Uzdavinys in Lahore

The author of these pages first met Algis Uzdavinys one gloomy, smog-filled evening in Lahore. The occasion was a philosophy conference, sponsored by General Musharef, and Dr Uzdavinys had arrived at the hotel late. Billed as the "new Coomaraswamy", and one of the stars of the programme, the Lithuanian scholar was lodging several rooms up from the present author who, upon being advised that he had arrived, thought it appropriate to introduce himself. He knocked upon the door and after a long delay Dr Uzdavinys, a huge hairy bear of a man, answered dressed only in his Y-fronts, his room hazy with cigarette smoke and gyrating with Arab pop music. He was gruff and jet-lagged. For some reason he felt it necessary to explain that he couldn't work without music going, at which the present author scolded him saying "That's a very bad habit" but then smiled to let him know he was joking. The Lithuanian thought about this for a long moment - and only at this point seemned to realise he was wearing nothing but his underwear - and said, "Yes. Now, where can we get some decent coffee?" The hotel coffee was dishwater. Coffee, cigarettes, Arab pop music - these, along with his books, were his essentials.

The conference was farcical. The programme was chaotic and the sound system in the auditorium failed. The organisers quickly rigged up a cheap make-shift PA and fitted speakers with microphones. When it came time for Dr Uzdavinys to speak, however, he found the microphone an impediment. He furiously ripped it from his coat and unilaterally decided to address the audience without amplification. He read his paper in his big booming Lithuanian voice - a huge man, six foot three or more - calling into the echoing spaces of the auditorium. No one could make out a word of it, but this was not the issue. The PA was so bad no one could understand any of the papers presented, but at least Dr Uzdavinys made an impression. It was a memorable performance. He had presence. Everybody knew, regardless, that whatever it was he was saying was erudite, authoritative, the work of a scholar. 

We spent the next few days touring around Lahore on foot or by taxi.  He strode through the narrow medieval streets of the old city towering above the short statured locals who stopped and stared as if he was a giant from a fairytale. Indulging his passion for cartography, he purchased a swag of maps and studied them in detail, then headed out to the various historical sites that were of interest to him. Invariably, this meant long delays sitting in taxis  in insane traffic jams, and it was on such occasions that the present author had the opportunity to discuss aspects of his work, and particularly his work on Plato and the Neoplatonic tradition. In return - sitting on the park benches watching camels and men with leashed monkeys go by and lamenting the terrible decay of what was once a beautiful cultured city - the present author shared his knowledge old roses. On one expedition Dr Uzdavinys made the astute observation that the beggars were armed with cell phones and were calling ahead of each other in a strategy to extract as much money from us as they could. 

It was in the context of these adventures that Dr Uzdavinys revealed the appalling state of the Lithuanian economy and the fact that, though a world-class scholar, his income was barely at a subsistence level. His work was constrained at every point by his comparative poverty and lack of opportunities in post-Soviet era Lithuania. Asked what Lithuania exported, he shrugged his shoulders and said "Girls." The present writer therefore determined to investigate the possibility of securing him some work in affluent Australia. This eventually transpired. A research position came up, Dr Uzdavinys applied and his application was successful. For a second time the present writer had the great fortune of spending time in his company, once more largely discussing the wider Platonic tradition of which Dr Uzdavinys had a truly encylopedic knowledge. 

Dr Uzdavinys in his office at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia

Alas, this sojourn to Australia - as far away from his home as can be imagined - was not a happy one for the homesick scholar (amongst other things he missed the companionship of his lovely wife, Virginia, who proofread his manuscripts and acted as his research assistant), and nor did it do much to improve his finances. Worse, the travel impacted upon his health and during a return visit to Lithuania during a Christmas break he fell sick. His solid diet of coffee, cigarettes and, even worse, Arab pop music, had taken its toll. He was diagnosed with heart disease.  He died of the same, aged forty-eight, in 2010.

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The young Uzdavinys at school in Lithuania. 

Algis Uzdavinys was extraordinarily prolific. As he told the present writer, the study of the Platonic and related traditions, and writing books on these traditions, was his vocation. Like any true scholar, he felt a strong calling to this task and he devoted himself to his books day and night. Averse to computers, he wrote in long hand, usually in Lithuanian, then translating everything into English for publication. His philosophical range was remarkable. His singular contribution was to trace and connect Platonic philosophy to ancient traditions in Egypt and the Near East and then, forwards in time, to their maturation in the Neoplatonic schools and, from there, in Sufism and other kindred traditions through to the present day. Against the usual atomizing academic tendency to emphasise differences rather than similarities (an unacknowledged side-effect of specialisation and the self-sustaining quest for academic novelty), he proposed that there is a single 'golden chain' of transmission uniting all of these schools and traditions. He remains one of the great modern exponents of this 'golden chain'. Few have done so much to help restore philosophy as a heiratic art. The Uzdavinyean position is summed up in the following quotation:

In Plato’s definition of philosophy as a training for death (Phaedo 67cd) an implicit distinction was made between philosophy and philosophical discourse. Modern Western philosophy (a rather monstrous and corrupted creature, initially shaped by late Christian theology and post-Descartesian logic) has been systematically reduced to a philosophical discourse of a single dogmatic kind, through the fatal one-sidedness of its professed secular humanistic mentality, and a crucial misunderstanding of traditional wisdom. The task of the ancient philosophers was in fact to contemplate the cosmic order and its beauty; to live in harmony with it and to tran- scend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning. In a word, it was through philosophy (understood as a kind of askesis) that the cultivation of the natural, ethical, civic, purificatory, theoretic, paradigmatic, and hieratic virtues (aretai) were to be practiced; and it was through this noetic vision (noesis) that the ancient philosophers tried to awaken the divine light within, and to touch the divine Intellect in the cosmos. For them, to reach apotheosis was the ultimate human end (telos). Christos Evan- geliou correctly observes that, “Neither Aristotle nor any other Pla- tonic, or genuinely Hellenic philosopher, would have approved of what the modern European man, in his greedy desire for profit, and demonic will to power, has made out of Hellenic philosophia.”

