Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi

The human soul, whose initiation the recitals “image,” has itself the structure of a pair, formed of the practical intellect and the contemplative intellect. In its superior state, the state of intimacy with the Angel of Knowledge and Revelation, the second of these “terrestrial angels,” the contemplative in tellect, is qualified as intellectus sanctus and prophetic spirit. § 1. Between Andalusia and Iran AflatBn). Ibn ‘Arab! was to be surnamed the Platonist, the “son of Plato” (Ibn AflafUn). This clarifies certain coordinates of the spiritual topography which we are here trying to establish. Anticipating the projects of Gemistos Pletho and Marsilio Ficino, this oriental Platonism, this Zoroastrian Neoplatonism of Iran escaped the rising tide of Aristotelianism which invaded the Latin Middle Ages and for several centuries determined not only their philosophy but also their world feeling. Accordingly, when in Cordova the young Ibn t ArabI attended the funeral of Averroes, the great master of medieval Aristotelianism, the melancholy scene becomes transfigured into a symbol which we shall do well to consider attentively.