Personhood and Individuation in the Philosophical Anthropology of Henry Corbin

"For Corbin, the Person is the first and final reality. This is not idealism, nor realism, nor materialism, and certainly not historicism, but rather 'personalism.'"¹

This lucid quote by Tom Cheetham presents the starting point of this essay: that the thought of the 20th century French philosopher Henry Corbin should be seen most of all as a personalism – a system which seeks to safeguard the ultimate reality of the person over and against all impersonalist ontologies.

Indeed, this threat of impersonalism, of such importance for Corbin, is especially powerful in our modern era. We are closed in on all sides from the reigning dogmatic positivism which inserts us into an inexorable web of impersonal forces – whether physical (materialist reductionism), biological (Darwinism), or even historical and social (Hegelianism and Marxism). The reality of the person cannot survive this flattening of being.

Against this, what Corbin seeks is what Jean-François Marquet has so aptly called a "Science de l'unique [Science of the unique],"² or else, as Gilbert Durand has simply called, a "Science de l’homme [Science of man]" – a science which, unlike the occidental science of man, reduced to the "science de causes, de conditionnements, d’infrastructures qui échappent à l’anthropologie [science of causes, of conditioning, of infrastructures which escape anthropology]," instead seeks to find man in "la spécificité, la singularité, l’unicité de l’homme qui ne peut avoi que l’Unique pour modèle et horizon [the specificity, the singularity, the uniqueness of man who can only have the model of the Unique for his horizon]."³

This model of the unique Corbin finds most of all in a theosophical spirituality, a spirituality which has as its subject the unique, the singular, the unified - the Absolute.

It is especially in this theosophical spiritual component that we find Corbin's unique place in the tradition of personalism. For we find here that Corbin fits especially well into the specifically French personalist tradition, and should be seen as such. Indeed, the scholar of personalism, Bernard Gerdreau, will say that this French personalism, through the work of Mounier and Maritain, is defined by its valorizing of the person through "the introduction of the spiritual within the
temporal order" – a fitting slogan too for Corbin's work.⁴

However, and this is where we can learn from Corbin's personalism, whereas Mounier and Maritain work within an ineliminably Christian framework, Corbin's pluralism and perennialist bent allows us to see how the reality of the person is safeguarded not solely by Christianity, but by the theistic framework in general. To this end, he describes himself as "a Philosopher pursuing his Quest wherever the Spirit guides him. If it has guided me towards Freiburg, towards Tehran, towards Isfahan, for me the latter remain essentially 'emblematic cities,' the symbols of a permanent voyage."⁵

In this way, Corbin's personalism is universal and much more expansive than that of Mounier or Maritain's. A centerpiece of Corbin's ontology is what he calls the great 'paradox of monotheism' – that an absolute adherence to the one unique and transcendent God can only in fact only be known to us in its multiple theophanies, not only in the multiple religions, but even, in a final personalist flourish, in the repetition of the Unique for each and every individual. Hence he explores not only Islam, for which he is famous, but Christianity too, and even Zorastrianism and Neoplatonism. Finally, he explores the individual vision, the way that the Unique is theophanised for specific individuals, whether it is Avicenna, Swedenborg, or Proclus. This extreme form of commitment to the uniqueness of every person distinguishes Corbin from his French personalist contemporaries, insofar as the latter commit themselves to the primacy of intersubjective grounding. Hence, where Mounier will state that "The person only exists thus towards others, it only knows itself in knowing others,"⁶ for Corbin, the person rather exists only in a solipsistic syzygy as a "dualitude [that] may be called the ego and the Self, or the transcendent celestial Self and the earthly Self," a vision which tends towards the esoteric.⁷

Corbin, then, is to be located within this French tradition of personalism, though he exceeds and is unique within it. Having established this, this essay will explore the foundations of Corbin’s spiritual personalist ontology.

Two movements especially can be found here – the first is set upon the macrocosmic level, in the relationship between God and his creatures. Here, it is Corbin's conception of the Absolute, and especially his adherence to a negative theology, which functions as the supreme safeguard for personhood, and for his pluralist theism.

