phenomenological and contemplative approaches to vigiling with persons who are nearing death.

R Gates - Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2016

... There is a sense of perceiving the interiority of self and others. According to philosopher and
theologian Henry Corbin (1969), the perceived dualities of inner and outer become one through
“sympathetic union” and something of the soul of others becomes visible. ...

Norman Fischer on the Imagination

Saved From Freezing: Spiritual Practice, Art Practice

from

Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language, and Religion

This essay is just so excellent. He's a hero of mine. Anything he writes is worth reading.

Assemblée générale 2016

Assemblée générale

Association des Amis de Henry et Stella Corbin

le vendredi 20 mai 2016

à l’EPHE

Salle 121, 1e étage, 190 av. de France, 75013 Paris

Ordre du jour : 

Rapport moral : activités de l’année écoulée.

Rapport financier

Activités : site web, publications en cours, 12e Journée Henry Corbin

Questions diverses

Daniel Gastambide, président

Marc Gastambide, trésorier

Pierre Lory, secrétaire

Bienvenue aux membres!

Being & Time & Corbin

You don't see this very often - at least I've not run across it, but here's a course on Heidegger in which Corbin's approach is taken seriously.

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 

Fall 2015 

Heidegger’s Being and Time 

PHIL 770 TH 3:35-6:20 HUM 384 

Instructor: Dr. Mohammad Azadpur

Full PDF HERE

Nov. 19: Being-Towards-Death Being and Time: “Dasein’s Possibility of Being-a-Whole and Being-Towards-Death,” pp. 274- 311. “From Heidegger to Suhrawardi: An Interview with Phillipe Nemo,” Henry Corbin, the first translator of Heidegger into French and the prominent historian of Islamic philosophy, is interviewed,” on iLearn.