{"id":720,"date":"2015-06-10T01:07:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T00:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.amiscorbin.com\/?page_id=720"},"modified":"2017-06-07T16:38:46","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T14:38:46","slug":"from-heidegger-to-suhravardi","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.amiscorbin.com\/en\/biography\/from-heidegger-to-suhravardi\/","title":{"rendered":"From Heidegger To Suhravardi"},"content":{"rendered":"

FROM HEIDEGGER TO SUHRAVARDI:<\/strong><\/p>\n

AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIPPE NEMO<\/strong><\/p>\n

translated by Matthew Evans-Cockle<\/strong><\/p>\n

see also<\/p>\n

Biographical post-scriptum to a philosophical interview<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PN: Henry Corbin, you were the first to translate Heidegger in\u00a0France\u00a0and then the first to introduce Iranian Islamic philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0How can these two tasks be reconciled as properly belonging to one and the same person, especially given that Martin Heidegger claims the West as his\u00a0homeland.\u00a0\u00a0His philosophy is typically German, and one might imagine a certain disparity between the business of translating Heidegger and that of translating Suhravard\u00ee.<\/p>\n

H.C.: I have often been asked that question, and I\u2019ve sometimes noticed, with amusement, a certain astonishment overtake my interlocutors upon discovering that the translator of Heidegger and the man who has introduced Iranian Islamic philosophy to the West are one and the same.\u00a0\u00a0And then they ask themselves, how has he passed from the one to the other?\u00a0I tried to tell you a while back, in an interview we had shortly after Heidegger\u2019s death, that this astonishment is the symptom of a type of compartmentalizing, of\u00a0an a-priori labeling of our disciplines.\u00a0\u00a0We tell ourselves: there are the Germanists and there are the Orientalists.\u00a0\u00a0Among the Orientalists there are the Islamists and there are the Iranianists, etc.\u00a0But how could one go from Germanism to Iranianism?\u00a0\u00a0If those who asked this question had only a little idea of what the philosopher is, and of the philosophical Quest, if they would imagine for a moment that linguistic incidents are no more for a philosopher than signs along the way, and that they announce little more than topographical variants of secondary importance, then perhaps they would be less astonished.<\/p>\n

I seize the opportunity to say these things because I have, in the past, run into altogether fantastical accounts of my spiritual biography.\u00a0\u00a0I had the privilege and pleasure of passing several unforgettable moments with Heidegger, in Freiburg, in April of 1934 and July 1936, which is to say during the period in which I was working through a translation of the collection of texts published under the title\u00a0Qu\u2019est ce que la M\u00e9taphysique?<\/em>\u00a0[\u201cWhat is Metaphysics?\u201d]\u00a0\u00a0I was subsequently to learn, much to my amazement, that if I had turned towards Sufism, it was because I had been disappointed by Heidegger\u2019s philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0This version of things is utterly false.\u00a0\u00a0My first publications on Suhravard\u00ee go back to 1933 and 1935 (My diploma from the \u201cEcole des Langues Orientales<\/em>\u201d [Oriental Language School] dates from 1929); my translation of Heidegger appears in 1938.\u00a0\u00a0A philosopher\u2019s campaign must be led simultaneously on many fronts, so to speak, especially if the philosophy in question is not limited to the narrow rationalist definition that certain thinkers of our days have inherited from the philosophers of the \u201cenlightenment\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Far from it!\u00a0\u00a0The philosopher\u2019s investigations should encompass a wide enough field that the visionary philosophies of a Jacob Boehme, of an Ibn \u2018Arabi, of a Swedenborg etc. can be set there together, in short that scriptural and visionary (imaginal) works may be accommodated as so many sources offered up to philosophical contemplation.\u00a0\u00a0Otherwise\u00a0philosophia<\/em>\u00a0no longer has anything to do with\u00a0Sophia<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0My education is originally philosophical, which is why, to all intents and purposes, I am neither a Germanist nor an Orientalist, but a Philosopher pursuing his Quest wherever the Spirit guides him.\u00a0\u00a0If it has guided me towards\u00a0Freiburg, towards Teheran, towards Ispahan, for me the latter remain essentially \u201cemblematic cities\u201d, the symbols of a permanent voyage.<\/p>\n

1. What I wish I could bring people to understand, as hopeless as it seems to imagine it happening in the space of the next minute\u2019s conversation \u2013for I would have to write a whole book on the subject- is the following.\u00a0\u00a0What I was looking for in Heidegger and\u00a0that\u00a0which I understood thanks to Heidegger, is precisely that which I was looking for and found in the metaphysics of Islamic Iran.\u00a0\u00a0I will recall the names of several among the greatest personalities in this domain a little later on.\u00a0\u00a0With these figures, however, everything was shifted onto a different level, transposed into a register whose secret explains why, ultimately, it is not by mere chance if my destiny has, on the morrow of the second world war, sent me off to Iran, where, for over 30 years now, I have not ceased to make contact with and to deepen that which is the spiritual culture and spiritual mission of this country.<\/p>\n

But I find it agreeable, and moreover necessary to add some further precisions - so as to facilitate understanding of just what has been my work and my quest - to the question of what I owe to Heidegger and what I have kept with me during a lifetime of investigations.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, I would say, there is the idea of\u00a0hermeneutics<\/em>, which appears among the very first pages of \u201cSein und Zeit\u201d<\/em>\u00a0[\u201cBeing and Time\u201d].\u00a0\u00a0Heidegger\u2019s great merit will remain in his having centered the act of philosophizing in hermeneutics itself.\u00a0\u00a0Forty years ago, when one employed this word, \u201chermeneutic\u201d, among philosophers, it had a strange almost barbaric ring.\u00a0\u00a0And yet, it\u2019s a term borrowed directly from the Greek and one that has its common usage among biblical specialists.\u00a0\u00a0We owe the technical definition to Aristotle: the title of his treatise\u00a0peri hermen\u00eaias<\/em>\u00a0was translated into\u00a0latin\u00a0as\u00a0De interpretatione<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0We can go one better too, for in contemporary philosophical parlance hermeneutics is that which, in German, is called\u00a0das verstahen<\/em>,\u00a0le \u201cComprendre,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u201cUnderstanding\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It is the art or technique of \u201cUnderstanding\u201d, as this was understood by Dilthey.\u00a0\u00a0An old friend, Bernard Groethuysen, who was once a student of Dilthey\u2019s, always came back to this in the course of our discussions.\u00a0\u00a0There is, in fact, a direct link between the \u201cVerstehen\u201d as hermeneutic in Dilthey\u2019s \u201cComprehensive Philosophy\u201d and the \u201cAnalytic\u201d, the idea of hermeneutics that we find in Heidegger.<\/p>\n

That said,\u00a0Dilthey\u2019s concept is derived from Schleiermacher, the great theologian of the German Romantic period, upon whom Dilthey had consecrated an enormous and unfinished work.\u00a0\u00a0Precisely there, we relocate the theological origins, namely protestant, of the concept of hermeneutics that we use in philosophical circles today.\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately, I have the impression that our young Heideggerians have somewhat lost sight of this link between hermeneutics and theology.\u00a0\u00a0To find it again, one would obviously have to restore an idea of theology altogether different from that which holds sway today, in\u00a0France\u00a0as\u00a0elsewhere,\u00a0I mean that definition that has become subservient to sociology when it is not handmaiden to \u201csociological-politics\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0This restoration could only come about through the concurrence of the hermeneutics practiced within the Religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, for it is therein that hermeneutics has developed as a spontaneous exegesis, and therein lie reserved its future palingenesis.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0\u00a0Because therein one is in possession of a Book upon which all depends.\u00a0\u00a0It is indeed a question of\u00a0understanding<\/em>the meaning, but of understanding the\u00a0true meaning<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Three things to consider: there is the act of\u00a0understanding<\/em>, there is the phenomenon of the\u00a0meaning<\/em>, and there is the unveiling or revelation of the\u00a0truth<\/em>\u00a0of this meaning.\u00a0\u00a0Now, are we to understand by this \u201ctrue\u201d meaning that which we currently call the historical meaning, or rather a meaning that refers us to an altogether other level than that of History as the word is commonly understood.\u00a0\u00a0From the very outset, the hermeneutics practiced in the Religions of the Book put into play the same themes and vocabulary familiar to phenomenology.\u00a0\u00a0What I was enchanted to rediscover in Heidegger, was essentially the filiation of hermeneutics itself passing through the theologian Schleiermacher, and if I lay claim to phenomenology, it is because philosophical hermeneutics is essentially the key that opens the hidden meaning (etymologically the\u00a0esoteric<\/em>) underlying the exoteric statement.\u00a0\u00a0I have as such done nothing more than attempt to deepen this understanding, firstly in the vast unexplored domain of Shiite Islamic gnosis, and then in the neighboring domains of Christian and Judaic gnosis.\u00a0\u00a0Inevitably, because on the one hand the concept of hermeneutics had a Heideggerian flavour, and because on the other hand my first publications concerned the great Iranian philosopher Suhravard\u00ee, certain historians stubbornly maintained their \u201cvirtuous insinuations\u201d that I had \u201cmixed up\u201d (sic) Heidegger with Suhravard\u00ee.\u00a0\u00a0But to make use of a key to open a lock is not at all the same thing as to confuse the key with the lock.\u00a0\u00a0It wasn\u2019t even a question of using Heidegger as a key, but rather of making use of the same key that he had himself made use of, and which was at everyone\u2019s disposition.\u00a0\u00a0Thank God, there are some insinuations whose sheer ineptitude reduces them to nothing\u2026 that said, the phenomenologist would have a great deal to say about the \u201cfalse keys\u201d of historicism.<\/p>\n

