Henry Corbin et la métaphysique du monde imaginal (French Edition) [Henry Corbin and the Metaphysics of the Imaginal World]

Abstract

What if imagination were not the opposite of the real, but one of the organs by which it is known? In Henry Corbin et la métaphysique du monde imaginal (Henry Corbin and the Metaphysics of the Imaginal World), Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad offers a philosophical exploration of one of the most fruitful intuitions in Henry Corbin's thought: the existence of the imaginal world, which is irreducible both to subjective fantasy and to the material world. Between the sensible and the intelligible, the imaginal designates a domain in which symbols, visions, angels, and spiritual forms acquire genuine ontological significance. Starting from this fundamental distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal, the work examines how Corbin rethinks the relations between imagination, knowledge, revelation, and presence. The dialogue with Ibn ʿArabī and Suhrawardī occupies an essential place. Creative imagination appears there not as a secondary faculty but as an organ of knowledge; the symbol is no longer reduced to a sign; angelology becomes a metaphysics of mediation; and taʾwīl opens a path of interpretation in which understanding also entails a transformation of the one who understands. Yet this work is not limited to the history of Islamic philosophy. It also interrogates our present. What becomes of meaning when reality is reduced to what can be measured, calculated, or explained? What do we lose when imagination is relegated to the realm of the unreal? And can Corbin's thought still help us understand secularization, disenchantment, and the fragmentation of the contemporary world? The author thus develops the notion of imaginal Islam, not as a new doctrine or a religious ideology, but as an orientation of perception: a way of recovering the symbolic depth of existence without renouncing intellectual rigour. An essay intended for readers of philosophy, metaphysics, Islamic thought, and intellectual spirituality, as well as for all those who wish to discover Henry Corbin beyond a strictly historical reading of his work.