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Some of the key publications of this great modern Platonic scholar, and assorted quotations therefrom follow below:

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Twin Peaks as a Gnostic Text

The widely over-rated film director David Lynch, with his annoyingly high-pitched voice and ridiculous hair-do (see here), is regularly accredited with having devised and created the cult television serial Twin Peaks - as in the phrase "David Lynch's Twin Peaks" - when in fact he had comparatively  little to do with it. He provided some initial creative guidance, wrote a few episodes and directed a few others, and at one time took cameo roles among the cast, but the qualities that have raised the series to cult status were almost entirely the work of co-creator, television writer and novelist, the much under-rated Mark Frost. This should have become plain to viewers when Lynch released his Twin Peak's prequel feature-length movie Fire Walk With Me after the television series had concluded. The movie lacked all the virtues that made the series cultish viewing. Quite rightly, it was savaged by critics, booed at Cannes and left Twin Peaks enthusiasts deeply disappointed. It revealed Lynch's interests for what they are: sordid sociology weirded up with some gratuitous surrealism. His initial contribution to the Twin Peaks series was signalled in the earlier film, Blue Velvet - beneath the thin veneer of middle-class American respectability is an ugly sociology of inter-personal violence. 

As with so much cinema this really amounts to little more than self-righteous voyeurism, and then you add some surrealism and ultra-close-ups to make it Art House. This is where Twin Peaks begins. You take a sleepy American timber-logging town and then you expose its seedier underbelly. Big deal. The homecoming Queen had a dark side. But it was Mark Frost who pushed the envelope. It was Mark Frost who took this tawdry Lynchian premise and pushed it beyond sociology into the cosmic dimension, which is precisely what makes the series interesting. No doubt Lynch contributed dream sequences and the surreality of unconscious realities imposing upon daytime normality. We are not suggesting Lynch's contribution was unimportant. But, as his novels make clear, it was Mr Frost who infused this pretentious Lynchian surreality with the structures of occultism and who thereby turned Twin Peaks, across its two seseasons, into a contemporary gnostic text.

Gnostic, in the sense it is used here, is just meant as a by-word for dualistic. It means to see the world through a dualistic lens, to see the world as an arena in which two forces compete and in doing so create the drama of life. Primarily, of course, there is the contest of good and evil, but by extension other polarities too. The present author is known to inveigh against the limitations of such a world-view in many contexts, and rightly so, but only insomuch as gnostic dualism leaves polarities unresolved. No one denies the drama, but there must be resolution. Non-dualism, in any case - the orthodox resolution proposed by Plato, Hindooism and others - is not, after all, an anti-dualism, nor even a monism. Non-dualism only proposes that dualisms are apparent but not final, though they are real enough on their own level. Let this post be testimony that this writer - for all his anti-gnostic prattle - is not unaware that the moon, in some of her phases, is both black and white.

The chief aspect that renders Twin Peaks a gnostic text, then, is its incessant preoccupation with duality. It is textured at every level with dualities and polarities drawn from arcane esoteric traditions all the way through to pop culture allusions. There are references to Tibetan Boodhism and to Madam Blavatsky all the way through to the two incarnations of the heroine, Laura Palmer/Maddy Ferguson, as the good girl/bad girl duality of the Patty Duke Show from '60s TV, and one is blonde and the other is brunette for good measure. Duality - cosmic, eschatological, moral, spiritual - is the abiding theme of the entire edifice and is signalled, of course, in the very title, Twin Peaks. For Lynch the 'twins' of the duality are the inside and the outside, the veneer and the underbelly, of small-town America, along with a Freudian interest in the secret sordidness and primal violence of seemingly civilized beings. 

Thankfully, Mark Frost amplifies this and extends it to further dimensions. He takes the dualities beyond their American particularities to the archetypal. Frost, that is, plays Jung to Lynch's Freud. If the series is textured with depth psychology rather than just a creepy psychoanalysis it is because of Frost's contribution, not that of David Lynch. Often in the cut-aways between scenes - among wind through the trees and traffic lights changing in the lonesome emptiness of night - we are presented with images of a cold half-moon. This is Mr Frost's dualist signifier. In one particularly telling case early in the second series we see, firstly, the perfect half-moon, and then we cut to the sign of the Twin Peak's diner, the Double R. We are being told that the cosmic duality of the half-moon extends all the way into the structures of human society. The name of the diner, RR, of course, is dualistic in itself - as much as the 'twin' in 'Twin Peaks' - but we are suddenly aware that its duality, its doubling, is an expression of the very structures of the cosmos. Specifically, the double R letters point to the mysterious 'Red Room' in which the otherworldly encounters take place (noting here also the allusion, among many others - Amerindians etc. - to Kubrik's horror classic 'The Shining' with its word-play on 'Red Rum', the word "murder" spelled backwards.) The ghouls of Twin Peak's demonology feed upon the pain and fear and suffering of humans. This psychic food is called 'garmonbozia' which, in its manifest form, appears like the humble down-home American fare creamed corn. The Double R, then, is the polar opposite to the Red Room. The Double R prepares meals of creamed corn to be distributed throughout the town by the Meals of Wheels service by Laura Palmer and others - the Red Room is its evil opposite, the diner of demons, where they feed on the shadow-food of 'garmonbozia'. If creamed corn is an all-American comfort food, garmonbozia is its vile, insidious shadow, its mirror image. 

We see, then, duality piled upon duality, and it finally becomes explicit in the Blavatskean device of the Black and White Lodges, two occult structures embodying good and evil, that are revealed late in the second season. There can be no doubt that this is an element added by Frost because his novels show an explicit interest in exactly this gnostic mythology. We remember, too, that Madam Blavatsky located her Black and White Lodges among the 'Secret Chiefs' and 'Ascended Masters' who reside, she claimed, in the spiritually potent nether-realms of mystic Tibet. And we realise, at that point, that the Tibetan motifs that recur throughout the television series - a wholesome interest in Lamaism that both deepens and distorts the character of Agent Cooper (even Lucy is reading a book about Tibet) - belong to Mr Frost as well. This quirkiness is all Mark Frost. 

For many casual viewers, of course, it all veered off the map and became just too weird; they were intrigued by the murder mystery and took the usual voyueristic pleasure in discovering Laura Palmer's double life, but they did not expect the soap opera genre to be taken to the places it was taken here, and large numbers of them refused to follow. Ratings crashed in the second season. The TV executives - a loathesome breed of feeble-minded scum at the best of times - insisted that the killer be revealed prematurely, and the whole enterprise limped to an ignoble conclusion. Demons, possession, mirrors. The endearing underpinning of the counter-program, soap opera within a soap opera, Invitation to Love, which had punctuated the first season was dropped through time constraints. The game of chess (with its black/white duality) never really added the further levels of symbolism it promised to do.  Mr Lynch's Fire Walk With Me - which reduced the entire thing to a grubby story about incest - was the final travesty. In the end - as gnostic text and as television - it becomes a beautiful failure. It might have been so much more. 