And specifically with regards to this last point, there is a book within the ensemble of Heidegger\u2019s work about which, perhaps, we no longer speak of enough.\u00a0\u00a0It is true that it is an old book\u2026 it was one of the first that Heidegger wrote, for it was his \u201chabilitation thesis.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I am referring to his book on Duns Scot.\u00a0\u00a0This book contains pages that have been particularly illuminating for me, concerning as they do what our medieval philosophers called\u00a0grammatica speculativa<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I was to make immediate use of it upon being called to stand in for my dear departed friend Alexandre Koyr\u00e9 at the Section of Religious Sciences in the\u00a0Ecole des Hautes Etudes<\/em>, [a French University, the \u201cSchool of Higher Studies\u201d] during the years 1937 through 39.\u00a0\u00a0Having to discourse upon Lutheran hermeneutics, I was able to put into practice that which I had learned [from its pages] of the\u00a0grammatica speculativa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In fact, there is one notion in particular which dominates the hermeneutics of the young Luther, and it is that of thesignificatio passiva<\/em>, precisely the type of question with which speculative grammar is concerned.\u00a0\u00a0Confronting the psalm verse \u201cIn justitutia tua libera me\u201d<\/em>\u00a0the young Luther asks:\u00a0\u00a0How can divine justice, the aspect of Righteousness opposed to that of Mercy, be the instrument of deliverance?\u00a0\u00a0There is no way out of this quandary so long as we consider this justice as an attribute that we confer upon God Himself.\u00a0\u00a0Everything changes, however, as soon as we consider it in itssignificatio passiva<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0By this we mean that justice by which we are made to be just.\u00a0\u00a0And so it is for the other divine attributes as well, which cannot be understood (modus intelligendi<\/em>) except through their relation with us (our\u00a0modus essendi<\/em>), and as such these should always be expressed with the adjunction of a suffix along the lines of \u201cicent<\/em>\u201d\u00a0(beneficent<\/em>\u00a0[Corbin here suggests the suffix \u201cfique<\/em>\u201d which has a much more widespread applicability in French than \u201cicent<\/em>\u201d in English, as such the following French examples he cites do not all admit of an adequate translation: \u201cl\u2019unifique<\/em>, le b\u00e9n\u00e9fique<\/em>, le v\u00e9rifique<\/em>, le sanctifique\u201d.\u00a0<\/em>These terms translated into English - the unifying, the beneficent, the veridical, the sanctifying - fail to illustrate the philosophical idea that Corbin is here concerned with: that the divine quality is only manifest to the extent that it is invested in the person.]\u00a0\u00a0It is this discovery that made of the young Luther the great interpreter of\u00a0Saint\u00a0Paul,\u00a0and this when he had almost been his victim.\u00a0\u00a0I have run across this same hermeneutic situation in many of the great tracts of mystical philosophy in Islam.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0specificity might well have remained obscure to me had I not already possessed the key of the\u00a0significatio passiva<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0A simple example: the advent of\u00a0Being\u00a0in this theosophy consists in putting Being in the imperative:\u00a0KN<\/em>,\u00a0Esto<\/em>\u00a0(in the second person, and not\u00a0fiat<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0That which is primary is neither the\u00a0ens<\/em>\u00a0nor the\u00a0esse<\/em>, but the\u00a0esto<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0This imperative inaugurator of \u201cBeing\u201d, this is the divine imperative in its active aspect (amr fi\u2019l\u00ee<\/em>); but considered in the \u201cbeing\u201d that it makes \u201cto be\u201d, the \u201cbeing\u201d that we are, none other than this same imperative, but in its\u00a0significatio passiva<\/em>\u00a0(amr maf\u2019\u00fbli<\/em>).<\/p>\n

I believe we can claim, therein, the triumph of hermeneutics as\u00a0Verstehen<\/em>, meaning that that which we truly understand, is never other than that by which we are tried, that which we undergo, which we suffer and toil with in our very being.\u00a0Hermeneutics does not consist in deliberating upon concepts, it is essentially the unveiling or revelation of that which is happening within us, the unveiling of that which causes us to emit such or such concept, vision, projection, when our passion becomes action, it is an active undergoing, a prophetic-poietic<\/em>\u00a0undertaking<\/p>\n

The phenomenon of\u00a0meaning, that is fundamental in the metaphysics of \u201cBeing and Time\u201d,\u00a0is the link between the signifier and the signified.\u00a0\u00a0But what makes this link, without which signifier and signified would simply remain objects for theoretical consideration?<\/p>\n

This link is the subject, and this subject is the\u00a0presence<\/em>, presence of the mode of being\u00a0to<\/em>\u00a0the mode of understanding.\u00a0\u00a0Pre-sence,\u00a0Da-sein<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I do not want to return here to a discussion of the reasons that, back in the day, led us, in agreement with our friends, to translate\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0r\u00e9alit\u00e9-humaine<\/em>\u00a0[human-reality].\u00a0\u00a0I am aware of the particular weaknesses of this translation, especially when by an all too frequent negligence, we omit the hyphen, whose necessity we have explained elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0Da-sein<\/em>: being-there, this is understood.\u00a0\u00a0But being-there,\u00a0is essentially to be enacting a presence, enactment of that presence\u00a0by<\/em>\u00a0which and\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0which meaning is revealed in the present.\u00a0\u00a0The modality of this human presence is thus to be revelatory, but in such a way that, in revealing the meaning, it reveals itself, and is that which is revealed.\u00a0\u00a0And here again we are witness to the concomitance of\u00a0passion-action<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In short, the link to which phenomenology draws our attention, is the indissoluble link between\u00a0modi intelligendi<\/em>\u00a0andmodi essendi<\/em>, between modes of understanding and modes of being.\u00a0\u00a0The modes of understanding are essentially in accordance with the modes of being.\u00a0\u00a0Any change in the mode of understanding is necessarily concomitant with a change in the mode of being.\u00a0\u00a0The modes of being are the ontological, existential [Corbin here draws a distinction between the two possible French spellings: existential<\/em>\u00a0and existentielle,\u00a0<\/em>and makes clear that he is using the French word \u201cexistential<\/em>\u201d in the sense of existentiating and not \u201cexistential\u201d as a simple attribute among others.] conditions of the act of \u201cUnderstanding\u201d, of the \u201cVerstehen<\/em>\u201d, which is to say of hermeneutics.\u00a0\u00a0Hermeneutics is the definitive task set before the phenomenologist.<\/p>\n

2. Let us now move on to the strange vocabulary that Heidegger puts before us, and which made a rude trial of his first French translator.\u00a0\u00a0I am thinking of words such as\u00a0Erschliessen, Erschlossenheit<\/em>; of all those terms designating the acts by which the modalities of the human-presence are revealed; of terms such as\u00a0Entdecken<\/em>, to dis-cover, to unveil the hidden, the\u00a0Verbogen<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Well, what I found out rather\u00a0quickly,\u00a0was that we find the equivalent of these words in the classical Arabic of the great visionary theosophers of Islam [\u201ctheosophers\u201d as distinct from the \u201ctheosophists\u201d belonging to the somewhat notorious European \u201ctheosophical\u201d movement].<\/p>\n

Nor is the bridge [between Heidegger and Islamic theosophy] difficult to find.\u00a0\u00a0A while ago I mentioned Heidegger\u2019s book on Duns Scot.\u00a0\u00a0We know, as Etienne Gilson has shown\u00a0us, that\u00a0Avicenna is a starting point for Duns Scot\u2019s thinking.\u00a0Furthermore, thanks to the historians of the\u00a0Toledo\u00a0school in the 12th<\/sup>\u00a0century we have a common Arabo-Latin philosophical vocabulary.\u00a0\u00a0Just recently Denis de Rougemont humorously reminded me, that when we were schoolmates he had noticed that my copy of \u201cBeing and Time\u201d contained numerous Arabic glosses in the margins.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, I believe it would have been much more difficult to translate the vocabulary of a Suhravard\u00ee, an Ibn \u2018Arabi, or a Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 Sh\u00eer\u00e2z\u00ee, etc\u2026 had I not already undergone a training in the acrobatics required to translate the extraordinary German vocabulary that one encounters in reading Heidegger.\u00a0\u00a0I am thinking of Arabic terms such as \u201czah\u00eer<\/em>\u201d which means the exterior, the apparent, the exoteric, and \u201cb\u00e2tin<\/em>\u201d designating the interior, the hidden,\u00a0the\u00a0esoteric.\u00a0\u00a0An entire family of words organizes itself around these two terms.<\/p>\n

There is a \u201czoh\u00fbr<\/em>\u201d, the manifestation, the act of a thing revealing itself, appearing; \u201cizh\u00e2r<\/em>\u201d, the act of making something appear, of making it manifest itself; \u201cmozhir<\/em>\u201d, that which causes such a thing to manifest itself, \u201cmazhar<\/em>\u201d, the form of manifestation, the form of epiphany; \u201cmarhar\u00eeya<\/em>, the epiphanic function of a\u00a0mazhar<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0In Persian, there are terms such ashast-kardan<\/em>\u00a0\u201cmake-to-be\u201d;\u00a0has-konandeh<\/em>\u00a0\u201cthat which makes-to-be\u201d,\u00a0hast-kardeh<\/em>,\u00a0hast-gard\u00eedeh<\/em>, \u201cthat which is makes-to-be, in itself\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0There is, of course, no need for me to sketch out the preliminaries of a dictionary here\u2026\u00a0\u00a0It is sufficient to note that with these few terms we may already feel the entire phenomenological vocabulary entering into play.\u00a0\u00a0Such being the case, do I really need to insist upon the mutual benefit, for these two domains, that resides in knowledge of both the Islamic theosophical vocabulary and that of phenomenology?\u00a0\u00a0And this, despite the disparity, that I mentioned earlier, between the intended level or horizon with which their investigations are concerned.<\/p>\n

