El Hombre y Su Angel

by Henry Corbin

Dans ces récits d'initiation qui font suite au texte de Sohravardi traduit et présenté antérieurement par Henry Corbin sous le titre L'Archange empourpré , ce qui nous est proposé est comme une aventure religieuse du Moi profond. Dans la doctrine sohravardienne de l' Ishrâq , l'" Ange " est en effet le double céleste de la psyché terrestre. Etre de lumière qui le fond dans sa réalité d'âme, l'" Ange " est le principe transcendant de son individualité. Le Destin de l'homme est unique et voué à l'Unique. Mais un Unique qui n'est tel que pour chacun.Le sens dernier de ce livre est que notre solitude au sein du monde n'est pas un destin sans issue mais une essentielle " dualitude ". Cette autre part de nous-même qu'est notre " Ange " peut nous soutenir dès ici-bas si nous savons entendre son appel transformant, au coeur de notre vie la plus singulière.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Henry Corbin was a philosopher, theologian and professor of Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. As a boy he revealed the profound sensitivity to music so evident in his work. Although he was Protestant by birth, he was educated in the Catholic tradition and at the age of 19 received a certificate in Scholastic philosophy from the Catholic Institute of Paris. Three years later he took his "licence de philosophie" under the great Thomist Étienne Gilson. In 1928 he encountered the formidable Louis Massignon, director of Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, and it was he who introduced Corbin to the writings of Suhrawardi, the 12th century Persian mystic and philosopher whose work was to profoundly affect the course of Corbin’s life. The stage was then set for a personal drama that has deep significance for understanding those cultures whose roots lie in both ancient Greece and in the prophetic religions of the Near East reaching all the way back to Zoroaster. Years later Corbin said “through my meeting with Suhrawardi, my spiritual destiny for the passage through this world was sealed. Platonism, expressed in terms of the Zoroastrian angelology of ancient Persia, illuminated the path that I was seeking.”
Corbin is responsible for redirecting the study of Islamic philosophy as a whole. In his Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he disproved the common view that philosophy among the Muslims came to an end after Ibn Rushd, demonstrating rather that a lively philosophical activity persisted in the eastern Muslim world – especially Iran – and continues to our own day.