Imagination in Henry Corbin's Thought: an Intellectual History Inquiry

Resumo

This article reconstructs the intellectual history of Henry Corbin’s philosophy of imagination within the European context of the 1930s, a period when phenomenology, Protestant theology, and German as well as Arabic philosophy intersected in new and decisive ways. It highlights the formative role of Protestant thought in Corbin’s reflections on faith, revelation, and language, particularly shaped by apophatic philosophy. The study also examines the decisive influence of Alexandre Koyré and Carl Gustav Jung, through whom Corbin developed a metaphysical conception of imagination as the organ of theophany rather than a psychological faculty. His sustained participation in the Eranos Circle provided the intellectual setting in which these ideas matured into a phenomenological and hermeneutic vision of the imaginal, conceived as an intermediate mode of being between the sensible and the intelligible. Through a historical and textual analysis, the article traces how the concept of imagination evolved in Corbin’s work itself, situating it within the broader currents of twentieth-century intellectual history.

Keywords: Henry Corbin, imagination, Matin Heidegger, Alexandre Koyré, Carl Gustav Jung, Eranos Circle, archives documents.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21747/21836892/fil42a10