There exist, in fact, what we may call \u201chermeneutic levels\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The term has become commonplace today; back in the day it was much less so.\u00a0\u00a0It is a question of course, in all cases, of considering the hermeneutic levels (the\u00a0modi intelligendi<\/em>) with regard to the different modes of being (modi essendi<\/em>), which are their respective supports or mediums.\u00a0\u00a0It is precisely these modes of being which it is important for us to differentiate, in order to avoid any over-zealous confusion between different modes of understanding, misunderstandings against which I have never ceased warning my students, inParis\u00a0just as in Teheran.<\/p>\n

To this end, it is necessary to have well defined concepts of phenomenology and hermeneutics at one\u2019s disposal.\u00a0\u00a0It is perfectly natural to have returned again and again to asking ourselves how we might faithfully translate the idea of phenomenology, into both Arabic and Persian.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One solution, which is not really a solution at all, consists simply in translating the word into Arabic writing.\u00a0\u00a0Nor is it any better - as I have often observed my students and the authors of reviews doing \u2013 if we arm ourselves with dictionaries and stubbornly search for an equivalent.\u00a0\u00a0It was best to begin by asking ourselves if the Arabo-Persian vocabulary of mystical theosophy did not already offer us a term for a corresponding process.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, there is such a term circulating within the sphere of mystical theosophy (\u2018erf\u00e2n<\/em>), a term so common in fact that it serves as title for more than one book.\u00a0\u00a0I am speaking of the term\u00a0Kashf al-mahj\u00fbb<\/em>, which signifies precisely \u201cthe unveiling of that which is hidden\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Is that not precisely the activity of the phenomenologist, an activity which - in unveiling and in bringing the hidden meaning, occulted beneath the outward appearance, beneath the phenomenal, out into manifestation - fulfills in its own way the program of the Greek science:\u00a0s\u00f4zein ta phainomena<\/em>\u00a0(to save the phenomena)?\u00a0\u00a0Kashf<\/em>, is the unveiling (Enthulling, Entdecken<\/em>) which causes the true meaning itself, initially occulted by that which is the apparent, to emerge into manifestation, the\u00a0phainomenon<\/em>\u00a0(here we might do well to call to mind that which Heidegger has said about the concept of\u00a0al\u00eatheia<\/em>, or truth).\u00a0\u00a0We are ourselves the veil so long as we abstain from the \u201cact of presence\u201d, so long as we are not being-there (da-sein<\/em>), at the hermeneutic level in question.\u00a0\u00a0And so, is it not clear that we are traveling a self-same route, even if we keep in mind the eventual difference between the levels of the destinations sought by the seekers, a difference heralded by the fact that our \u201ctheosophers\u201d understand this unveiling to be of the\u00a0esoteric<\/em>\u00a0hidden beneath the\u00a0exoteric<\/em>\u00a0appeareance.\u00a0\u00a0Upon this very point, their hermeneutic remains faithful to that which is simultaneously its source and springboard: \u201cthe phenomenon of the Revelation of a Holy Book\u201d, to which I had called our attention at the beginning of this discussion.<\/p>\n

And this is precisely the meaning suggested by the Arabic term that corresponds most closely to the term \u201chermeneutics\u201d: I am speaking of the term\u00a0ta\u2019w\u00eel<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Etymologically, the word\u00a0ta\u2019w\u00eel<\/em>\u00a0means to re-conduct something to its source, to its archetype\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It is the technique of \u201cUnderstanding\u201d in which the Shiite \u201ctheosophers\u201d, both Duodeciman and Ismaili have excelled in their esoteric Koranic hermeneutics.\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0consists\u00a0of \u201cthe occultation of the apparent and the manifestation of the occulted\u201d; nor did the alchemists themselves conceive otherwise their own great work.\u00a0\u00a0On this path there is a multitude of hermeneutical levels, each one corresponding to a respective level of\u00a0Being.\u00a0\u00a0This is why an authentic\u00a0ta\u2019w\u00eel<\/em>\u00a0has nothing to do with inoffensive \u201callegory\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The ascension through these hermeneutical levels might well create the impression that we are leaving our occidental phenomenologist companion behind.\u00a0\u00a0But since we are engaged upon one and the same hermeneutical path why mightn\u2019t he come and join us?\u00a0\u00a0And this is indeed the question of our relations to come, the very question we encountered earlier on in relation to the\u00a0significatio passiva<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0While altogether necessary, it sufficed to prolong what we had learned, in terms of\u00a0grammatica speculativa<\/em>, to follow the admirable developments of the great theosopher Ibn \u2018Arabi concerning the\u00a0meaning<\/em>\u00a0of the divine Names.\u00a0\u00a0A simple exercise, permitting me nonetheless to affirm that if one is not already somewhat acquainted with the secret of the\u00a0significatio passiva<\/em>, one risks making a mess of the question and overlooking the essential.\u00a0\u00a0I hope, of course, that it is no breach of etiquette for me to refer to my work on Ibn \u2018Arabi, here.\u00a0\u00a0This then, in as brief a synopsis as was\u00a0permissible,\u00a0constitutes the governing idea in my books and in my life\u2019s work as a researcher in the philosophical and religious sciences.<\/p>\n

3. It is thus easy for you to understand my dear Philippe Nemo, why I couldn\u2019t be, and why I wouldn\u2019t wish to be, a historian in the common sense of the word, an intellectual authority who establishes the course of events of the past, without feeling him or herself responsible for the latter, not even responsible for the meaning which he or she attributes to it.\u00a0\u00a0And it is indeed he or she who confers upon this past one meaning or another and who sets in motion the cogwheels of \u201chistorical causality\u201d in conformity with the meaning upon which he or she has already decided.\u00a0\u00a0For the historian the events have come and gone, they have past by, without the historian having been there.\u00a0\u00a0And it is convenient that the historian should not have been there, where and when the events took place.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, it is necessary that he or she not be there, nor ever\u00a0engage\u00a0in an \u201cact of presence\u201d with regards to this past, for this would compromise the historian\u2019s ability to speak with \u201chistorical objectivity\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0And even if they make conspicuous use of such terms as the \u201cliving past\u201d, or the \u201cpresence of the past\u201d, such presence is no more than an inoffensive metaphor for their personal alibi.\u00a0\u00a0In striking contrast hermeneutical phenomenologists must always be \u201cBeing-there\u201d (da-sein<\/em>), for them there can never be anything that is irrevocably past.\u00a0\u00a0It is by\u00a0their own\u00a0\u201cact of presence\u201d, that they cause that which is occulted by the phenomenal appearance to manifest itself.\u00a0\u00a0This \u201cact of presence\u201d consists in opening or ushering in the future that all so-called bygone events of the past conceal within themselves.\u00a0\u00a0It is to see the past before one, and this is something entirely different from the inoffensive and metaphorical literary \u201cpresence\u201d of the \u201cliving past\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Because at one and the same time, it is to feel oneself \u201cresponsible for the past\u201d, in that one makes oneself answerable for its future.\u00a0\u00a0This implies, of course, a certain mode of\u00a0Being, but precisely that mode of Being which conditions this hermeneutical level.\u00a0\u00a0(There can be no question of dialectically contesting the modes of\u00a0Being.\u00a0\u00a0One can understand them, one can refuse them, but they are not such that one can refute them.)\u00a0\u00a0This is why I have always remained the phenomenologist that I was in my youth.\u00a0\u00a0I am well aware that this may have misguided several of my Orientalist colleagues, more or less well informed of the exigencies proper to the philosopher.\u00a0\u00a0Nevertheless, as the state of the research in this field necessitated that I take upon myself the critical edition of many volumes of Arabic and Persian texts, I was able to prove in so doing that the duties intrinsic to philological erudition and the exigencies of philosophical understanding were indeed such as could be combined by the philosopher.\u00a0At the same time I was much better understood in philosophical circles where the nature of the questions involved were immediately recognized.\u00a0\u00a0But this is where one feels the poverty of our official [academic] programs.\u00a0\u00a0One must begin by making known the names of distant philosophers, the discontinuity between possible chronologies, the catalogue of technical terms, etc., all things that ought to be common currency, and which will perhaps one day come to be so, when Occidental and Oriental philosophers will have once more come together to assume responsibility for the tradition they hold in common.<\/p>\n

Is it even necessary for me to say that the direction my research has taken had as its starting point the incomparable analysis we owe to Heidegger showing the ontological roots of the Historical sciences, showing effectively that there is a more original, more primitive historicism than that which we call the \u201cuniversal History\u201d; the History of external events, the\u00a0Weltgeschichte<\/em>, or simply History in the ordinary everyday sense of the word.\u00a0\u00a0To signify this idea I forged the termhistoriality<\/em>, and I believe it is a term worth holding on to.\u00a0\u00a0The same relation exists between the terms historiality and historicism as between existential as \u201cexistentiating\u201d and existential conceived as a simple attribute [existential<\/em>\u00a0andexistentielle<\/em>\u00a0in the French].\u00a0\u00a0It was a decisive moment.\u00a0\u00a0This very historiality appeared to me as motivation for and legitimization of the refusal to allow oneself to be inserted into the historicism of History, into the weave of historical causality, as effectively calling us to tear ourselves from the historicism of History.\u00a0\u00a0For if there is a \u201cmeaning to History\u201d, it is not by any means in the historicism of historical events; it is in this \u201chistoriality\u201d, in these secret, esoteric, existentiating roots of History and of the historical.<\/p>\n

