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WHY I LEARNED TO LOVE ISLAMIC MYSTICISM, by Rob Doyle (@RobDoyle1)
The country with which the French Heideggerian philosopher Henry Corbin is most closely associated is the one that screams from today’s headlines of war, massacres, and oppression: Iran. But, instead, Corbin shows us a land of the most exquisite spirituality and philosophical refinement, all in a vocabulary that includes words and phrases like “the eighth climate, the Cosmic North, Sophiology, the Night Ineffable, the mountain of Qaf, the earth of Huqalya, and so on.
Such language might suggest the kind of florid effusions to be found inside dubious books shelved in the ‘Mind, Body, and Spirit’ section of your local bookshop, but Corbin’s works are written to the highest standards of French scholarship. It’s as if Roland Barthes or Jean-Paul Sartre were philosophising from inside the universe of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Or, better yet, a sort-of singular form of avant-garde, scholarly, theological fiction, which abounds with almost Borgesian characters. For example, consider Khdir, the ‘immortal wanderer’ of Sufi lore who visits solitary mystics in dreams and visions; or the ‘Hidden Imam’ of Shi-ite apocalyptic theology who went into occultation many centuries ago and will reveal himself again at the end of time.
Beyond that, Corbin says something profound to inhabitants of the West in the 2020s — a place where something has gone catastrophically wrong. He insists that our malaise is not to be located in this or that symptom, be it societal, political or cultural, but must be traced into the philosophical foundations of secular modernity itself.
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