As well as what appeared on screen, though, the very process of production needs to be considered in all its gnostic overtones as well. It seems likely that Lynch had decided from the outset that Laura's father would be the killer - the father-as-abuser is the feminist stereotype of our times and was waiting to be exploited at the centre of the zeitgeist of the 1980s especially - but many other elements of the series unfolded over time without being preordained. Lynch's surrealist film-making instincts added some useful elements (the character Bob, it is said, emerged from an image of a set hand mistakenly appearing in a film take and Lynch liked it's serendipity) and other random factors introduced some key aspects of the final production. But Frost and his team of co-writers (sometimes but usually not including Lynch) engaged in a creative process that can only be described as supra-rational as they gave the characters and the story an inner life of its own. One of the writers, Harley Peyton, reported that speculative concerns about motive and plot were as important as the writer's intentions. He commented:

Once we made or wrote something, it was out of our hands. And the incredible amount of speculation that followed was -- and is -- in my opinion, every bit as valid as what appeared on the screen. And let me reiterate one point, the writers were often speculating right along with the audience, and in this way, many of the characters evolved into more complex creations. And sometimes, it just seemed to blossom out of nothing. We would take character names from movies we liked, join them together, and others would take those names as some kind of sign. And would then speculate and ruminate on the various implied meanings. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But most of the time...

This is a description of a dynamic creative process suited to symbolic texts. You cannot successfully plot symbols in a deliberate fashion with ratiocinative modes. The half moon juxtaposed with the Double R diner is heavy-handed enough, but it comes in between scenes as a type of symbolic summary. For the most part it seems that the occultism of Twin Peaks unfolded through symbols and symbolic themes that were pursued, in and of themselves, in a type of 'pathworking' where even the executive producers and the screen writers do not know where they are heading. There is the sustained classical dualism of comedy/tragedy providing an encompassing structure to the whole, and all involved are bound by those structures (the comedy/tragedy structure is very primitive, after all), but otherwise the creative process itself becomes a type of shamanic undertaking. 

Agent Cooper is the shaman of the series. He moves between the worlds. (The owls - who bring the vision of day into the darkness of night - are not what they seem.) The question then becomes whether Agent Cooper was in fact lured to Twin Leaks by the Black Lodge through the device of Laura Palmer's murder? It would seem that this possibility only occured to the writers too late and that they themselves were unwitting accomplices in this design, a case where - quite unknown to them - a cigar was not just a cigar. The symbolism of wood is all-important in an occult soap opera set in a timber milling town. Josy Packard's spirit becomes trapped in a wooden drawer knob - hylomorphism of the crudest kind. (Are the writer's aware that the Greek word for matter hylo means, literally wood, and in Greek Gnostic texts carries the connotation of the evil principle opposed to spirit?) The judge warns that the woods around the town are majestic, yes, but strange. And a cooper, after all, is a man who makes vessels from wood. 

The writers of the series were also no doubt unwitting when the series ended with the ghost of Laura Palmer telling Agent Cooper that she would see him again in twenty-five years. They could not have conspired to know that twenty-five years later a third season would come into production and would air on American television in May 2017. 

 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Conversazioni - Having an Athens

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HAVING AN ATHENS

Being a conversation inquiring as to the importance of Athens in Platonic philosophy. 

What do you think would be required for the revitalisation of the West? Is that even possible?

There are two centres to Western civilization, and ironically - or importantly - both of them are in the east, namely Jerusalem and Athens. These are the two great cities of the "West", the sacred cities. Rome is a different matter. In some sense it is an extension of Athens, so we'll leave it out of this. Because by these two cities we are designating, of course, the Graeco-Roman heritage generally, and the Judeo-Christian heritage. The West, Western civilization, is built upon those two foundations and upon that symmetry. 

Reason and revelation?

Amongst other symmetries, yes. The vitality of the West depends upon them both, so revitalisation would require a proper reengagement with these two foundational structures, the Graeco-Roman heritage and the Judeo-Christian heritage. Is that possible? Probably not. But we fight for it all the same. Largely, it is a matter of stories. Fighting for our stories. The vitality of a civilization is its narrative, its story of itself. Post-modernist dissolution purports to do away with such narratives. Vitality is having a viable story. 

So revitalizing the West is more than just returning to its Christian roots, as some people suggest?

That type of Christian reactionary ideology is a response to the perceived threat of Mahometan immigration amongst other things. Which is understandable. But besides the Church there is also the university. The university is degraded in the West. Too little is being said about that. There is advanced intellectual decay in our universities. The Academy is cancerous. We hear about declining church attendance and other symptoms of the decay of Christianity, but too little attention is given to the decay of the Academy. Which is not a matter of declining numbers but declining standards. A revitalization of the West must include intellectual renewal as well as spiritual renewal. If that were possible. Most likely the decay has much further to go yet and renewal, or restoration, is only possible after the complete collapse of Western institutions. In any case, the tradition is built on two cities, Athens and Jerusalem - and their stories. 

Why are these two great cities of the "West" eastern? 

Orientalism is not a new phase in Western culture. Both Athens and Jerusalem are Western cities by appropriation, by an annexation of the east, by an expansion eastwards. The Romans acquire Athens under Sulla. And the aquisition of Jerusalem is the great epic of Rome that forms the substance of Christianity. Remembering that Christianity is an oriental religion. We forget that too readily. So too is the Greek tradition. It is acquired by, imitated by, the Romans. This is a deep cultural process, orientalising. And the Greeks themselves did it with the Persians. The Greeks resisted the Persians but in other respects acquired aspects of Persian culture. So there has always been this looking eastwards and bringing the East to the West. In our pivotal narratives there are two great eastern cities. Athens and Jerusalem. The vitality of a civilization depends upon having a viable story. 

A story that concerns Athens and Jerusalem and those two traditions?

Those traditions are the stories. The stories are set in those two sacred or symbolical cities. The Biblical stories. The Gospel stories, that is. But there are also the stories of Athens. To be a reader of Plato, especially, you need to become a citizen of Athens, in a sense, and participate in that city and its stories. The word 'civilization' implies city. When we ask about the vitality of civilizations, then we are asking about cities. Symbolical cities. It is not an issue of sociology. I am talking about symbolical cities. The polis as a foundational unit. It is an important symbolism. The sacred city. Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem. The city as an eschatological symbol. But Athens is such a city also. Athens is the 'city writ in heaven'. Athens is a symbolical city in the Western imagination. It is a city of the philosophical imagination and one becomes a citizen of it, occupies it, lives within its story. There is a topography of the imagination, the mind. 

What do you mean, to live within its story? How is that done?