If the moment was decisive it is because it was also without any doubt, the moment in which, while following the example of the Heideggerian Analytic, I was drawn to explore hermeneutical levels that his program had not yet envisioned.\u00a0\u00a0I am speaking of that which I have since designated by the term \u201chierophantic-history\u201d, a sacred history that is not in the least bit concerned with the outward facts of a \u201chistory of the saints\u201d, or of a \u201chistory of salvation\u201d, but is rather concerned with something much more original: the esoteric hidden beneath the phenomenon of the literal appearance of the [spiritual] tales and acccounts related in Holy Books.\u00a0\u00a0I have just indicated the contrast between historiality and historicism.\u00a0\u00a0Now, this contrast is already perfectly well known - albeit expressed in different terms - to the Gnostics and Cabalists of the Religions of the Book.\u00a0\u00a0Our Jewish Cabalistic friends, for example, speak of the mysteries of the primordial Torah, of the Torah-Sophia, containing the archetypes of Creation that the Saint-blessed-be-he contemplated over the course of millennia before creating the worlds.\u00a0\u00a0But it was not the story of the first man, the story of Core, that of the she-mule of Balaam, in their literal appearance that occupied his meditation; it was not with these that he created the worlds.\u00a0\u00a0That which he contemplated was the\u00a0neshama,\u00a0<\/em>the most intimate spiritual center of both the Torah and of Man, of the Torah as it exists at the level of the supreme world, the world of\u00a0Atsilut<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0And that is what spiritual hermeneutics teaches us to read in the Bible.\u00a0\u00a0Similarly, for the Shiite Gnostics - Duodeciman as well as Ismaili - that which we profanely call historicity and historical meaning is for them but the outward figure and metaphor (maj\u00e2z<\/em>) of the true Reality (haq\u00eeqat<\/em>) of events and of metaphysical persons, prior to the creation of our world.\u00a0\u00a0And that is what spiritual hermeneutics,\u00a0the\u00a0ta\u2019w\u00eel<\/em>, teaches us to read in the Koran.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, if there had not been\u00a0that<\/em>, -and here we are dealing with a matter that has been formulated in a most decisive manner by the fifth Shiite Imam, Imam Mohammed Baqir (VIIIth century)-\u00a0if there was nought but the literal appearance relative to the circumstances surrounding the revelation of the Koranic verses, that is to say if there were no more than the merely historical, the Koran would have long since become a dead book.\u00a0\u00a0Yet, to the contrary this book shall live till the day of Resurrection, and if it lives, it is by virtue of the spiritual hermeneutics that is forever unveiling its hidden meanings. \u2013And herein we have a perfect example of our phenomenological hermeneutics being called back to its theological origins.<\/p>\n

And so, what tremendous irony!\u00a0\u00a0That which the profane, the \u201cexotericists\u201d, consider to be the metaphorical meaning is precisely what the Gnostics consider to be the real or true meaning, and this because they never degrade spiritual meaning to the rank of metaphor or of allegory.\u00a0\u00a0And that which the profane take to be the real meaning, which is to say the visible historical meaning, is nothing more for the Gnostics than the metaphorical meaning, the metaphor of the True Reality.\u00a0Within such a perspective, our historical science and our historians are themselves reduced to metaphors and to a metaphorical state of\u00a0Being.\u00a0\u00a0What then must we say of those contemporary exegetical theologians who intentionally ignore any other meaning than the so-called \u201chistorical\u201d meaning, and who destroy hierophantic-history by inserting it at all costs into the historicity of History, because, for them, there is no other \u201creality\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0At the very limit they may concede a [spiritual] typology every bit as inoffensive as it is unconvincing.\u00a0\u00a0I may not have had many precursors in making these links, but they seem indispensable to me, for they allow one to judge, all the more accurately, whether or not the Heideggerian Analytic has not come to a premature halt, immobilizing itself at a false impasse.<\/p>\n

Because the historiality of hierophantic history tears us away from the historicism of History, it allows us to see, and with a good deal of irony, the furor for the historical and for historicity which is so dominant today.\u00a0\u00a0There are \u201chistorical keys\u201d and \u201chistorical conferences\u201d, propositions are made for historical laws, for historical trends, etc.\u00a0\u00a0Hierophantic history teaches us that there are filial connections more essential and more true to reality than historical affiliations.\u00a0These connections are in fact so essential that the privilege which those, who are \u201cblind to the invisible\u201d, concede to the historical appears derisory.\u00a0\u00a0It is not by any \u201chistorical\u201d tie that we are connected to the other worlds which give this world its \u201cmeaning\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The Heideggerian Analytic has, among others, the interesting virtue of bringing us to an understanding of the underlying motives that have lead the humanity of today to cling frantically to the historical as though it were the only \u201cReality\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It all gives one the impression of a laicising of the idea of Incarnation, in the wake of which even the theologians have been dragged into a generalized and omnipresent sociology.\u00a0\u00a0On the contrary, the Analytic of the \u201cact of presence\u201d, of the\u00a0da-sein<\/em>\u00a0- within which the future of the past emerges, for it \u201cactuates\u201d that which in the past was still to come - ought to have the virtue of liberating us from the mirage of this passion for historicity, the passion for making by-gone history to which we will have the glory of belonging, and this precisely because it dissipates the mirage of the very idea of the past through its transfiguration.<\/p>\n

Let us recall once again the extraordinary vocabulary before which Heidegger places us in asking the question: do the acts of human-presence come to pass purely and simply in the past?\u00a0\u00a0Or do they not remain in the present in the sense that they \u201care\u201d \u201chaving been\u201d?\u00a0\u00a0But if they are, it is that that presence which \u201cenacts the act of presence is always yet to come, a future yet to come which will not cease to constitute itself in the present (Gegenwartigendes-Zukunftiges<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0The \u201chaving-been\u201d cannot presently\u00a0be<\/em>-having been (Gewesenheit<\/em>) except as born endlessly out of the future.\u00a0\u00a0There would be no present if it were not for the \u201cfuture yet-to-come\u201d endlessly becoming \u201chaving-been\u201d (Gewensend<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0The present is that: it is the yet-to-come having-been-yet-to-come, but because the future\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0having-been, it retains all its virtualities and possibilities in the present.\u00a0\u00a0Everything depends upon the act of \u201cbeing-there\u201d (da-sein<\/em>) by which the having-been\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>there (da-gewesen<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0And this process is the very \u201ctemporalizing\u201d of time.\u00a0\u00a0But of course one would do well to compare this with the profound intuitions of the Iranian theosophers concerning this process.\u00a0\u00a0It begins with pre-Islamic\u00a0Iran\u00a0and with all that is connected to Zervanism.\u00a0\u00a0In Islamic Iran, a certain Semnani (XIVth century) distinguishes between the\u00a0zam\u00e2n \u00e2f\u00e2q\u00ee<\/em>, the temporality of the \u201chorizons\u201d - that is to say the time of the macrocosm, of the physical universe - the\u00a0zam\u00e2n anfos\u00ee<\/em>, the temporality of the souls - that is to say psycho-spiritual time.\u00a0\u00a0A certain Q\u00e2z\u00ee\u00a0Sa\u2019\u00eed\u00a0Qomm\u00ee (XVIIth century) would later dinstinguish between an opaque and dense temporality (zam\u00e2n kath\u00eef<\/em>), an already subtle temporality (lat\u00eef<\/em>), and an absolutely subtle temporality (altaf<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0I have dealt with this subject in my books.<\/p>\n

What I have been trying to evoke permits me to explain how the grand project undertaken by the young philosopher Suhravard\u00ee, in the 12th<\/sup>\u00a0century - very intentionally proposing, and this right in the middle of an Islamicized Iran, to \u201cresuscitate the Light of the ancient Persian Sages\u201d- might not have appeared to me as it were invested with its fulgurating aura, had I not been exposed to and instructed in this phenomenology.\u00a0\u00a0From the perspective of the historian as such, the Suhravardian project could appear as a \u201cpiece of idle fancy\u201d to use a common expression, an arbitrary project without historical foundation.\u00a0\u00a0But Suhravardi himself neither thought nor acted in the manner of a \u201chistorian\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0He does not deliberate upon concepts, upon influences, upon discernable or contestable historical remnants and vestiges of the past.\u00a0He is quite simply\u00a0there<\/em>: he engages himself in an \u201cact of presence\u201d [of being-there].\u00a0\u00a0He takes the past of the old Zoroastrian\u00a0Iran\u00a0in charge, thereby rendering it present.\u00a0\u00a0It is no longer a by-gone irretrievable past, the material lineage having been interrupted.\u00a0\u00a0To this past, he restores the future yet-to-come, a future that begins with\u00a0himself\u00a0because he feels himself to be responsible for this past.\u00a0\u00a0The spiritual tie defies all historical rupture for it is strong enough in itself to constitute a legitimate filial connection.\u00a0\u00a0Henceforth, the ancient Persian Sages, the\u00a0Khosrovaniyun<\/em>,\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0in truth the precursors to the\u00a0Ishraqiyun<\/em>\u00a0(the Platonists) of Islamic Iran.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIn this I have had no precursor\u201d, wrote our\u00a0Ishraqi<\/em>\u00a0Sheikh.\u00a0The intrepidness, no doubt, of a young thinker of thirty five years whose \u201cact of presence\u201d (the\u00a0da-sein<\/em>) provokes and legitimates the reversal of past into future, because it is all the future yet-to-come of this past which is constituting itself anew as present, in the present of his act of \u201cbeing-there\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0And it is this that is the\u00a0historially true<\/em><\/p>\n

