Henry Corbin

See also: Corbin

Henry Corbin (born with Paris the April 14th 1903 and died in Paris the October 7th 1978) is a Philosophe and Orientaliste French.

He is one of the rare philosophers who had the merit to allow it (Re) discovered of a philosophical continent absorbed by the history: that of the Islam Iran Shiite IEN in general and of the Gnosis in particular.

Thanks to its zeal, Corbin translated, interpreted and published some of traditional of this tradition, whose great names such as Sohrawardi, Molla Sadra Shirazi, Rûzbehân Baqlî Shîrâzî and also the soufi Ibn Arabi, also widen little by little a philosophical horizon him in the process of universalization.

Life

Raise Etienne Gilson and Jean Baruzi, Louis Massignon reveals the “ Eastern theosophy to him ” of Sohravardi which directs its philosophical vocation definitively. After does several stays in Germany, it publish in 1937 the first French translation of Heidegger under the title “ What metaphysics? ”. Attached to the French Institute of Istanbul (1939 with 1945), it is charged to found the department of Iranologie to the French Institute of Teheran. It founds the “ Iranian Bibliothèque there ” where will be published traditional this forgotten tradition. In 1954, it is named director of studies “ Islamisme and religions of Arabia ” to the School of the high studies where it succeeds his friend Massignon. In 1974, it founds a international Center of spiritual research compared with the Midsummer's Day University of Jerusalem where specialists in the three abrahamic religions meet.

Work

Through its interpretation, Corbin shows the originality and the importance of this tradition during the centuries. Topics like those of knowledge and the account visionary, the world imaginal and creative imagination as theophanic faculties, the spiritual body or the celestial ground, the immamology, the angelology and the drama in the sky are creations whose development is without equivalent in the Western philosophical tradition, creations which are with the base of what Corbin names a prophetic philosophy based on the spiritual hermeneutics of the Holy Book whose best Christian equivalent is Jakob Böhme. It is to say that this prophetic philosophy must be regarded as a Théosophie able to reconcile faculties visionaries and rational in the man.

The historical assessment of the work of Henry Corbin is to show irrefutably that the ground reflection of Islam is not limited to the hellenistic philosophers, the Kalâm Sunnite or even to the Soufisme and that the history of the Moslem thought does not stop with Averroès, like one still too often says it. According to Corbin, the death of Averroès puts only fine at the Arab peripatetism and the dialog of the deaf between Kalam and Falasifa. Islamic philosophy takes on the contrary a new rise starting from work founder of Sohrawardi while passing from the Arab world in the Persian world where it finds a new vitality and carries out fully certain still unexplored potentialities without to disavow the technical assets and the categories of the Greek thought.

Finally, the work of Corbin exceeds historical interpretation and takes a new dimension when she regards this tradition as a possible rampart against the spiritual dangers mortals of the Sécularisation and the desacralization whose Western Nihilisme seems the ultimate term. For Corbin, the Shiite esotericism joined the esotericism abrahamic of which it is one of the tops and form an always valid force of proposal, able to cure the dead ends metaphysics of the dogmatic theological systems which, by réifiant God, make a metaphysical Idole of it (the supreme Être) that the Athéisme could only denounce after the weakening of the secular power of the Église S.

The essential work of H. Corbin is prolonged through its pupil Christian Jambet, who, without calling it in question, showed that beside this esotericism, the tradition Shiite comprised also a kalam, a dogmatic theology whose taking into account is essential when one wants to include/understand the origins of the Sectarisme and the Fondamentalisme whose Iranian Révolution is the last misadventure.

Publications

  • Bibliography and biography detailed in Book of Herne devoted to Henry Corbin, 1981, under the direction of Christian Jambet.
  • the paradox of the monotheism , Herne, 1981.
  • cyclic Time and gnosis ismaélienne , International Berg, 1982.
  • Face of God, face of the man , Flammarion, 1983.
  • Alchemy like hieratic art , Herne, 1986.
  • Iranian Philosophy and compared philosophy , Buchet/Chastel, 1979.
  • spiritual Body and celestial Ground: of Iran mazdéen in Iran shî' ite , 2nd ED. entirely revised, Buchet/Chastel, 1979, 303p.
  • History of Islamic philosophy , coll “Ideas”, Gallimard, 1964.
  • In Iranian Islam: spiritual and philosophical aspects , 2nd ED., Gallimard, 1978,4 vol.
  • creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn' Arabî , 2nd ED., Flammarion, 1977.
  • Temple and contemplation , Flammarion, 1981.
  • the man of light in the Iranian Sufism , 2nd ED., Editions “Presence”, 1971.
  • the Jasmine of Faithful of Love , by Ruzbehān, translated Persan by Henry Corbin, ED. Verdier, Fatty 1991.
  • “Henry Corbin, the pilgrim from Iran”, by Jean Moncelon, in '' Aurora '' spring-be 2006.

See too

  • Iranologie
  • Islamologie
  • Shiism
  • Ismaélisme

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