One of the things that happened to people, Europeans,in the XXth century is that they were stripped of their stories. It is very obvious when you start reading XIXth century works. People in the past lived with a story, specifically the gospel narrative in the case of Christians. They lived with a common story. And in this sense they were citizens of Jerusalem and, by imagination, they inhabited the Holy Land. I find this fact striking about XIXth century writers. It is as if they occupy two places at once. There is their actual location, their physical location, wherever it might be, but there is also a spiritual and imaginative topography that they inhabit. And it is conspicuous that we no longer do that. 

I don't understand. What do you mean they lived in two places at once? 

People in the past - say the people who colonized Australia, settlers from England, Europe, or we might mention the Americans as settlers from England, Europe - they also lived within a Biblical topography. A topography of the imagination. The average XIXth century person spoke about Jerusalem and Nazareth, and the well in Samaria, and the River Jordan and the road to Damascus as if these were real places to them, although places of the imagination. They lived in those places spiritually. The gospel stories were living realities and they knew those places. So they lived in the 'life world' as the sociologist calls it, but also in a story world. I read accounts of, say, gold miners who travelled to southern Australia in the 1850s. The gold rushes. There they are at the far end of the earth, but in their writings - diaries and so on - they also live in a Biblical world. That is to say they still live within the gospel story. Jerusalem is not just a city in the Near East, it is a city of the mind, the spirit, the imagination. Americans did this too, often through the motif of the Promised Land. America as a Biblical land. Which was, in fact, lacking in the Australian experience. But it was a strong force in American settlement. Most evident in the Mormons, of course. Which is one reason I take an interest in Mormonism. 

And we have lost that? Have we lost the capacity to do it, or is it just that religious faith has declined? 

You can still meet Christians with this sense of story. This is something conspicuous about Christians, or certain Christians anyway. They live within a story. Quite apart from factors such as 'faith' or 'belief'. They have a story. They are people with a narrative. Their lives are framed by a narrative. The gospel is not ancient history to them. It is current. And the religious life is richer for this. This is an obvious way in which religion enriches a person's life. It installs a story, a grand narrative, into their life, or places their life in a greater narrative.  For the Mahometan, he lives in the age of the Prophet. He knows that world. It is a very strong impulse in Mahometanism, to keep alive the sense of the Prophet's age and world and to retain that story. They occupy that story. They live in it. They copy it as a paradigm. The religious life is a life of stories. But so too is the philosophical life. Athens is a city of stories too. The Graeco-Roman heritage is a heritage of stories. And the principle story, the central story, is the story of Socrates. The avatars of the West are Jesus and Socrates. The great cities are Jerusalem and Athens. It's an important symmetry. 

And we are supplied with the story of Socrates by Plato?

Yes, and it is Plato who sanctifies Athens. In the Republic we are given a description of the ideal city, the city of the philosopher kings. This is an idealised Athens. Too few commentators note this. The city of the Republic is Athens. This fact becomes very clear in other Platonic dialogues too, such as the preface to the Timaeus. The city state, the polis, described by Socrates in the Republic is Athens, an Athens redeemed. Throughout the dialogues we encounter decadent Athens. But in the Republic we are given an ideal view of the city of Athena, the goddess Athena. And we are told that it is a city 'writ in heaven', a celestial city. Sacred Athens. So the Platonic tradition gives us Socrates - and it is an idealised Socrates, not quite the historical Socrates - and he occupies an idealised Athens. The philosopher's task is to become a citizen of that city. To have an Athens. We are told this in the Republic too. We are told that, in whatever age, the philosopher may become a citizen of that great celestial city, the city of philosopher-kings and of justice. This is what becoming a philosopher, in the Platonic sense, entails. It means to become a citizen of this celestial Athens. 

So the revitalization of the Academy would entail returning to Plato? Putting the story of Socrates at the centre of our intellectual culture again? 

There is no age as anti-Platonic as ours. Especially the second half of the XXth century. The complete denial that there are fixed realities. The descent into relatvism in the modern West is anti-Platonic. So intellectual renewal means a new engagement with the Platonic tradition. I take the view that the greatest periods of the West are when the Platonic intellectual tradition is strongest. Plato is the Athenian, par excellence. Or at least Socrates is. The story of Socrates is dramatized in the dialogues of Plato, and the backdrop of the drama is classical Athens. And so classical Athens becomes a fixture - an enduring place - in the Western intellectual imagination. In the practice of Platonic philosophy we become citizens of the celestial Athens. And followers of Socrates. Fellow citizens with Socrates, the greatest of the Athenians. 

Through an act of imagination?

It is a specific texturing of the imaginative life. It is an important and necessary part of engaging in Platonic philosophy. Importantly, we do not come to it through history. History is a hardening. The narrative must be fresh and flexible and must live in the imagination. There is no direct value in the historical Socrates. Plato very deliberately crafts a particular portrait of Socrates in the dialogues and it is not the Socrates of history. Similarly, we are not concerned with historic Athens. Rather, like the case of Socrates, we view the historic Athens through a certain constructed lens. It is an idealised Athens. An Athens of archetypes. Athens as the Form of the city, just Plato's Socrates is the ideal philosopher, the Form of the philosopher, in history. Profane history extinguishes the imagination. The proper engagement with Plato's Athens is essentially imaginative, and imaginal, to use the Corbinian term. 

Jerusalem is still a sacred city. Is it true that Athens has only an historical significance now, compared to Jerusalem?

Christianity is vociferous. Loud. And it remains at the heart of Western civilisation, whereas in the XXth century Athens has gone into decline. Even more so than Christianity. In the XIXth century - think of the English public schools, schools that trained intellectuals for the entire British Empire - it was more common to live in the story of Athens. The classical education - learning Latin and Greek. Studying the classics. In the British classical education, you could live in close company with Socrates and Aristophanes and all the Athenians of that generation, classical Athens. The educated gentleman in the British Empire, even if he was in the Punjab or Singapore or Hong Kong or New South Wales, he lived, intellectually, in ancient Athens as well. To be educated was, in a sense, becoming a citizen of ancient Athens. Since then that ideal of the classical education has collapsed. Christians might still occupy Jerusalem - as a mental and spiritual space - but few intellectuals occupy ancient Athens in that way anymore. We live in an age in which the classics, the Graeco-Roman heritage, has been dislodged from the centre of the culture. In that sense it is a very Christian age in the West today. Christo-Islamic tensions fills the whole space. Jerusalem is pivotal, intense. Athens not so. 

What are the steps to becoming such a citizen?