The young\u00a0Ishraqi<\/em>\u00a0Sheikh, Suhravardi, has long since been, in my eyes, the exemplary hero of philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0Following his example, I have attempted to understand the whole spiritual culture of\u00a0Iran\u00a0in such a way as to give it the fullness of that dimension which is still yet-to-come.\u00a0\u00a0I have, perhaps, helped more than one Iranian friend, known or unknown, to \u201cfind himself\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0I have, at any rate, heard testimonies to this effect on more than one occasion, and have always found them staggering.\u00a0\u00a0But I am persuaded that such an \u201cact of presence\u201d must be accomplished by anyone wishing to transmit a message such as that of the Iranian spirituals to the West.\u00a0\u00a0Nor do I think that any more direct testimony [than this act of transmission] can be brought forward in support of what I was saying earlier about that which I owe to Heidegger and have subsequently conserved throughout an entire career of research and philosophical investigation.\u00a0\u00a0And that ought to be enough to dissipate the serious misunderstanding [by which Corbin was considered to have renounced Heidegger\u2019s philosophy] that we have already dealt with here, at least to the extent that this misunderstanding has come about in good faith.<\/p>\n

It has long since been observed that the \u201cAnalytic\u201d - which is the application of the Heideggerian Hermeneutic - already tacitly posits a fundamental philosophical choice, a conception of the world, a\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0This choice announces itself at the horizon within which the \u201cAnalytic\u201d of the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0is deployed.\u00a0\u00a0But it is not at all necessary to adhere to this tacit\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>\u00a0to make use of all the resources of an \u201cAnalytic\u201d of this\u00a0Da-sein<\/em>\u00a0which I translated earlier as to \u201cengage an act of presence\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0If one\u2019s\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>\u00a0does not coincide with that of Heidegger, this will translate into the fact that you give the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0another\u00a0situs<\/em>, another dimension, than that given it in\u00a0Sein und Zeit<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0A while ago I drew a comparison [between the Hermeneutic] and the key that one is handed in order to open a lock.\u00a0This key is indeed the hermeneutic, and it is up to you to give to this key the form adapted to the lock you have to open.\u00a0The examples I recalled a few moments ago show us how, when adapted in this way, the\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0opens all the locks that close access to the veiled, to the occulted, to the esoteric.\u00a0\u00a0It is with the\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0that Swedenborg opens the locks of the Bible\u2019s\u00a0Arcana caelestia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This key is, if I may say so, the principal tool with which the phenomenologist\u2019s mental laboratory is equipped.\u00a0\u00a0But to make use of this\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0- Heidegger having shown one how it might be used and adapted - does not in any way demand, nor in any way mean, that one therefore shares the same world view, the same\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>\u00a0as Heidegger.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, when it was insinuated that I had \u201cmixed\u201d up Heidegger with Suhravardi it was not with reference to this\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0- of whose very existence such detractors were ignorant - the intention was to insinuate that I had operated some type of syncretic conjunction between Heidegger\u2019s\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>\u00a0and that of the Iranian philosophers.\u00a0The insinuation is so inept that I have questioned its being made in good faith.\u00a0\u00a0I have made use of the\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0in particular and I have written reams of pages to show the differences between the possible \u201cdoors\u201d it might open.\u00a0\u00a0But to what end? The feeble minded critics don\u2019t read them and persevere in their ineptitude.<\/p>\n

As an example of my efforts to illustrate these differences and prevent confusion, I will refer to the work of one of the greatest Iranian philosophers, Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 Sh\u00eer\u00e2z\u00ee (XVIIth century), himself one of the great hermeneutic interpreters of Suhravardi\u2019s\u00a0Ishr\u00e2q<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I have dealt with Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 in many of my books; have published and translated one of his treatises in its entirety, and given several courses on his works, as often in\u00a0Paris\u00a0as in Teheran.\u00a0\u00a0Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 is the author of a veritable metaphysical revolution in traditional Islamic philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0He was the first to shake the venerable metaphysics of the Essence from its moorings, replacing it by a metaphysics according priority and primacy to the act of Being: to Existence over Essence.\u00a0\u00a0Nothing more was needed for me to hear students and researchers in Teheran proclaiming with conviction that Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 was the true founder of Existentialism!\u00a0\u00a0Others, impressed by Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2\u2019s cosmogony and grandiose psychology proudly found in his\u00a0works\u00a0that which they had more or less successfully assimilated of evolutionism.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, the Johannine element which one finds in the works of Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 and so many other Iranian philosophers -\u201cNothing returns to Heaven save that which has from it descended\u201d- is completely alien to evolutionism.\u00a0\u00a0Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2\u2019s philosophy of the active imagination as a purely spiritual power might well authorize certain comparisons with developments in Bergson\u2019s\u00a0Matter, Memory and Spiritual Energy<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0But the eschatological horizon of our Iranian philosophers is not a Bergsonian horizon.<\/p>\n

So, in each instance I have had to go to great lengths, to double back and take up the charge again and again to avoid such confusions as ruin all serious attempts at comparative philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0And I have done so with the use of the\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>, which is to say by showing that, certain consonances notwithstanding, there subsisted fundamental differences in that we were dealing with modes of understanding (modi intelligendi<\/em>) proceeding from entirely different modes of being (modi essendi<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0It was necessary to show that the respective ambition in each case corresponded to hermeneutical levels of differing degrees.\u00a0\u00a0Moreover, in translating and publishing Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2\u2019s work, the \u201cBook of Metaphysical Penetrations\u201d, I had had the opportunity to insist at great length upon the particularities of the vocabulary ofBeing\u00a0in Greek and in Latin, in Arabic and in Persian, in French and in German.\u00a0\u00a0There is no question, the translators of Toledo in the XIIth century, to whom I was referring a little earlier, have given us the elements of an Arabo-Latin philosophical vocabulary in which we find such words as\u00a0m\u00e2h\u00eeya<\/em>\u00a0(quidditas<\/em>,\u00a0essentia<\/em>),\u00a0woj\u00fbd<\/em>\u00a0(esse<\/em>,\u00a0existere<\/em>),\u00a0mawj\u00fbd<\/em>(ens<\/em>), etc.\u00a0\u00a0One needs hardly refer to such consonances to understand that, with Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2, there is no trace of what has called itself \u201cExistentialism\u201d in\u00a0France.\u00a0\u00a0I\u00a0mean,\u00a0nothing of that particular philosophy of existence, which has taken over the name.\u00a0\u00a0The fact is that the modes of being which are considered to be the supports of the primacy conferred upon \u201cexistence\u201d are in both cases radically different.\u00a0\u00a0And they are so even without the added prejudice of the judgement past by Heidegger himself upon \u201cexistentialism\u201d a word which the early Heideggerians would never have pronounced.<\/p>\n

We are now touching upon the fundamental difference that underlies the passage -\u201cmy passage\u201d- from Heidegger to Suhravard\u00ee, a difference upon which I would like to conclude.\u00a0\u00a0I have just indicated how the use of the\u00a0clavis hermeneutica<\/em>\u00a0which Heidegger has handed to us in no way implies an adherence to his\u00a0Weltanschauung<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0The hermeneutic proceeds from the \u201cact of presence\u201d signified in the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>; its task is therefore to illuminate how, in understanding itself, the human\u00a0Being-there<\/em>\u00a0situates itself, circumscribes the\u00a0Da<\/em>, the\u00a0situs<\/em>\u00a0of its presence and unveils the horizon which had up until then remained hidden.\u00a0\u00a0The metaphysics of the\u00a0Ishr\u00e2q\u00eey\u00fbn<\/em>, and par excellence that of a Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2 culminates in\u00a0a metaphysics\u00a0of Presence (hoz\u00fbr<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0Around this situs<\/em>\u00a0Heidegger arranges all the ambiguity of human finitude characterized as a \u201cBeing-toward-Death\u201d (Sein zum Tode<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0With a Moll\u00e2 Sadr\u00e2, or an Ibn \u2018Arabi the Presence as they experience it in this world - as it is unveiled by the \u201cphenomenon of the world\u201d lived by them - is not that Presence whose finality is death, a Being-towards-Death, but a \u201cBeing-towards-Beyond-Death\u201d, let us say:\u00a0Sein zum Jenseits des Todes<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0One may see quite clearly that the conception of the world, the pre-existential philosophical choice, whether it be that of Heidegger, or that of our Iranian \u201ctheosophers\u201d, is itself constitutive of the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>, of the act of Being-there present to the world and its variants.\u00a0\u00a0From hereon in, all that remains to be done is to hold and press this notion of Presence, as closely and as intently as possible.\u00a0\u00a0To what is this human presence, this Being-there, present?<\/p>\n