In the first half of the essay, Corbin's pluralist Absolute will be contrasted with both a literalist exoteric conception of the Absolute and the Indic transpersonal Absolute, neither of which for Corbin allow the person to exist. It is only in his own theophanic Absolute that both the person and the plurality of religions are safeguarded. The second movement is set upon the microcosmic level, in the relationship between the Active Intelligence and the individual human soul, which repeats at its own degree of being the general relationship between God and his creatures. It is in this relationship that the whole adventure of the individual soul's uniqueness is placed.

In the second half of the essay, I will first of all explain why it is that our personhood is to be ensured through this vertical relationship of Intelligence and soul. As we will see, for Corbin, the Active Intelligence is uniquely personified for each and every individual soul, and it is in this anthropological adventure of the bi-unity of human soul and celestial counterpart, rather than in our intersubjectivity or material relations, that our eternal haecceity is found. The epistemology of this relationship, what Corbin calls the visionary recital, will be the final topic of the second half of the paper, in which we will find Corbin’s distinctly personalist epistemology, where each individual must carry out his own transcendence.

Negative Theology as Safeguard of Personhood

It is obvious enough why Corbin might have a problem with the reigning naturalist positivism in relation to personhood – in every case it reduces the person to already constituted impersonal forces. Tom Cheetham calls Corbin's rejection of this paradigm his "Great Refusal,"⁸ which consists of "the refusal to allow oneself to be inserted into the historicism of History, into the weave of historical causality."⁹ Yet it is not immediately obvious why this demands a spirituality and especially a theistic spirituality – indeed, Corbin famously finds his solution first of all in Heidegger's phenomenology and not in the hinterlands of Islamic gnosis. It is in Heidegger's Dasein, primordial presence, 'being-in-the-world,' that Corbin finds his first escape from the inexorable current of impersonal forces. The basis of Dasein for Corbin "show[s] effectively that there is a more original, more primitive historicism than that which we call the 'universal History;' the History of external events."¹⁰

It is this esoteric historicity of the soul's act of presence which escapes the current of external positivist historicity that Corbin borrows from Heidegger – but this is also where Corbin goes far beyond.

For Heidegger's analytic, as Corbin notes, is not at all neutral, but in fact "already tacitly posits a philosophical choice [...] which announces itself at the horizon within which the 'Analytic' of the Da of Dasein is deployed."¹¹ Corbin's ontology, he himself says, "see[s] hermeneutic levels that [Heidegger's] program had not foreseen" – and these levels, as Samir Mahmoud notes, are "rooted in a hierarchical structure of Being peopled by real Persons."¹² The most we can say is that Heidegger's vision does not take up the same philosophical and situative choice as Corbin – it is not the problem of personalism, but the problem of Being that is Heidegger's. And so, though his foundation is thoroughly in Heidegger's phenomenology, Corbin must look elsewhere for the ultimate foundation of unique personhood. And it is only in the vision of the transcendent Absolute that Corbin finds his true home – for the transcendent is at the same time the simple idea of the Unique itself, that which is absolutely other, singular, sufficient, not other than itself. Gilbert Durand states this foundation of Corbin’s perfectly – "C'est alors qu'à travers l'affirmation fondamentale de l’unicité et de la transcendance, une Science de l’Homme véritable [...] peut être éta-blie [It is then through the fundamental affirmation of oneness and transcendence, that a true Science of Man can be established]."¹³ And if Peter Hallward is right to argue that the whole field
of 20th century French philosophy is marked "by a sort of simplicity in the proper sense of the term – an orientation to a principle marked by its essential singularity,"¹⁴ it is only Corbin who takes up this philosophical decision as a distinctly personalist one.

