I HAVE noticed a bias against this thinker in particular

There are certain persons who cannot bring themselves to see Avicenna otherwise than as he was seen by the doctors of Latin Scholasticism.

If you think of Averroes (who I’m extremely fond of) to be “too far away from western reality”, Avicenna is a further remove from him even. I’ve noticed in particular that Straussian medievalists avoid Shia thinkers. And they have something of a monopoly on the reception of Islamic philosophy. Those guys are great, don’t get me wrong, they just don’t mention this world very much, and I wonder if there are “reasons” for that. Cladistic Kabbalists vs. cladistic Zoroastrians is how I’m looking at it- there might be some kind of (ancient) conflict there.

There’s just too much in Corbin that’s perfect

Precisely this leads them to depreciate the most explicit testimonies to an experience that transcends the rational and “natural” realm to which they would fain relegate what is not in agreement with their dogmatic conception of mysticism. The result is… a strange determination to see… nothing but the “amusement” of a philosopher, a “harmless allegory.”

Remember that Corbin was friends with the likes of Jung and Lacan, so he knew psychology quite well, and there’s probably a “reason” you know their names and not his. So you focus on thee religion certain “people” don’t want others to know about, bad goys get punished.

As guarded as they are about the real meaning of the Germans and Italians I think the real meaning of the Iranians is even more obscure to us. That’s just a war waiting to happen, it seems like. Ever wished you lived in the 40s to fight on the side of fascism? Well you’re in luck, because there’s an ethos similar to that that’s around today. And these ethoses all DO revolve around the Great Chain of Being in my opinion. Let’s put it this way- the Keter is at the top–or else. And I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that Keter is a symbol for royalty. You be the judge, do you want usurious demon-worshipers as your king? Hey, I’m just going off of scripture, you can’t hold it against me.

Corbin puts it in some pretty solemn terms that only few will probably understand

philosophers of the Orient and philosophers of the Occident, we together interrogate ourselves concerning the significance of Avicennism for our destiny as philosophers

How far you wanna go? Want to go “be designated a pariah in your country” far?

At the same time, I don’t see Corbin as “unfrench” at all. He simply took Frenchness in a direction he shouldn’t have. The Swede in me can relate actually, certain Euros push logics in a questionably responsible direction, usually leftward. I hate socialist Swedes for instance, they’re extremists. Still, I see how I’m similar to them in pushing logics. Many Euros are very obnoxious, they use their brains for not good things. I’ll put it this way- Corbin has a similar spirit to Bataille, he just takes it in a direction that the ones who engineered the French Revolution were not fond of.

Again, I think the best thought-experiment in these matters is to mentally juxtapose your sense of the Chinese with your sense of the Islamic writers. Zhuangzi for instance, one of the main Taoists, what he has to say is so harmless next to the thought of understanding the mystics of the Shia current. What implications do you think that has? It’s because Islam is ultimately our cousin, and the Chinese are not our family at all. That’s where the hostility is from! There’s only hate because we’re so similar to each other. China was isolated from our Abrahamic conflicts. I’m not going to pretend it’s perfect in the middle east, I just want to express to you that I recurrently get the impression that the Islamists are at a higher plane of awareness than the west.

Some genealogy the nerds might find significant

Suhrawardi is after Avicenna. In other words, these are some of the even more hidden imams in their tradition.

Stop pretending this is so foreign to you- MARX is your imam in all likelihood. And look at all the disasters he’s caused. You sweep it under the rug.

The “Persian Platonists” as Corbin calls them are outside of all that jew nonsense. Still, they respect Abraham, so it’s really the Talmudists and what followed from there that they’re against. They’re selective. “I thought the Sufis were about loving everyone!!” That’s the Jew reading so that you love Jews, yes. I don’t love Jews on tautological grounds- people who want the worst for me are not people I would love. The Shi’ists are not so confused about all this. They haven’t been disconnected from the angels for centuries like the whites. I’ve always been a Platonist and people see me as a traitor for that reason. Whatever you want to think- I ideally want a fellow “traitor” with me in the shelter that is Iran, and I doubt that will happen, thus it’s easy to conclude that whites really are niggers. I’m the most logical person out of anyone probably, so I’m sorry to tell you that.

Reading Corbin though, in case you want my own intuition of rangordnung, I think it would have been better for Heidegger to study the Shi’ists. Heidegger was born too early in the cycle to have done that so it’s up to us.