From the exile in the space to the space in the soul: Henry Corbin between two worlds

• Grant number: 14/06278-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: May 24, 2014
• End date: August 23, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Olgária Chain Féres Matos
• Grantee: Monica Udler Cromberg
• Supervisor: Pierre Lory
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/15199-4 - From the exile in the space to the space in the soul: Henry Corbin between two worlds, BP.DR

Abstract

The objective of this research is to show the importance of Corbin's thought, as well as that of the oriental philosophers that he intends to speak for, to contemporary philsophy. His ideas confront the hegemony of the Western materialistic rationality which has consigned mystical philosophy to the field of irrationalism. I intend to demonstrate some consequences of that banishment to the crisis in meaning in the modern world and to the helplessness of contemporary man. This thesis aims to show how Corbin implies that man's spirituality - his interiority as a being which turns itself to its transcendent foundation, to its supra-human core - is what makes it possible for him to escape the state of exile, the state of "being cast" into the world of merely quantitative newtonian space. For Corbin and his mystics, it is when man comes to have a solid and spiritual inner life that he can integrate the outer world, interiorize it, unveil its Presence and send it back to its "anagogical meaning", instead of being oppressed by its impersonality and lack of meaning - which renders him helpless and/or alienated. Then the world can live in him rather than he in the world. (AU)