But here we must go further and analyse the particular conception of the Absolute that Corbin puts forward, the particular conception that will guarantee the ultimate reality of the person. For there are many visions of the Absolute – and in fact, the personalism of someone like Mounier will rely on a particular image of the Absolute, a peculiarly Christian one which has at its basis "his Incarnation shining at the heart of the created world."¹⁵ So it is left to Corbin to present an image of the Absolute that simultaneously guarantees personhood as well as the plurality of
religions. In Corbin's paper, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism, he deals especially with three main images of the Absolute:

1. The Exoteric Absolute (literalists, naive exoteric religion) – God as greatest being possible
2. The Indic Transpersonal Absolute (Buddhist and Hindu)
3. The Theophanic Absolute (Eriugena, Ibn Arabi, Jacob Boehme etc.)

We will deal with each of these in turn as two moments of a singular movement in Corbin's paper on apophatic theology – the third image of the Absolute, which alone Corbin says can safeguard personhood, is an integration of the first two as a dynamic interplay. And the distinctive nature of the theophanic Absolute, we will see, allows Corbin to create a pluralist and expansive personalism, beyond the solely Christian boundaries of classical French personalism.

The Exoteric Absolute and the Indic Transpersonal Absolute

The starting point of Corbin's paper is the question of the role of individuality within our conception of the Absolute. In this way, the essential division is that of the Western exoteric Absolute which is identified with the personal and individualised God and that of the non-dualistic Absolute of the Indic variety, for which the determinacy of the individual would be sheer illusion. Either an Absolute which would be nothing but the personal God, the God who would be the greatest possible being, the being who maximises each attribute, or an Absolute that would be absolutely indeterminate and transcendent.

Here, Corbin is especially relating himself to the ideas of George Vallin, who argues that this focus on the individual is the essential mark of European culture. Moreover, Vallin argues this in favour of the Indic non-dual Absolute, insofar as he takes the idea of the belief of individuality to be constitutive of the "tragic" as also a central category of European culture.¹⁶ This dual hallmark of the affirmation of individual form and the tragic in European culture is no coincidence for Vallin; for him, suffering in fact only exists insofar as reality is individualised, it is the ego itself which is suffering. Insofar then, he says, that the Western conception of the Absolute stays within the realm of individuality, it is to be seen as a "nihilism," since it blocks off any transpersonal source of salvation. In fact, so far Corbin does not disagree with Vallin that this form of the personal God is a form of nihilism. This is surprising, considering Corbin's commitment to personalism. But the exoteric Absolute, that which identifies the Absolute solely with the personalised form of God, does not actually end up valorising the person in all its forms. The personal God "which seemed to us legitimately targeted by George Vallin’s critique"¹⁷ in fact leads directly to a number of destinations which do not allow the continuation of the person's existence.

In the first case, the blocking off of a transpersonal Absolute prepares the ground for modern positivism, insofar as God is equated with merely immanent attributes, although infinitised. From invoking a transcendent which would only maximise immanent attributes, a God wholly great or wholly good, it is not so far to arguing that only the immanent exists at all - this would be the so called 'death of God.'

In the second case, even if this divinity stays, this "confusion between Theotes (Divinity) and the theoi (gods),"¹⁸ the turning of God into just one more being, erects a static divinity which would not allow for the reciprocal sympathy between God and creatures. In fact the creatural plane in relation to this highest being would be empty, for without this reciprocal sympathy, the finite creatural plane becomes devalorised in relation to the perfect being. The relationship is unilateral – the finite creatural plane, on this model, possesses only a derivative form of being in comparison to the maximised and infinite attributes of God. The act of presence which Corbin made his foundation for his personalism vanishes, and we are left with only an infinitely distant God and a devalorised finite world. Finally, where there is even the possibility of the act of presence here, of creating a reciprocal sympathy, the lack of a true transcendence in relation to the source of being creates a mysticism which is "characterized by a nihility to be resorbed into the Absolute, of a multiplicity of beings to be confounded with and lost in the unity of being."¹⁹ This indeed is an act of presence, but its philosophical choice is not one that valorises the person, for the person ceases to exist the moment all multiplicity is swallowed up in the infinite attributes of the now pantheistic divine being.