In the first instance it is just a dwelling of spirit. And we dwell there by becoming engaged with the dialogues of Plato. Which have a providential quality in the West. They are like intellectual scripture. We shouldn't pit reason and revelation against each other in a false polarity. The story of Socrates is sacred too. Enter into the story. Socrates, wisest and most just. He is, of course, a horrid little man - an anti-hero as much as a hero. That is the nature of it. But you become a citizen of Athens by engaging with the story of Socrates. Metaphorically, you are in Athens, tagging along, following Socrates - this horrid little barefoot man - around the Agora. It is an intellectual positioning. It means to become philosophical, in the Platonic sense. We follow old Socrates around the streets of Athens, puzzled by his arguments, amused or outraged by his antics. 

So it is merely a matter of reading Plato? 

We might read a bit of background history, or we might study maps, archeology, and learn Greek, read other Athenians, the Athenian drama, but just by reading the dialogues we develop a sense of the city, and that is the sense that needs to be fostered. It is the same with the gospels. There is a world presented in the gospels. It is not the same world as the world of the Biblical historian or the archeologist. It is, instead, lit by the light of an imaginative reading. And so we let this happen with the dialogues of Plato. When we enter the dialogues we enter the company of Socrates and we enter Athens. This is a very deliberate feature of the dialogues of Plato, but rarely appreciated. All the dialogues - the Laws is an exception, the Phaedrus to some extent, but only just - are set in Athens. Plato is very particular about this. His Socrates never - or rarely - ventures outside the city. Why has Plato done this? He constructs and maintains a very specific narrative space, and that space is Athens. It is a general rule: when you are reading Plato you are in Athens. So in that sense the city is always present, always the backdrop for Plato's philosophical dramas. This is one of the first facts about Plato. The dialogues are set in the city and, moreover, many of the dialogues are about the city. 

Many of the dialogues are set on specific historical events, aren't they? Doesn't it help to understand the historical context?

History and historicity in Plato is a complex matter, and deliberately so. What is history and what is myth? What is logos and what is muthos? No other writer, in any age, is as capable of walking the fine line between history and myth as does Plato. Plato never indulges in outright fictions. Except perhaps in the Menexenus, which is an interesting case. But generally if an event didn't happen, then he is  careful to make sure it might have happened. Did young Socrates meet old Parmenides? Probably not. And yet Plato has made it, written it, so that such a meeting might have taken place. And it might have. 

Did it?

We cannot be sure. Which is the point here. Plato very deliberately leaves us in a space between fact and fiction. We can never be sure just what is historical in Plato, and he is very deliberate about this. We should ask why? Because he purposefully avoids an ossified sense of history. In the dialogues he presents us with reasoned philosophy side by side with cosmic myths. Philosophy involves both. Platonic philosophy is derived from both. History, profane history, will harden our sense of reality. Plato keeps it moist with mythology. It is a deadening process to try to read Plato through its historical context. Everything about a Platonic dialogue discourages us from doing that. They may be anchored in history - because Plato does not indulge in baseless fictions - but they are essentially supra-historical. And our sense of Athens - the city of the philosophers - must be supra-historical too. Based in history, but essentially supra-historical. 

So, between history and myth? Between fact and fiction?

Plato is very careful to build up a sense of Athens that is between history and myth. It is the historical city seen through philosophical eyes, and in the Platonic sense this means seeing the city as recollection. The objects of the world serve to remind us of their ideal models. So Athens, in Plato - and the characters in Plato - are types, archetypes. Or at least they shine with an archetypal light, they shimmer with their perfection. Athens itself is a symbol. Objects are symbols. They point to some other reality. This is the sense in which it is "idealised". When the Platonic philosopher looks at an object, he sees its ideal, its perfection. There is the duality of copy and model, but there is a borderland between them. That duality is not final. This is the "imaginal" realm. Plato's dialogues take place in an "imaginal" Athens, if you like. The reader has to breathe that air. To read Plato right is to be sensitive to this borderland, the tension between real and ideal, history and myth, logos and muthos. Plato keeps us, holds us, in that suspension. Too much history will reduce the city to ruins. 

What do you mean?

Historical readings reduce Plato to museum pieces. It requires a deconstruction of Plato's historical fictions. But it involves ignoring or explaining away the fact that Plato dances with history. The proper spirit of it is to acknowledge the dance and to join it. But people like to say, "Plato says such-and-such, but the historical facts were xyz." That is not philosophy. It is textual archaeology. Instead of that, you have to find the pulse of it. And it is somewhere between reason and revelation. We can witness various approaches in some orientalist paintings of the XIXth century. In some, the artist is just recording what he sees. These are artists who have travelled east, to Athens, which was then under the rule of the Turks. In other cases the artist has an archaeological interest. But in others the artist catches a glimpse of the ideal city, is moved to envisage the ideal city. These are very interesting records. It is a case of Europeans rediscovering Athens. 

Athens was under the Ottomans? When was this? 

In the late XVIIIth and early XIXth centuries. And then into the XIXth century. There is the interesting phenomenon of Europeans rediscovering Athens. Through orientalist eyes. Not an intellectual rediscovery, but through a journey. Athens had been severed from Europe and is under the Ottomans. Orientalist depictions of Athens in the XIXth century are fascinating, because we see Europeans rediscovering this sacred city which, of course, is in ruins and is occupied by the Turks. You can see the ruins or you can see beyond it to the celestial city and acknowledge - remember - the place of the city in the soul of the West. There are journeys east that are journeys into the past, and also in an important sense journeys into the self. The same is true of Jerusalem, whether in the Crusades or later. Jerusalem is a city in physical reality, but it is also a city of the imagination and the spirit. And likewise Athens. When European travellers, orientalists, ventured into Ottoman Greece to find Athens it was a journey over land but also through time and also into the European spirit. Athens is not just any city. It is at the heart of Western identity. So the records of European travellers going there - especially when it was under the Ottomans - are especially interesting. Some only see ruins. 

Who does that? What are examples?

Some painters who arrive in Athens in that period record the ruins. Such as Carl Rottman who reached Athens in the mid 1830s. (See below.) We see an arid landscape more or less faithfully recorded and the Acropolis in ruins. This is an historical view, obviously. It is interesting but only as an historical record. It tells us about Athens at that time. 

But its only interest is historical because it is confined to that period?

