The philosophical life and career of Corbin can be divided into three phases. The first is the 1920s and 1930s, when he was involved in learning and teaching
western philosophy. The second is the years between 1939 and 1946, in which he studied
Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and the
School of Illumination in
Istanbul. The last phase begins in 1946 and lasts until his death, in which he studied and reintroduced
eastern and
Islamic philosophy.[6]
In 1933 he married
Stella Leenhardt. In 1938, he completed the first translation of one of
Heidegger's works into French (Was ist Metaphysik?, as Qu’est-ce que la metaphysique?).[1] In 1939 they traveled to
Istanbul, and in 1945 to
Tehran. They returned to
Paris one year later in July 1946. In 1949, Corbin first attended the annual
Eranos Conferences in
Ascona, Switzerland. In 1954 he succeeded
Louis Massignon in the Chair of Islam and the Religions of
Arabia at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. From the 1950s on he spent autumn in Tehran, winter in Paris and spring in
Ascona.
The three major works upon which his reputation largely rests in the
English speaking world were first published in French in the 1950s: Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi and Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. His later major work on Central Asian and Iranian
Sufism appears in English with an Introduction by
Zia Inayat Khan as The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. His
magnum opus is the four volume En Islam Iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques. It has been translated into
Persian twice by Dr Enshollah Rahmati and Reza Kuhkan from French (the 4th volume being still untranslated).[7] He died on 7 October 1978.[1][8]
Main themes
There are several main themes which together form the core of the
spirituality that Corbin defends. The
Imagination is the primary means to engage with Creation.
Prayer is the "supreme act of the creative imagination". He considered himself a
Protestant Christian but he abandoned a
Christocentric view of history. The grand sweep of his
theology of the
Holy Spirit embraces
Judaism,
Christianity and
Islam. He defended the central role assigned in theology for the individual as the finite image of the Unique
Divine.
Corbin's work has been criticized by a number of writers, including Steven M. Wasserstrom. Corbin's scholarly objectivity has been questioned on the basis of both a
Shi'ite bias, and his
theological agenda; he has been accused of being both ahistorically naive and dangerously politically
reactionary; and he has been charged with being both an
Iranian nationalist and an
elitist in both his politics and his
spirituality. Other writers, such as Lory and Subtelny, have written to defend Corbin.[18][19]
^Jambet, Christian, ed. (1981). Cahiers de l'Herne no. 39: Henry Corbin (in French). Paris: L'Herne. pp. 40–41.
ISBN2851970399. English translation of the entire interview with Philippe Nemo courtesy of L'Association des Amis de Stella et Henry Corbin. Quoted in Cheetham, Tom, The World Turned Inside Out, p. xi.
^Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Ed. by Jacques Alain-Miller. Trans. by Dennis Porter (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 148-149.
^Jacques Lacan, Le Triomphe de La Religion précédé de Discours aux Catholiques [The Triumph of Religion preceded by Discourse to Catholics] (Paris: Seuil, 2005), 65.
^Abdesselem Rechak, Le grand secret de la psychanalyse (Mandeure: self-published, 2020).
^Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz (2016). Foucault in Iran. University of Minnesota Press. p. 73.
ISBN978-0-8166-9949-0.
Algar, Hamid. "The Study of Islam: The Work of Henry Corbin." Religious Studies Review 6(2) 1980: 85–91.
Avens, Roberts. "The Subtle Realm: Corbin, Sufism and Swedenborg," in Immanuel Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision, Edited by Robin Larson. Swedenborg Foundation, 1988.
Bamford, Christopher. "Esotericism Today: The Example of Henry Corbin," in Henry Corbin, The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy. North Atlantic Books, 1998.
Bloom, Harold. Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams and Resurrection. Riverhead Books, 1996.
Brown, Norman O., "The Prophetic Tradition," and "The Apocalypse of Islam," in Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis. University of California Press, 1991.
Camilleri, Sylvain and Proulx, Daniel. « Martin Heidegger et Henry Corbin : lettres et documents (1930-1941) », in Bulletin heideggérien, vol. 4, 2014, p. 4-63.
Cheetham, Tom. The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism. Spring Journal Books, 2003.
_____ Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World. SUNY Press, 2005.
_____ After Prophecy: Imagination, Incarnation and the Unity of the Prophetic Tradition. Lectures for the Temenos Academy. Spring Journal Books, 2007.
_____ All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings, North Atlantic Books, 2012.
_____ Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman, Spring Publications, 2015.
Chittick, William. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn 'Arabi's Metaphysics of the Imagination. SUNY Press, 1989.
______ Seal of the Saints: Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn 'Arabi. Trans. Liadain Sherrard. Islamic Texts Society, 1993.
Corbin, H. (1969). Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn `Arabi. (Trans. R. Manheim. Original French, 1958.) Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press.
Corbin, H. (1972). "Mundus Imaginalis, the Imaginary and the Imaginal". Spring, 1972 pp. 1–19. New York: Analytical Psychology Club of New York, Inc.
Elmore, Gerald. Islamic Sainthood in the Fullness of Time: Ibn al-'Arabi's Book of the Fabulous Gryphon. Brill, 1998.
Jambet, Christian, (Editor). Henry Corbin. Cahier de l'Herne, no. 39. Consacré à Henry Corbin, 1981.
_____ La logique des Orientaux: Henry Corbin et la science des formes. Éditions du Seuil, 1983.
Giuliano, Glauco. Il Pellegrinaggio in Oriente di Henry Corbin. Con una scelta di testi. Lavis (Trento-Italia), La Finestra editrice, 2003.
Giuliano, Glauco. Nîtârtha. Saggi per un pensiero eurasiatico. Lavis (Trento-Italia), La Finestra editrice, 2004.
Giuliano, Glauco. L'Immagine del Tempo in Henry Corbin. Verso un'idiochronia angelomorfica. Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2009.
Landolt, Hermann. "Henry Corbin, 1903-1978: Between Philosophy and Orientalism," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 119(3): 484-490, 1999.
Morris, James. The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn 'Arabi's Meccan Illuminations. Fons Vitae, 2005.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. “Henry Corbin: The Life and Works of the Occidental Exile in Quest of the Orient of Light,” ch. 17, in S.H. Nasr, Traditional Islam in the Modern World. KPI, 1987.
Shayegan, Daryush. Henry Corbin penseur de l'Islam spirituel, Paris, Albin Michel, 2010, 428 p.
Suhrawardi, Yahyá ibn Habash. The philosophy of illumination: A new critical edition of the text of Hikmat al-Ishraq, with English translation, notes, commentary, and introduction by John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai.
Brigham Young University Press, 1999.
Varzi, Roxanne. "Iran's French Revolution: Religion, Philosophy, and Crowds", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 637, issue 1, pp. 53 – 63, July 25, 2011