As we have stated, George Vallin, in relation to these critiques, decides instead in favour of the truly transpersonal Absolute found in the Indic traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism. Rather than having a starting point in the personal divinity, these Indic traditions commit themselves to a negative theology, an Absolute completely transcendent and indeterminate, which allows one to escape the form of individuality which he earlier identifies with the form of suffering in general. Salvation on this model consists of the erasure of individuality in order to reach the transpersonal.

We can see already how this does not satisfy Corbin's commitment to personalism. But, as a deeper critique, we can also state that this form of the Absolute in fact does not escape the nihilism of the exoteric Absolute insofar as it still exists only as a negative movement from the very premises of the exoteric Absolute. It exists in a negative relation, as the simple denial of that which was valorised in the exoteric case. In this way, it has no choice but to devalorise all that is multiple and immanent, hence what Corbin finds as a "guilt of selfhood" in the Indic traditions.²⁰ The movement between these two forms of the absolute takes the form of an either/or – either individual form is affirmed, or the transpersonal is affirmed. We have seen already how both do not safeguard the person. What, then, is Corbin's solution?

The Theophanic Absolute

Corbin must avoid these symmetrical nihilisms, "that of an affirmative theology (kataphatic) erecting its absolute dogma, beyond which there would be nothing to search; that of a negative theology (apophatic) which would only aspire to the indetermination of the Absolute, [...] On one side and the other one has a theology without theophany."²¹ Instead, Corbin integrates the two from the perspective of a reverse movement – rather than exorcising the determination of the personal God towards the indeterminacy of the transpersonal absolute, Corbin understands the determination of the personal God from the perspective of its birth. It is a process of "invert[ing] the sense of this nihilitude, putting it right side up."²² In fact, we see these three forms of the Absolute as a single drama, a single circle of being, of multiplicity to oneness and back to multiplicity. The nihilitude of the transpersonal absolute is now not seen from the perspective of a negative movement away from multiplicity, but from its self-causal perspective of creative explication. So it is that for Corbin "the auto-generation of the personal God – engendering itself from the Absolute, absolving itself of the indetermination of this Absolute – is not the 'death' but the eternal birth of God."²³

If one is to ask why the transpersonal Absolute must theophanise itself, Corbin takes his cue from Jacob Boehme, where "the Absolute, being absolved of all determination, there remains ultimately to absolve it of this indetermination."²⁴ This must – this necessary pluralising and theophanising of the Absolute – is what, for Corbin, absolutely safeguards the role of uniqueness and individuality within the created order. It is only from the perspective of a negative theology, a transpersonal absolute, that unique individuality is guaranteed, that personhood becomes the supreme fulfilment of being. From the necessary theophanic explication, "Eo ipso, the transpersonal cannot be conceived of by human thought as being ontologically superior to the personal form of the divinity and the human self."²⁵

Moreover, this apophatic transpersonal safeguard in fact also guards us from any pantheistic mysticism that we diagnosed as a consequence of the personal form of God that did not have a negative theology. For whereas the latter's mysticism entailed an annihilation of the finite in the infinite attributes of God, the mysticism of Corbin’s theophanic Absolute is compared to Proclus, where the 'One' "is essentially unificent [unifique], unifying, constitutive of all the Ones, of all the beings that can only be existents by being each time an existent, i.e. unified [made one], constituted in unities precisely by the unifying One."²⁶ The relationship between the Absolute and its theophanies is no longer that of a pantheistic unity of being, but a relationship between unique Persons who are made unique Persons precisely by having the unifying power of the Unique conferred as one's horizon.