The investigation will\u00a0begin,\u00a0as well it ought to, with the gnoseology of the\u00a0Ishr\u00e2q\u00eey\u00fbn<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0They distinguish the following: there is a formal knowledge (\u2018ilm s\u00fbr\u00ee<\/em>) that is the common form of knowledge; it is produced through the intermediary of a\u00a0re-presentation<\/em>, of a\u00a0species<\/em>, actualized in the soul.\u00a0\u00a0And there is a knowledge which they designate as a\u00a0presential<\/em>knowledge (ilm hozuri<\/em>) which does not pass through the intermediary of a\u00a0representation<\/em>, of a\u00a0species<\/em>, but is immediate presence, that by which the soul\u2019s \u201cact of presence\u201d itself gives rise to the presence of things and renders present to\u00a0itself, no longer objects but presences.\u00a0\u00a0It is this same knowledge that they typify as \u201cOriental\u201d knowledge (\u2018ilm ishr\u00e2q\u00ee<\/em>), which is at one and the same time the dawning of the Orient of Being upon the soul and the dawning of the matutinal illumination of the soul upon the things which it reveals and which it reveals to itself as co-presences.\u00a0\u00a0It is important that we always conserve the original signification of the word\u00a0Ishr\u00e2q<\/em>, that of the dawn and Orient of the Heavenly body, the rising sun.\u00a0But here we are dealing with an Orient that one should not try to locate on our geographical maps, it is the dawning Light, a Light prior to all revealed things, to all presence, for it is that which reveals them, that by which the Presence\u00a0is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And so it will make all the difference, when we pose the question as follows: which presences does the human presence, render present to\u00a0itself, in enacting its own presence?\u00a0\u00a0In other words, with which constellations of presences does the\u00a0Da<\/em>of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0surround itself when it reveals itself to itself?\u00a0\u00a0To which worlds is it being present in its being\u00a0there<\/em>.\u00a0Should I limit myself to the phenomenon of the world analyzed in\u00a0Sein und Zeit<\/em>?\u00a0\u00a0Or should I intuit, accept and amplify my presence to all the worlds and \u201cinter-worlds\u201d, as they are dis-covered and revealed to me by the \u201cOriental\u201d Presence of our Islamic Iranian \u201ctheosophers\u201d?\u00a0\u00a0In posing this question, I am merely illustrating the difference that I posited earlier.\u00a0If Heidegger teaches us to analyze the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>, the \u201cact of presence\u201d, you can see that this in no way implies that the limits of the Heideggerian horizon impose themselves upon this \u201cact of presence\u201d, nor that it must immobilize itself in premature fashion.\u00a0\u00a0This is why, sometime earlier, I was evoking the decisive moment in which I was drawn towards hermeneutical levels that had not been foreseen by the Heideggerian Analytic that I had at my disposal.\u00a0\u00a0I am speaking of a dimension of the \u201cact of presence\u201d in which we feel ourselves to be in the company of the divine hierarchies of Proclus, the great neoplatonist, as well as those of Jewish gnosis, of Valentinian gnosis, of Islamic gnosis.\u00a0\u00a0Thenceforth it is the future yet-to-come, and the dimension of the future, which are being decided.\u00a0\u00a0If the \u201cact of presence\u201d is in fact the future ceaselessly constituting itself in the present, if the process of the yet-to-come constituting itself as my being-present is dependent upon my act of presence, then what is this yet-to-come future to be?\u00a0\u00a0The choice cannot be avoided \u2013 the philosophical option is there even before the hermeneutical process - for this choice is decisive: the hermeneutic merely discloses it.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, we are made to hear the pathos-laden adage of the Heideggerian Analytic: to be\u00a0free for one\u2019s death<\/em>.\u00a0On the other hand we have the firm invitation to a\u00a0freedom for the beyond of one\u2019s death<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Let us hold onto the wordEntschlossenheit<\/em>: the resolute-decision [la<\/em>\u00a0decision r\u00e9solue<\/em>].\u00a0\u00a0Today this term is translated by decision without withdrawal [decision sans retrait<\/em>].\u00a0\u00a0This is even better.\u00a0\u00a0For it is a question of knowing whether and in what measure this resolution is not a movement of withdrawal, of retreat, before death, an impotent inability to be free for that which is beyond one\u2019s death, to render oneself present to and for that which is beyond death.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m afraid that, having become the victims of widespread agnosticism, the humanity of today falters before the\u00a0freedom for that which is beyond death<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0We have invested such a great measure of genius in building up all possible defenses: psychoanalysis, sociology and dialectical materialism, linguistics, historicism, etc., everything has been put in place to prohibit all perspective on, concern for, and signification of\u00a0the beyond<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Even an infinitely evolved humanity, after the hundreds of millennia imagined by Franz Werfel, in his immense and moving novel \u201cThe Star of the Unborn\u201d (\u201cStern der Ungeborenen<\/em>\u201d), does not cease -with the exception of those few initiates of all eras, the \u201cchronosophers\u201d- in its too great fragility and age, to fall short of assuming the weight of its future in\u00a0the beyond<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0And that is, after all, the metaphysical meaning of the word \u201cOccident\u201d: the decline, the setting,\u00a0a\u00a0meaning that Suhravard\u00ee typified in his \u201cTale of the Occidental Exile\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0One day, perhaps, I will tell how this \u201cTale of the Occidental Exile\u201d presented itself as the decisive moment in which I cast off the weight of finitudes that weigh beneath the overcast sky of Heideggerian freedom.\u00a0\u00a0I could not avoid perceiving that, beneath that somber sky, the\u00a0Da<\/em>\u00a0of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0was an isle of perdition, was precisely the isle of \u201cOccidental exile<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n

People tranquilize themselves by repeating:\u00a0\u201c death\u00a0is a part of life\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0This is not true, unless one means to limit life to its biological expression.\u00a0\u00a0But biological life is itself derived from another life which is its independent source, and which is Life in its very essence.\u00a0\u00a0So long as the \u201cresolute-decision\u201d remains simply \u201cfreedom for one\u2019s death\u201d, death presents itself as a closure and not as an\u00a0exitus<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0And so we will never take leave of this world.\u00a0\u00a0To be free\u00a0for\u00a0that\u00a0which is beyond death<\/em>, is to foresee and to bring about one\u2019s death as an\u00a0exitus<\/em>, a leave-taking of this world towards other worlds.\u00a0\u00a0But it is the living, and not the dead, which leave this world.<\/p>\n

I hope I have succeeded, in the course of these brief comments, in communicating how one and the same philosopher can be the first French translator of Heidegger and the hermeneute of the Iranian\u00a0res religiosa<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0By this I mean, to have made understood all that I owe to the armament with which Heidegger\u2019s hermeneutic has equipped me, and how and why I have used it to attain other heights.\u00a0\u00a0I believe that it has been an experiment of a different order than the more or less successful attempts that have been made to link Heidegger\u2019s philosophy with theology.\u00a0\u00a0One must also understand, you see, how after my long years of Oriental pilgrimage, far from\u00a0Europe, it was difficult for me to renew my ties with both Heidegger himself and his philosophy.<\/p>\n

P.N.\u00a0\u00a0Now, Henry Corbin, you\u2019ve just been speaking of the Heidegger whom you translated in 1938.\u00a0\u00a0You\u2019ve underlined the contrast between the Heideggerian hermeneutic of the\u00a0Dasein<\/em>\u00a0and that which you were led to discover by the mystics and philosophers of\u00a0Iran.\u00a0\u00a0You have illustrated the extent of this contrast by referring to the meaning of the words \u201cOrient\u201d and \u201cOriental\u201d as they are employed by these same philosophers.\u00a0\u00a0But are we to understand that Heidegger\u2019s works subsequent to 1938 bear witness to a full stop and fixation upon positions already acquired?\u00a0\u00a0Are we to understand that the second half of Heidegger\u2019s works, after the period of \u201cSein und Zeit\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and of \u201cWhat is Metaphysics?\u201d,\u00a0has changed nothing with regards to the closure that you experienced in the first part of his work?<\/p>\n

H.C.\u00a0\u00a0Careful now!\u00a0\u00a0I certainly don\u2019t want to employ the term \u201cclosure\u201d in reference to a philosopher who, in his interrogation of\u00a0Being, has on the contrary taught us to open so much that was hitherto locked shut.\u00a0\u00a0But the question which you posed concerned my own personal experience: what have the works and thought of Heidegger meant to one who was known at the same time, or has come to be known since, for his inquiries into and interpretations of an Iranian Islamic philosophy that had until then remained\u00a0Terra incognita<\/em>\u00a0in the West.\u00a0\u00a0I have done my best to answer your question, and it should be understood that I have been referring to the works of Heidegger such as were at my disposition in 1938, and already of considerable weight.\u00a0\u00a0The question that you are now asking\u00a0me,\u00a0is in relation to the entirety of Heidegger\u2019s work.\u00a0\u00a0To answer this question one would have to undertake a comparative study of the whole of Heidegger\u2019s works and those of Iranian Islamic philosophy.\u00a0\u00a0Such a task may one day be conceivable, but I must admit that for the moment it exceeds my ambitions.\u00a0\u00a0There is still so very much for me to do on behalf of our Iranian philosophers, precisely in order that such a project of comparative philosophy may one day be possible.\u00a0\u00a0This task will concern our young philosopher colleagues, on the one hand those who will have maintained contact with Heidegger\u2019s later work, a contact which I have inevitably lost over my many years spent in the East, and on the other hand the young philosophers, my own students and others, who for their part I have encouraged to study Arabic and Persian, in order that they may work - as philosophers - to tear Islamic philosophy and theosophy out of the ghetto of what has come to be called \u201cOrientalism\u201d.<\/p>\n

