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"Henry Corbin's works are the best guide to the visionary tradition.... Corbin, like Scholem and Jonas, is remembered as a scholar of genius. He was uniquely equipped not only to recover Iranian Sufism for the West, but also to defend the principal Western traditions of esoteric spirituality."--From the introduction by Harold Bloom
Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) was one of the great mystics of all time. Through the richness of his personal experience and the constructive power of his intellect, he made a unique contribution to Shi'ite Sufism. In this book, which features a powerful new preface by Harold Bloom, Henry Corbin brings us to the very core of this movement with a penetrating analysis of Ibn 'Arabi's life and doctrines.
Corbin begins with a kind of spiritual topography of the twelfth century, emphasizing the differences between exoteric and esoteric forms of Islam. He also relates Islamic mysticism to mystical thought in the West. The remainder of the book is devoted to two complementary essays: on "Sympathy and Theosophy" and "Creative Imagination and Creative Prayer." A section of notes and appendices includes original translations of numerous Su fi treatises.
Harold Bloom's preface links Sufi mysticism with Shakespeare's visionary dramas and high tragedies, such as The Tempest and Hamlet. These works, he writes, intermix the empirical world with a transcendent element. Bloom shows us that this Shakespearean cosmos is analogous to Corbin's "Imaginal Realm" of the Sufis, the place of soul or souls.
In a treatise on "the hieratic art of the Greeks," Proclus, that lofty figure of late Neoplatonism whom scholars have so unjustly neglected, writes the following: Just as in the dialectic of love we start from senuous beauties to rise until we encounter the unique principle of all beauty and all ideas, so the adepts of hieratic science take as their starting point the things of appearance and the sympathies they manifest among themselves and with the invisible powers. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Another interrelated problem as Chittick points out, is discerning where Corbin ends and Ibn Arabi begins. The French writer had his own premises and weaves Ibn Arabi around them. This had to with his own interests in Iranian illuminationist philosophy as well his early ties with existentialism. For example, Corbin tries to make Ibn Arabi some sort of secret shiah which he certainly wasn't, attested to by strong remarks Ibn Arabi directs against them, as well as his own immersion in sunnism. Chodkiewickz and Addas have illustrated the falsity of Corbin's ideas on this point. On a whole, Corbin fails to do justice to Ibn Arabi's dhahiri or exoteric dimension, projecting him as an exclusively esoteric mystic who stood at odds with the law. In fact, Ibn Arabi was as much an exotericist as he was an esotericist. (Eric Winkel has recently brought to light the importance that Ibn Arabi laid on the outward dimension of Islam in his MYSTERIES OF PURITY as well ISLAM AND THE LIVING LAW).
Apart from these short comings, the book is an interesting read, and requires the carefull attention of the reader. But sadly, the book is perhaps a better introduction to Corbin's ideas than Ibn Arabi.
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