The unique Absolute, moreover, must be pluralised in its multiple theophanic forms, but it is not fragmented as a result, "but wholly present in each instance, individualized in each theophany."²⁷ Hence Corbin's perennialist attitude we have already alluded to as his distinguishing mark within the French personalist tradition – the plurality of religions and of religious experience – is not a mark against religious truth "but is on the contrary its revelation and fulfilment."²⁸ For it is the natural consequence of the Unique to reveal itself as every time unique without thereby fragmenting it, as the unity of the one and the many, or the one in the many, or the many as the one, or as Christian Jambet puts it, "in the visible that epiphany unveils by hiding, and manifests the identity of the near and the proof of the distant."²⁹ Nevertheless, this drama of the Absolute's unifying power is not in fact given – in much the same way as the Indic traditions, there is a struggle for salvation, to realise the divine origin of which we are naturally ignorant. But the struggle is no longer that of erasing our personhood in favour of the transpersonal Absolute, but rather "to free the individual being, to restore his or her individuality to its full and authentic monadicity. It is to restore its truth, not at all to denounce this individuality as illusory."³⁰

Angelic Pedagogy and Individuation

Here is where we arrive at the crux of Corbin's philosophical anthropology. By moving from the macrocosmic perspective just explored to the microcosmic hypostases on which the human drama is played out, we are able to see concretely how the person is established within Corbin's ontology. Just as in the first half of the paper, where the establishment of personhood relied first of all on the vertical dimension, in the relation between God and his creatures, the establishment of personhood on the concrete microcosmic perspective similarly exists on the vertical dimension, in the relation between the Active Intelligence and the human soul. We mention now, already, how this contrasts with the spirit of Corbin's French personalist contemporaries who, while still valorising the relationship between the spiritual and the temporal, ultimately find the establishment of personhood as an intersubjective relation and perhaps even a political relation. Hence, Mounier will write his Personalist Manifesto, detailing a materialist revolution as support for the introduction of the spiritual. This could not be more different to Corbin, who, in the end, finds the individuals personalist task "to become pure Form,"³¹ free from matter, and who finds the political front to be the "most formidable and paradoxical ordeal that an esoteric religion may undergo."³² But, we must first explicate Corbin's position in fuller detail.

Active Intelligence and Human Soul

We note at first that Corbin presupposes the hierarchical cosmology proper to any esoteric religion that has at its basis a transcendent Absolute. In particular, he takes his cue from the Avicennan cosmology which has an especially Neoplatonic schema – the human soul in this schema is the last production of a multiple procession. In the order of emanations, it is in fact the tenth Intelligence which produces the multiplicity of human souls.

The tenth Intelligence, moreover, being the last in the chain of procession, shows exhaustion of production in comparison to the previous Intelligences. The multiplicity of human souls is a unique case in the order of processions, for the previous Intelligences produce a soul "whose individuality would be identical with their species in accordance with the norm of the previous dyads of the pleroma."³³ In other words, whereas the tenth Intelligence produces a multiplicity of souls out of its exhaustion, the previous Intelligences produce "an individual entity that is itself its own species," a relation of one alone with one alone, ensuring the uniqueness of its hypostatic universe. The human souls, however, "unlike the single Soul of each heaven, differ from one another only numerically but are identical as to species."³⁴ Hence, the human soul in the first place lacks the uniqueness that a personalism demands and which the previous Intelligences hold on to – the question is "how should [one] attain to the state of the individual being that is its own species, that realizes the fullness of its own archetype?"³⁵ If the human soul has at first only a numerical differentiation but is otherwise identical to the species of human souls in general, is there any space for the uniqueness of each human soul by itself, of a human soul which would be its own species?

If the first part of this paper has shown anything, it is only in the relationship between God and his creatures that the unique is created – hence it is "at the moment when the soul discovers itself to be a stranger and alone in a world formerly familiar,"³⁶ where the self realises his celestial or angelic origin, that the person can be established.

This vertical dimension, we have said, is localised concretely in the microcosm of the tenth Intelligence and the human soul, which is "the same structure that is repeated at all degrees of the beings of the pleroma."³⁷ But in what way is the uniqueness of the individual human soul ensured by this dyadic relationship? In fact, the classic Aristotelian image of the relationship between the Active Intelligence and human soul is one where the principle of individuation is attributed to matter alone - "[T]he human soul receives its individuality only through its union with the body, and this Individuation is the 'service' that the body renders the soul."³⁸ Insofar as the human soul has a relationship to this vertical dimension then, it is a relationship which takes the most immortal part of us as entirely generic. "The individual is identified with the perishable; what can become eternal in the individual pertains exclusively to the separate and unique active Intelligence."³⁹ On the other hand, we have the position of Avicenna, which Corbin also holds, where the principle of individuation is attributed in fact to Form – hence it is to the relationship with the active Intelligence that we achieve not a conjunction that is entirely generic, but a relationship in which "a personal figure appears on its horizon, a figure that announces itself to the soul personally because it symbolizes with the soul's most intimate depths."⁴⁰