There are a great many such paintings and drawings. Historical. The Western artist wants to record an historical moment. Edward Dodwel, the Irish artist, published a famous collection called Views of Greece, which are very lovely. Largely, the orientalists were very accurate in their drawings, especially of architectural features and other features that they might want to duplicate, reproduce. Some artists were neoclassicts and were involved in recovering details, drawings, to be applied in neoclassical projects back home. In some cases, though, - more interesting - there is a sadness to the ruination. Paul Spangenberg later in the century depicts Athens in desolation. The once sublime city has been lain to waste. (See below.)

Yes, he presents it as a desert. Very different to Athens today!

These type of paintings are always a measure of just how much things have changed in the course of the XXth century. We all know what Athens is like today! Just over a century ago it was a desolation. Emptiness. Spangenberg's painting is not merely reportage, though. There is a melancholy. This is the great city of the philosophers reduced to ruins by the ravages of time. Others had different interests. Turner, for instance, as always, was interested in light; not the least bit interested in architecture. He's a landscape painter, although he does capture the 'air' of the site and that is important. Not even a landscape painter but an air painter. It is not just a metaphor: to breathe the air of Athens. The modern city is hopelessly polluted, and you would not want to breathe the air! In ancient times - this is based, I think, on a reference in the Timaeus-Critias ensemble of Plato - it was believed that the air of Athens was responsible for her many philosophers. Turner is interested in the air of the city. (See below.) 

How is the air of Athens responsible for the philosophers?

There is a reference in the Timaeus - Plato's great cosmological dialogue, one of the keys to Plato. It mentions, or implies, that the quality of the air in Athens is conductive to philosophy, and this is why Athens is famous for giving birth to philosophers. It is not a reference that modern readers are in a position to fully understand. Although a painter like Turner helps us. We tend to homogenize matters. But in fact there are subtle differences of quality in the air in certain places. Air is not just air. Just as soil differs in one place to another, so too does the air. Actually, soil and work work together as a single system, but that is another matter... Plato might just as well said that the soil of Athens, the soil of Attica, produces good philosophers. He says the air does. A painter like Turner tries to capture the subtle differences in the air and light, atmosphere, in different places. As an artist he is sensitive to exactly that. In his painting - he visited Athens - he tries to capture the air of the place. He paints a scene of a military skirmish, but it is insignificant and incidental in the context of the painting. Turner is interested in the air. In ancient times the air of Athens was famous. The air, the atmosphere, of philosophers.

So you mean the air is - or was - conducive to philosophy?

Yes. Although there is a deeper significance. It is not really the time to go into it here, but the goddess Athena - the patroness of the city - is an air goddess. There is an esoteric significance to that. It is not what Mr Turner is about, though. But when the ancients said that the air of the place was fit for philosophers they were alluding to Athena as an air goddess, a goddess of the air. Although Ruskin writes a book about it in the XIXth century, so perhaps it was not entirely remote from Turner, after all. To discuss it would lead us into esoteric matters about the goddess Athena. Instead, all we need to say is that the philosophers breathes the air of ancient Athens. And yes, that is a matter of the imagination, the intellectual or spiritual imagination. We say it metaphorically - to breathe the air of ancient Athens - meaning to live in that world, imbibe its atmosphere. Actually, it has a deeper significance that has to do with Athena. When we are in Athens we are under the gaze of Athena. Ruskin writes a beautiful little book called 'Queen of the Air'. Possibly Turner's landscapes and seascapes are informed by the same understandings Ruskin records in that little book and that he acknowledges is a power of Athena. 

So what artists paint an idealised Athens? 

The best examples are the paintings of the German artist Leo von Klenze. Those are the most celebrated examples. He journeyed to Athens but rather than recording the ruins there, or just the landscape,he was moved to re-imagine the ancient city. But not as an archaeologist might. (See below.)

You see, in the late 1830s the Ottomans were expelled from the city and a German, Otto, became its first king after independence. Von Klenze, a court architect, was invited to Athens to assist with restoration projects and projects for public buildings. 

So the Germans - who have such a rich philosophical tradition - had this connection to Greece? 

We forget this connection between Germany and Athens. It is important to German romanticism. Perhaps the Germans don't forget it, but the rest of us do. The Germans took possession of Athens after the Turks. It is important to the Germanic sense of continuing the Greek philosophical tradition. The connections between the Germans and Athens - and the Greek philosophical tradition, and the Greek current into European culture - are rich and important. The feminine archetype, Athena, the goddess of the city - as a feminine archetype - is rooted in the northern soul of Europe. In southern Europe it is the Virgin Mary. This is a dichotomy that underpins something of the Reformation, essentially a northern/southern sundering. 

So there are two cities, two avatars - Christ and Socrates - and there are two feminine archetypes or Forms, as well? 

A further symmetry. There is Mary. Jerusalem. And Athena. Athens. The Greek tradition, the connections to Athens, are richer in the north, in Germany as it happens. This also meant that German orientalists had access to Athens. Von Klenze took employment there. So he had to re-imagine the city and in this he produced pictures of the idealised city, ancient Athens in her golden age. These are not archeological renderings, though; these are architectural visions. This is the Athens of legend. And this is the Athens that we want. This is the same Athens that we find in Plato's dialogues. This is Athens - city of philosophers. So this is the Athens with which philosophy should be concerned. Historians and archaeologists can fuss about other versions of Athens, but the philosopher should make himself at home in the Athens of the philosophers. Socrates' Athens. Plato's Athens. This is the Athens that Von Klenze imagines. Note that it is not one of those precise historical reconstructions. These days, with 3D animation and technology, we have scale models of ancient Athens and you can navigate around in the city.

Virtual reality. Like in a computer game? 

Like in a computer game. We don't need that.

No?

It goes too far. It is like the difference between erotica and pornography, if you like. A wit once said that the only difference is in the lighting, but the real difference is in imagination. As they say, pornography "leaves nothing to the imagination", whereas we very definitely and very deliberately do want to leave something to the imagination. The ideal is not the super-real. In modern art, there is the movement or the style called the super-real, super-realism. It is a mode of painting that tries to out-perform the camera. But that is not the "ideal". It does not try to capture the essence or the Form. The super-real, virtual reality, has a deadening effect upon the imagination. Whereas the whole task here is to foster an imaginative sense. Much as a book does. A novel creates a mental picture of places and people. Very different from a movie. You are much better to read the gospels than to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ which is pornographic in its realism. In any case, Von Klenze - his paintings are idealised, an idealised rendering of ancient Athens, not virtual reality. He is a beautiful painter, Von Klenze. An architect but also one of the great orientalist painters from Germany. When he went to Athens in the first half of the XIXth century he gave us a vision of its classical ideal. 

So we enter the Athens of the imagination?