As you well know, Heidegger\u2019s work achieved considerable proportions.\u00a0\u00a0Is there not talk of a complete edition, which, with seminar transcripts included, will count some seventy volumes?\u00a0\u00a0This is, in fact on the same scale of the in-folio productions of our Oriental philosophers.\u00a0\u00a0There are thus great possibilities, vast works to envisage, unlimited \u201cpotentialities\u201d to understand.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to repeat the call: Philosophers, to your stations!\u00a0\u00a0In any case, I believe it may be relevant here to offer a somewhat personal account in view of an eventual answer to an often-posed question, one that will perhaps remain an enigma.\u00a0\u00a0The question concerns the fate of what would have been the second part of \u201cSein und Zeit<\/em>\u201d, second part without which the first is nought but an arch deprived of its spring, and which, there can be no doubt, would have completed the ontological edifice of what we have referred to as the \u201chistorial\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, I saw the manuscript of this second part, with my own eyes, on Heidegger\u2019s work desk in\u00a0Freiburg\u00a0in July 1936.\u00a0\u00a0It was contained in a large sheath.\u00a0\u00a0Heidegger even amused himself by putting it in my hands that I might weigh it, and it was heavy.\u00a0\u00a0What has since come of this manuscript?\u00a0\u00a0There have been some contradictory answers to this question: as for myself, I have none to offer.<\/p>\n

Returning to your question.\u00a0\u00a0Just as I cannot speak of a definitive \u201cclosure\u201d in Heidegger\u2019s philosophical proceeding, the sheer extent of his work will not permit us to speak of a halting or of a fixation.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, the question does not lie therein.\u00a0The real question is whether or not the Heideggerian Analytic, in the multiple aspects of its distinct applications and throughout its far-reaching proceedings, has not maintained the tacit presuppositions underlying a distinct\u00a0Weltanshauung<\/em>in evidence from the very beginning.\u00a0\u00a0To analyze the being-for-death as anticipating the very possibility of a human-being\u2019s forming a completed whole, does this or does it not already imply a philosophy of life and of death?\u00a0\u00a0I believe that for the \u201cOriental\u201d philosophers to whom I\u2019ve been referring, the idea of such a\u00a0completion<\/em>,\u00a0proclaims on the contrary an acceptance of the\u00a0incompletion<\/em>\u00a0of a being condemned to fall\u00a0behind<\/em>, to fall short of himself.\u00a0\u00a0This is why I preferred to speak of a hermeneutic of human existence immobilizing itself prematurely upon an achievement which is in fact forever unattainable without a leap forward (vorlaufen<\/em>), a leap into the\u00a0beyond<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Henry Corbin, I would like to ask you one last question.\u00a0\u00a0You have clearly distinguished between the horizon of Heidegger\u2019s Analytic and the \u201cOriental\u201d horizon.\u00a0\u00a0Nonetheless, if it is true that in Heidegger\u2019s work there is no place for the notion of God, since for him God may be assimilated to a metaphysical concept - that of the supreme existent Being - Heidegger still reserves a place in his thought for the dimension of the \u201csacred\u201d, for a difference which he calls the ontological difference between Existence and the existent, which is to say the difference between two worlds, the eternal world above and the provisional world below.\u00a0\u00a0Is there not, therein, the means of bringing about a convergence between religious thought and Heidegger\u2019s own thinking?<\/p>\n

H.C.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m under the impression, my dear Philippe\u00a0N\u00e9mo, that\u00a0the question as you have posed it would tend to make of Heidegger a great Platonist.\u00a0\u00a0It would thus place you on a scabrous path where you would have to watch every step you made.\u00a0\u00a0I am not sure that I am able to follow you in this direction.\u00a0\u00a0Let us first recall that Heidegger did indeed have a presentiment of the \u201cOriental\u201d dimension, even if not entirely the \u201cOrient\u201d as understood by the\u00a0Ishr\u00e2q\u00eey\u00fbn<\/em>, \u201cPersian Platonists\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0You yourself must certainly have heard some echo of the striking declarations made by Heidegger concerning the\u00a0Upanishads<\/em>, declarations that leave one with the feeling that it was ultimately something along those lines that he was in search of.\u00a0\u00a0That said,\u00a0we must recognize that the relation between Existence and the existent is not at all equivalent to the relation between the world above and the world below.\u00a0\u00a0It does not suffice to establish an opposition between a world of Existence and a world of existents, to gain access to the sacred.\u00a0\u00a0The world of existents does not signify\u00a0eo\u00a0ipso<\/em>\u00a0a provisional world of decay, for each and every universe of the gods and of the angels is an eternal universe of the existent.\u00a0\u00a0At the same time, you have put your finger upon an essential point by recalling that for Heidegger the concept of God is the metaphysical concept of the supreme existent Being (Ens Supremum, Summum Ens<\/em>) and he was aware of the difficulty, among others, which arises when one questions the relation between the\u00a0Summun Ens<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0non-ens<\/em>, thenihil<\/em>, the nothingness, when we say that the\u00a0ens creatum<\/em>\u00a0is created\u00a0ex nihilo<\/em>, from nothingness, by the\u00a0Ens increatum<\/em>.\u00a0Here we are touching upon a fundamental difficulty, so radical in fact, that it throws in question the very meaning of monotheism.\u00a0\u00a0I believe that this difficulty has been observed best and above all by the Islamic \u201ctheosophers\u201d whose unparalleled vigilance stems, I believe, from the fact that the horizon of Islamic thought and spirituality is dominated by the\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>, the affirmation of the Unique.\u00a0\u00a0And what is the nature of this \u201cUnique\u201d?<\/p>\n

A catastrophic confusion is prone to arise, and one that has been denounced with lucidity by our Iranian mystic \u201ctheosophers\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The confusion in question has been committed by many Sufis and, following these, by many an Orientalist.\u00a0\u00a0This is the confusion between the\u00a0Esse<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Existence\/Being (woj\u00fbd<\/em>\u00a0in the Arabic) and the\u00a0ens<\/em>\u00a0or the existent (mawj\u00fbd<\/em>\u00a0in the Arabic).\u00a0\u00a0Here, no question, we have not left Heidegger\u2019s company.\u00a0\u00a0In Islamic theosophy, Ibn \u2018Arabi (XIIIth century) firmly established the difference between the theological\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>\u00a0(ol\u00fbh\u00ee<\/em>) and the ontological\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>(woj\u00fbd\u00ee<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0The exoteric theological\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>\u00a0effectively affirms the \u201cUnicity\u201d or Oneness of God as\u00a0Ens\u00a0Supremum<\/em>, as the Existent which dominates all other existents.\u00a0\u00a0The esoteric ontological\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>\u00a0affirms the transcendental \u201cUnicity\u201d or Oneness of Existence\/Being.\u00a0\u00a0Existence\/Being or the\u00a0esse<\/em>, is essentially one and unique.\u00a0\u00a0The beings (existents) which Existence actualizes in their very act of being are essentially multiple.\u00a0\u00a0The one and unique Existence, and the one and unique Divine Existent, ineffable in the depths of its mystery, is the\u00a0Absconditum<\/em>\u00a0and can only be addressed from afar by an apophatic or negative theology.\u00a0\u00a0It cannot be positively known except in its theophanies: the Theophany itself is therefore essential for an affirmative theology to be possible.\u00a0\u00a0And that is precisely why, if the Divinity is one and unique, the Gods - which is to say the Divine Names, the Divine Figures, the theophanic Figures - are multiple.\u00a0\u00a0No one of their number needs to fulfill the function of the supreme Cause.\u00a0\u00a0To confound one of these necessary Figures with the one and unique Divinity is to instate a unique idol in the place of the others, and monotheism thus perishes in its victory.\u00a0\u00a0To affirm the unity of the\u00a0Esse<\/em>, the unique\u00a0Esse<\/em>\u00a0being the divinity itself, is to affirm the very essence, but that is in no way equivalent to affirming the unity of all that is existent.\u00a0\u00a0It would be monstrous to say that there is only one existent being.\u00a0\u00a0It would be an instance of metaphysical nihilism which reality would take upon\u00a0itself\u00a0to disprove.\u00a0\u00a0If we make of God a\u00a0Summun Ens<\/em>, the\u00a0Ens\u00a0unicum<\/em>, the unique existent being, all the other existent beings fall into abysmal indifferentiation and nothingness, and the entire order of Existence in the hierarchy of beings disappears.\u00a0\u00a0It is perhaps this illusion which has intoxicated many pseudo-mystics, and which certain Occidental interpreters have designated as \u201cexistential monism\u201d, without realizing that the very term itself involves a\u00a0contradictio in adjecto<\/em>, the existential being essentially multiple.\u00a0\u00a0As for the relation between the\u00a0Esse unicum<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0entia<\/em>\u00a0(this\u00a0Unicum<\/em>\u00a0in fact transcending the\u00a0Esse<\/em>\u00a0which it makes to-be in the existents themselves), this has been best formulated by our great philosopher Proclus: it is the relation between the Henad of Henads and the hierarchy of beings that he monadises in bringing them into being.\u00a0\u00a0There is in fact no existent-being in any other form than that of one being (whether it is a question of\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0God, of\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0Angel, of\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0human, of\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0species, ofone<\/em>\u00a0constellation, etc.).\u00a0\u00a0Ens et unum<\/em>\u00a0convertuntur<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0This is the reason our great speculative theosophers (\u201cspeculative\u201d in the sense of the word speculum, mirror) have always posited that the active Subject of the\u00a0tawh\u00eed<\/em>, is the One itself.\u00a0\u00a0It is the Uni-fier.\u00a0\u00a0It is\u00a0That\u00a0which makes each being, each one of us,\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0being, a unique\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0in relation to which the One is the Source of its singularity.\u00a0\u00a0This is what the mystic Hall\u00e2j was formulating when he said: \u201cthe simple economy of the Unique is to be made unique by the Unique\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are perhaps now relatively far a-field from the Existence and the existents as they concerned Heidegger.\u00a0\u00a0But this is only a question of appearance, since it is your question which had led us to bring up this theosophical aspect of the metaphysics of\u00a0Being\u00a0for which Ibn \u2018Arabi remains our greatest teacher.\u00a0\u00a0You see, I have just said that the Theophany (tajall\u00ee il\u00e2h\u00ee<\/em>) is essential, and is so in multiple Figures corresponding to each of those for whom and to whom they theophanise.\u00a0\u00a0But the personal theophanic God does not have to assume the functions of the supreme Cause orAbsconditum<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Monotheism can only save itself from this confusion, with its underlying political dimensions, through the esoteric paradox of the \u201cmultiple-One\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Existentially, we might say that it is the human being who reveals to him or herself something (or someone) like God.\u00a0\u00a0Theologically it is God who reveals himself to the human being.\u00a0\u00a0Mystical speculative theosophy rises above this dilemma by making these two simultaneous truths inseparable.\u00a0\u00a0In revealing Himself to the human being, the personalized God of the personal theophany reveals the human being to itself, and in revealing the human being to itself, He reveals it to Himself and reveals Himself to Himself.\u00a0\u00a0In each instance, the eye that sees is simultaneously the eye that is seen.\u00a0\u00a0Every theophany (from the lowest initial degree of mental vision onwards) accomplishes itself simultaneously in these two aspects.\u00a0\u00a0We may be witness here to something like a superceded neo-Platonism, but the surpassing is the work of Ibn \u2018Arab\u00ee rather than of Heidegger.\u00a0\u00a0There remains, of course, much important research to be carried out along this path.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But in the meantime, the impression I am left with - one that was formulated by a colleague, I believe it was Pierre Trotignon \u2013 is as follows: the Heideggerian hermeneutic gives the impression of a theology without theophany.<\/p>\n