In this relationship with the Active Intelligence, the radiating of Form appears as the unique principle of individuation itself, and appears to the human soul in the form of a unique person. The conjunction of the Active Intelligence and the human soul reveals a bi-unity of transcendent Self and earthly self – it is this personal figure of the Angel, which, along with the human soul, "forms a totality that is dual in structure,"⁴¹ that establishes our eternal haeccity. It is in this personal relationship that we escape our subordination to a general human species and find a haeccity that is its own unique species. The degree of our personhood then depends "upon the greater or less aptitude that [we] will have gained for turning with greater spontaneity, perfection, and constancy toward the illuminating Angel Intelligence."⁴²

The Visionary Recital

It is now especially that we get to the unique personalist epistemology of Corbin – this one-to-one relationship between human soul and personal angel announces itself only through what he calls the visionary recital. It is an excessively spiritual vision in comparison with his more materially grounded French personalist contemporaries. Whereas Mounier will state that "[fundamental experience] lies not in separation but in communication,"⁴³ Corbin's visionary recital will announce a relationship of separation from matter, and an internal solipsism. The visionary recital is the medium, the vision through which, beyond didactic or syllogistic exegesis, personally and existentially relates the human soul to its angelic archetype. It is a personal vision through and through – Corbin in fact takes care to note the affective tonality in this relationship which takes us beyond mere intellectuality, where "the relation of the soul to the Active Intelligence is expressed with unmistakable clarity as the relation of child to parent," or where the conjunction is "accompanied by an incomparable love and joy."⁴⁴

Crucially, this relationship in which we find our eternal haeccity cannot be established in any other way than the visionary recital. The visionary recital "is the unique expression of the thing symbolized as of a reality that thus becomes transparent to the soul," and "remains the sole expression of the signified thing with which it symbolizes."⁴⁵ In other words, the visionary recital cannot be degraded to a simple allegory which can be cognized in any other way, whether rational, general, or abstract, simply because it expresses that which it symbolises, the Active Intelligence, directly. It is a knowledge through which the Active Intelligence and the entire angelic pleroma emanating from the ineffable Absolute is directly 'present' to the knower. And this is why the vision must be won over for each unique individual himself – it is not enough to know the relationship between Active Intelligence and human soul sui generis, each individual must personally carry out the illumination himself, "inviting to fresh transcendences."⁴⁶

Corbin’s commitment to the uniqueness of the visionary recital in fact puts him at odds with the majority of Avicenna scholars who, like Dimitri Gutas, argue that "Avicenna composed his works in a variety of styles [...] in order to reach different layers of audience with the same knowledge, not the same audience with a different, ‘esoteric,’ knowledge."⁴⁷ But it remains the case that for Corbin it is only in this specifically personalist epistemology that Avicenna's principle of individuation is able to be performed and appropriated.

Conclusion

The route to salvation offered by Corbin here may seem esoteric. Gilbert Durand states that it may be shocking in the first place to even link a Science of Man to a theosophical spirituality – "nous disions ce qu'il y avait de choquant pour un Occidental, de mettre au singu­lier, 'Science de l’Homme' et surtout de rattacher cette anthropologie à une spiritualité théosophique."⁴⁸ We started by arguing that Corbin's personalism is much more inclusive and expansive than the solely Christian ontology of those such as Mounier or Maritain. But it seems that in the end it is an esoteric vision, perhaps reserved only for a few, that Corbin's ontology leads to. Or rather, perhaps through Corbin we see the differences in how personhood is supposedly established. For as we noted earlier, his contemporaries such as Mounier were politically active, and in fact sought to establish personhood especially through political and material means. Corbin is instead excessively spiritual – it is only as pure Form, 'light against light,' in the relationship with our unique personal angel, that personhood is established.