Or the imaginal. The oriental city of true philosophy. If the West is to be revitalized it is necessary to make that journey again. There are cities of the imagination. Athens is one of them. To journey again to the garden of the philosophers in Athens. That is another important painting in this respect. It is by the Hungarian, Strohmayer. Antal Strohmayer. Who also journied to Athens and instead of painting what he saw with his physical eyes he reimagined the Athens of the philosophers in the painting 'The Garden of the Philosophers', in 1834. (See below.) Of course, needless to say, historical Athens almost certainly never looked like that. Which is entirely beside the point. Strohmayer paints the Athens of the philosophical imagination. This is a location in the European soul. Today, we live in an age where the Academy, the university, as an institution, is dangerously debased. It is now the realm of the soulless technocrat and of the relativist and of the post-modernist who knows no greater virtue than sheer power. Christianity is compromised and confused, certainly, and the Church is in a sorry state, but the university is in a state of even deeper decay. What has been lost is the garden of the philosophers, in Athens. The imaginal Athens. This is the Athens that needs to be rediscovered, as a cultural, civilizational project, but first as the personal project of anyone interested in Platonic philosophy.  

Which is in a worse state, the Church or the university?

The university. Although in recent times we have seen the virtual collapse of Protestantism. There is hardly anything of value left in Protestantism. And in any case, these institutions overlap. The disease that has beset the universities is largely a disguised Calvinism. The Catholic Church has her problems, of course, and yet the Eastern Orthodox churches are in a healthier state. Even after eighty years of the Soviets the Russian Church is very healthy. But the Academy is in advanced decay almost everywhere. Very little is being done about it. The garden of the philosophers has been turned into a wasteland. People who are concerned with cultural decline, and so are also concerned with cultural renewal, they are aware of the spiritual problems in Christianity. But the West - and this is my key point here - is and has always been a mixture of Jerusalem and Athens. Christianity was never able to fully Christianize the occidental soul. And this is a matter of providence. The pagan spirit was never fully subdued, and the greatness of the West, and the greatest epochs of Western civilization, always drew upon Athens and Jerusalem. So any revival of the fortunes of the West - which you'd have to regard as unlikely anyway at this time - must include a renewal of the spirit of Athens. A return to Christianity will not suffice. You will hear it said that a renewal of the West must consist of a return to Christianity. I am more concerned about a return to Athens. 

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Yours,

Harper

Henry Corbin - A Philosophy of the Imagination

A philosopher’s 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 “enlightenment”. Far from it! The philosopher’s investigations should encompass a wide enough field that the visionary philosophies of a Jacob Boehme, of an Ibn ‘Arabi, 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. Otherwise philosophia no longer has anything to do with Sophia. My 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. If it has guided me towards Freiburg, towards Teheran, towards Ispahan, for me the latter remain essentially “emblematic cities”, the symbols of a permanent voyage.

- Henry Corbin

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The author of these pages offered an introductory presentation on the life and work of Henry Corbin to the Bendigo Library 'Philosophy in the Library' series on Monday April 3rd. Being for the general public it was necessarily rudimentary and did not delve into the esoterica associated with Corbin's philosophy; with only an hour's speaking time and an audience entirely unfamiliar with the background to the subject it was only possible to present the basics. Hopefully, those in attendance might then go away and pursue the topic in greater depth for themselves. 

On this page - below - are the slides presented at the talk along with a few notes indicating what was covered.

First, a rudimentary account of the man himself; his birth in Paris, his education, the era in which he lived. 

Second, this revealing quote concerning his life's work. Massignon had given Corbin a copy of Suhrawadi's Philopsophy of Illumination and it made a profound impact upon him. Corbin determined to devote his life to the study and exposition of Suhrawadi. He recognized this as an aspect of Platonism. 

Further to the previous slide: Corbin as Platonist. This is the present writer's interest in Corbin. Others are drawn to Corbin for other reasons, but for the present writer Corbin is of great interest because he is a modern Platonist and opened a dimension of Platonism generally neglected in the West. 

At this point the talk concerned Corbin reconnecting Platonism with its ancient Persian roots. It was observed that the Persians had invaded the Greek world in the decades prior to the emergence of Plato. Indeed, Socrates himself had foiught against the Persians. We are all aware of the narrative that describes how brave little Athens took on and defeated the big bad Persian empire. And yet, throughout Plato, we have hints that there was more cross-fertilization between the Persians and the Greeks than we might otherwise think. Much of Plato's mathematics, for instance, has been traced to Persian origins. And here, in Corbin, we find that Platonism and many of its central tenets - the Theory of Forms, for instance - have a strong resemblance to aspects of ancient Persian theosophy. There is more Persian influence in Plato than we might have previously imagined. Corbin, the orientalist,  reconnected the Platonic tradition with its Persian roots, rediscovering, as it were, a "lost" branch of the Platonic tradition. This is one of the most important things about Monsieur Corbin. 

Next, we introduced Suhrawadi and the Illuminationist School. A brief account of the life of Suhrawadi.  A copy of the Philosophy of Illumination was passed around among the audience and it was observed that, rather than being a scintilating work of profound truths leaping from every page, it is largely an account of logical problems in philosophy and is a remarkably dry and unexciting text to most readers. 

Suhrawadi understood his mission as reviving the ancient (pre-Islamic) heritage of Persian theosophy.  He very consciously set out to revive ancient Persian philosophy. He understood Illuminationism to be a reworking of a pre-existing school of philosophy and not a new innovation. 

We can discern numerous threads to Suhrawadi's philosophy: Platonism, Zoroastrianism and, necessarily, Shi'ite Sufism. Living in a Shi'ite Islamic environment Suhrawadi was compelled to adapt his "renaissance of ancient Iranian wisdom" to Islamic orthodoxy. Even so, he was nevertheless executed as a heretic. 

The discussion then turned to a key aspect of Ishraqi metaphysics considered in Platonic terms. Ordinarily, Platonism is shaped in starkly dualist ways, particularly regarding FORMS and PARTICULARS. There is the idea of the chair, or chairness, and then there are particular instances of chair. Classically, Plato talks in terms of models and copies. In Ishraqi metaphysics, however, there is an intermediate realm between forms and particulars. Most of Corbin's work concerns this realm. It was noted that the nature and status of this intermediate or middle realm is a matter of controversy among Platonists and others. It is, though, the key to the "lost" branches of Persian Platonism Corbin discovered in Suhrawadi.

Expressed in religious terms, this intermediate realm is the realm of angels. Thus did Corbin's work concern Zoroastrian angelology. In Corbin's view, it is precisely this middle realm that has gone missing in modernity. A modern man might very well believe in God, but the same man will find it nearly impossible to believe in angels. The intermediate realm with which Ishraqi metaphysics is concerned is the angelic realm. Corbin is concerned to rediscover it. 