P.N.\u00a0\u00a0It is indeed necessary to push ahead with such research, for there is also the thematic of the Word which was ultimately inaugurated \u2013 in the modern era - by Heidegger, and which is nevertheless in such close accord with the Tradition, notably the biblical Tradition of the Word of God, and there, clearly, we are in the tradition of the sacred.\u00a0Whether this sacred takes the name of God or simply takes the name of Existence, what is most fundamentally important is the ontological difference taken in itself, the difference between Existence and existents, just as in the various religions there is a difference between the world above and the world below.\u00a0\u00a0If we take this difference in and of itself do we not then find that a self-same inspiration exists between Heidegger and what is left of the Religious world?<\/p>\n

H.C.\u00a0\u00a0I fully understand your concern.\u00a0\u00a0Your query brings us to question ourselves upon the relation between the Logos of Heidegger\u2019s onto-logy and the Logos of theo-logy or better yet: the Logos of all the theologies of the Book.\u00a0\u00a0Firstly, I recalled some time ago that adage which is common among our mystical \u201ctheosophers\u201d and which is nothing other than a reminiscence of the Gospel of John (3\/13): \u201cNothing returns to Heaven, save that which has from it descended.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Has the Logos of the Heideggerian Analytic come down from Heaven to be capable of re-ascending?\u00a0\u00a0Because I think that your search for a common inspiration between Heidegger and the rest of the Religious world can be symbolized in this way.\u00a0\u00a0If it has been shown that we may, without too great difficulty, study the laicising processes that have profaned the sacred,\u00a0wehave not seen testimony of any re-sacralisation of the laical.\u00a0\u00a0We are certainly witness to a frequent promotion of the laical, according the latter those privileges and prerogatives that once belonged to the sacred.\u00a0\u00a0This is however, nothing more than a demoniacal caricature.\u00a0\u00a0Metaphysical laicising merely takes care of the death of the Gods, and not of their resurrection.\u00a0\u00a0As such, we need to concentrate all our efforts on this word \u201cresurrection\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0All the meanings that it comports imply the rupture of the well-ordered system of things: a tearing away, a leave-taking of the tomb.\u00a0\u00a0The resurrection is announced to us after the fact: by the mystery of the empty tomb.\u00a0\u00a0On the contrary the laicising of our day, in its caricature of the sacred, contents itself with the pseudo-cult of the inhabited tomb.\u00a0\u00a0And I believe that the herald of any resurrection is par excellence the Verb \u2013 the Verb that sounds with divine sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Your question also brings us\u00a0back,\u00a0and that most pertinently, to the theme of the Word, to the biblical Tradition of the divine Verb.\u00a0\u00a0There is no question that we find a thematic of the Word in Heidegger\u2019s works.\u00a0\u00a0But let us not forget that, in this domain our Jewish Cabalist friends, as well as our Cabalists in Christendom and in Islam, have been our best teachers and guides for centuries now, and they remain so today.\u00a0\u00a0They have admirably analyzed the phenomenon of the Word: how the Word became Book, how the written Word is resuscitated as living Verb.\u00a0\u00a0By comparison, the thematic of the Word as dealt with by Heidegger seems frought with ambiguity: is it\u00a0a twilight, - a twilight consisting in the laicising of the Verb?\u00a0\u00a0Or is it a dawn, announcing the palingenesis, the resurrection of the biblical Tradition\u2019s Verb?\u00a0\u00a0The answer will depend upon those asking themselves the question, and the choices underlying these answers make me think that if the philosophy of Hegel has given birth to a Hegelian right and a Hegelian left the question which you are asking is among those that may bring Heidegger\u2019s philosophy,\u00a0volens nolens<\/em>, to give birth to a Heideggerian right and a Heideggerianism left.<\/p>\n

But the essential thing, as it appears to me for the moment, and one which attests to the coherence of this interview, is that your question brings us back to our starting point.\u00a0\u00a0I began by recalling the theological origins of the idea of hermeneutics that we find in Heidegger\u2019s works.\u00a0\u00a0And now your question concerning the Verb, which is central to hermeneutics, brings us back to these same origins.\u00a0\u00a0We have thus come full circle within the hermeneutic circuit, and that\u2019s a good sign.<\/p>\n

I believe that my own experience, as I have tried to retrace it, is in accordance with the concern your question expresses, in the very measure in which the Heideggerian hermeneutic, a distant offspring of Schleiermacher, was for me the threshold of an integral hermeneutics.\u00a0\u00a0Let us recall its characteristics.\u00a0\u00a0I do not believe that the inoffensive \u201cfourfold meaning\u201d to which common medieval exegesis was attached has the virtue of leading us to an unforeseen level of being, into a hermeneutic adventure admitting of neither \u201cwithdrawal\u201d nor return.\u00a0\u00a0Quite to the contrary, there is a hermeneutic of the Verb - imparted to the religions of the Book - that has always had as its very essence the virtue of producing a heightening, an exit, an\u00a0ek-stasis<\/em>\u00a0towards those other invisible worlds which give its \u201creal meaning\u201d to our \u201cphenomenon of the world\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0I am thinking, in Christianity, of the great Gnostic Valentine, of Joachim de Flore, of Sebastian Franck, of Jacob Boehme, of Swedenborg, of F.C. Oetinger, and many many others.\u00a0\u00a0So many witnesses testifying together with their esotericist Jewish and Islamic brethren, that the phenomenon of the Sacred Book, far from immobilizing the initiative and development of thought is in fact its most lively stimulant.\u00a0\u00a0Only, just as others have spoken of the need for a \u201cpermanent revolution\u201d I would suggest the need for a \u201cpermanent hermeneutic\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Nor do I mean thereby, an accommodation of historical and archeological discoveries \u2013 the latter leading most often to the reduction of the \u201chistorical recital\u201d of the Holy Book to the banal dimensions of a cross-section of diverse facts for which we have a ready made sociological explanation at hand, at the same time eliminating the occasional superfluous word of a slightly embarrassing \u201csacred\u201d nature \u2013 but quite to the contrary, the \u201cpermanent hermeneutic\u201d does not alter even a single word within the Tradition, each word is to be conserved, for each word participates in a new fulgurating encounter between the Image and the Idea.<\/p>\n

Only, would Heidegger, have followed our lead in this operation that would tend to convert the Logos of his ontology into a theological Logos?\u00a0\u00a0When the occasion arose for him to stage the confrontation between philosophy and theology (one of his articles carries the same title) in which direction did he operate the conversion?\u00a0\u00a0And firstly, who must the Theos be?\u00a0I have tried to express it.\u00a0\u00a0But our uncertainty as to his possible response is merely secondary.\u00a0\u00a0A Heideggerian \u201corthodoxy\u201d is out of the question, and we simply have to pursue our task as we understand it.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps one day we will find - within the mass of his unpublished work, or in some recorded interview - the indication of an answer.\u00a0\u00a0But it is also possible that he has taken his secret with him forever.<\/p>\n

That is why, today, I prefer simply to say, as we do in Arabic:\u00a0Rahmat All\u00e2h \u2018alay-hi<\/em>: May the divine Mercy be with him.<\/p>\n

(This interview was recorded for\u00a0Radio France-Culture<\/em>, on\u00a0Wednesday, the second of June 1976.\u00a0\u00a0The text was revised and completed with the use of notes taken on this occasion, both before and after the interview).<\/p>\n

Henry Corbin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FROM HEIDEGGER TO SUHRAVARDI: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIPPE NEMO translated by Matthew Evans-Cockle see also Biographical post-scriptum to a philosophical interview   PN: Henry Corbin, you [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3084,"menu_order":15,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-720","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Heidegger To Suhravardi: An Interview with Philippe N\u00e9mo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Interview giving by Corbin around the death of Martin Heidegger, he explain why he is the first french translation of Heidegger works.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amiscorbin.com\/en\/biography\/from-heidegger-to-suhravardi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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