But is this necessarily esoteric, or 'other-worldly?' We must see this spirituality against the backdrop of his initial antagonisms – if his problem in the first place is that secular positivism which brings its impersonalist ontologies, it cannot be fought against with its own secular means. Hence, the introduction of the spiritual into the temporal takes on different meanings for Corbin and someone like Mounier. Whereas Mounier will be painfully aware of the power and importance of political structures, for Corbin it can only be through the internal spiritual revolution which must be uniquely carried out by each and every person that we can also bring balance to the social world in general. In this sense, Corbin's personalism demands a commitment to the primacy of the celestial Pole as the ultimate orientation for all our activities, and not as just one more among, for example, material and political ones.

1. Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings (Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2012), p.30.
2. Jean-François Marquet, "Henry Corbin et la 'Science De L’Unique'" in Henry Corbin, Philosophies et sagesses des religions du Livre, (eds.) M.A. Amir-Moezzi, C. Jambet, P. Lory (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishing, 2005).
3. Gilbert Durand, "Science de l’homme et islam spirituel" in Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, (ed.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran: McGill University, Tehran Branch, 1977), pp.43, 90.
4. Bernard Gerdreau, "The Role of Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier in the Creation of French Personalism," The Personalist Forum, Spring 1992, Vol. 8, No. 1, Supplement: Studies in Personalist Philosophy. Proceedings of
   the Conference on Persons (Spring 1992), p. 98.
5. Henry Corbin, From Heidegger To Suhravardi: An Interview with Philippe Nemo, (trans.) Matthew Evans-Cockle (June 2, 1976).
6. Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p.31.
7. Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, (trans.) Willard R. Trask (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014), p.20.
8. Tom Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism (Woodstock, Conn.: Spring Journal Books, 2003), p.8.
9. Henry Corbin, From Heidegger To Suhravardi: An Interview with Philippe Nemo
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Samir Mahmoud, Ta’wil and the Angel (2005).
13. Gilbert Durand, Science de l’homme et islam spirituel, p.87-88.
14. Peter Hallward, "THE ONE OR THE OTHER French philosophy today," Angelaki, 8:2 (2003): p.2. DOI: 10.1080/0969725032000162549.
15. Emmanuel Mounier, The Spoil of the Violent, (trans.) Katherine Watson (West Nyack, N.Y., Cross Currents, 1962), p.83.
16. Henry Corbin, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism, (trans.) Matthew Evans-Cockle (October 20. 1997).
17. Ibid.
18. Henry Corbin, preface to The New Polytheism, by David L. Miller (Dallas, Texas : Spring Publications, 1981), p.2.
19. Henry Corbin, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism
20. Ibid.
21. Henry Corbin, The Paradox of Monotheism, (trans.) Matthew Evans-Cockle (June 7, 1976).
22. Henry Corbin, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Henry Corbin, The Paradox of Monotheism
27. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, (trans.) Ralph Manheim (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1969), p.121.
28. Henry Corbin, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism
29. Christian Jambet, "The Stranger and Theophany," (trans.) Roland Végső, in Umbr(a): The Dark God, No. 1 (2005): p.40.
30. Henry Corbin, Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism
31. Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, p.71.
32. Henry Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam, (trans.) Leonard Fox (West Chester, Pa: Swedenborg Foundation, 1999), p.95.
33. Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, p.81.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid. p.20
37. Ibid. p.85
38. Ibid. p.82
39. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, p.12.
40. Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, p.20.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid. p.82
43. Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, p.17.
44. Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, p.76.
45. Ibid. p.30
46. Ibid p.9.
47. Dimitri Gutas, "AVICENNA v. Mysticism," Encyclopædia Iranica, III/1,
    http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/avicenna-v.
48. Gilbert Durand, "Science de l’homme et islam spirituel," p.89.