Traditional ontologies are heirarchial and typically describe extensive heirarchies of angelic beings and orders of angelic beings. This follows from an emanationist worldview. Again, Corbin believes that this is exactly what has gone missing in modernity. Our universe has shrunk, hardened and has become polarised into dualist metaphysical schemes. 

As well as the angelic orders, the intermediate realm also typically included a large array of other beings: fairies, elves, elementals, and so on. These are personifications of the intermediate realms of being. They have disappeared from the modern worldview, including modern spiritual worldviews. 

At this point in the talk we introduced Corbin's terminology for the intermediate realm - the IMAGINAL. He dubbed that realm the Mundus Imaginalis, the World of the Imaginal. 

As per Corbin himself, as soon as one mentions the term the 'imaginal' it becomes necessary to distinguish it from the imaginary. The imaginal is not the imaginary. This may be difficult for modern people to understand. Corbin insists that the imaginal is real - more real - than the physical realm. It is not in any sense merely 'subjective'. The distinction between the imaginal and the merely imaginary is very important. Corbin insists that there is an objective imaginal realm and that human beings have a corresponding faculty by which it can be known. This faculty is related to but not the same as what is commonly referred to as the 'imagination'. 

To understand the nature and status of the imaginal world - the intermediate realm - it is useful to consider the title of one of Monsieur Corbin's key works - Spiritual Body, Celestial Earth. This was discussed against typical Platonic categories. Ordinarily, the Platonist might say that "spiritual body" is a contradiction in terms. In the dialogue called the Phaedo, most famously, Socrates proposes that body and soul are utterly unalike. The body is finite, composite, unenduring, etc. The soul is quite the opposite. The Platonic tradition is replete with such dualities. The notion of 'spiritual body' defies such dualities. Similarly, the phrase 'celestial earth' defies the usual polarity of earth and heaven. How can there be a 'spiritual body'? How can there be a 'celestial earth'? In usual Platonic terms, it makes no sense. But again Corbin is intent on revealing a 'lost' branch of Platonic philosophy that acknowledges intermediate terms between such polarities. There are forms of bodies and bodies of forms. (The speaker noted here that classically trained Playonists of his acquaintance had been alarmed by this proposition and said, "It's interesting, but it's not Plato!")

The talk then disgressed to the question of whether this intermediate realm can be found in Plato's works. We noted that there is Socrates' account of the 'True Earth' in the Phaedo which seems to descibe such a realm. 

Furthermore, in Plato's cosmology as described in the Timaeus, there is an explicit account of how polar opposites must be bound together by middle terms. In this case, Plato talks about the four classical elements. All things, he says, consist of Fire and Earth (which are polar opposites), but Fire and Earth can only be bound together by means of Air and Water, the intermediate elements. This passage in the Timaeus could conceivably be interpreted as permitting the intermediate realms with which Corbin is concerned. 

And in fact, in traditional iconography, beings of the intermediate or imaginal realm - as Corbin describes it - are typically creatures of the Air and the Water. Such creatures very often have intermediate forms - the mermaid, for example, half human/half fish.  Such iconography depicts them as belonging to two realms at once - spiritual body/celestial earth. The imaginal realm is also often portrayed as having sunk into the waters (noting Plato's Atlantis myth). Or it is a world of the Air. Imaginal creatures typically sport wings, as do angels and fairies, or are creatures of the clouds. 

In Muhammadean mythology, the great imaginal event is the Night Journey of the Prophet. 

Similarly, imaginal or angelic texts are typically shown as encased in clouds. The symbolism of the element Air (and Water) are indicative of the imaginal. 

Pursuing this further, the talk then turned to the myth of the winged soul in Plato's dialogue the Phaedrus. The concern of the speaker here was to underline the fact that, despite the general tone of dualism in Plato, many passages in the Platonic corpus lend themselves to Corbinian interpretation. In the Phaedrus, for example, we have a famnous account of how the liberated soul grows wings. 

This account of the winged soul in Plato can then be matched to the symbol of the winged soul in Zoroastrianism. The so-called FARAVAHAR is emblematic of the ancient Zoroastrian religion. It refers to the notion of the Fravashi, the guardian angel. We pointed out that it was not that long ago that people had a notion of a 'Holy Guardian Angel' - an angelic being who is set over every incarnate soul. This is a key idea in Zoroastrian angelogy. Understood Platonically, the Guardian Angel is the Form of the soul. Is there a Form of Socrates?  The Form of Socrates is his 'Holy Guardian Angel' by other accounts.  The speaker drew attention to this order of ideas in the neo-Platonist Plotinus. 

At this point, after some discussion on the abnove matters, the speaker directed listeners to the work of Tom Cheetham as a useful introduction to Henry Corbin. Corbin's own writing is quite dry and scholarly. He is a painstaking textual scholar. For most people it is best to approach Corbin through a writer such as Tom Cheetham. A number of themes in Corbin will then open out from there: the monotheisms as an epic cycle, the twofold nature of revelation, the practices of the active imagination, amongst others. The talk then considered each of these themes briefly:

One of the distinguishing features of Corbin's work is that he sees the monotheist complex - Judaism/Christianity/Islam - as a single epic cycle (culminating in Shia esotericism!) Each revelation is twofold, having an inner and outer dimension. 

Turning to the Western tradition, one of the most interesting aspects of Corbin's work is his attention to the Grail cycle and the Arthurian romances, which he identifies as expressions of the imaginal in the Western Christian temperament. In the Corbinian perspective, the spiritual revival of the West depends upon renewed attention to the Grail legends. 

On the other hand, Corbin gave quite extraordinary attention to the life of work of Swedenborg and offered Swedenborg as an example of a proponent of the imaginal in the Western Tradition. (The speaker confessed that he did not share Corbin's enthusiasm for Swedenborg. One wonders why Corbin gave so much attention to Swedenborg and yet entirely neglected such thinkers as, say, William Blake, or, say, Rudolf Steiner.)

All the same, there are many examples of practices and techniques in the Western tradition - and others - that constitute a 'Via Imaginativa' - a path of the imaginal. There was a brief discussion of such methods. 

Finally, the speaker drew attention to the theme of the imaginal in European romanticism in general. There was, however, no time left to pursue this further. A brief question and answer session followed. Once again, it must be stressed that this was a very introductory account of Corbin, intended for the general public and for people with no background in the subject matter.

Yours,

Harper