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Charles M. Stang Doubles Down
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Our conversation turns to the enigmatic figure of Henry Corbin (pictured above, in conversation with Carl Jung), a divisive thinker whose work is deeply interested in the figure of the divine double and angelomorphic transformation. Dr Stang also takes on with aplomb a number of our trademark irresponsible questions, including the fascinating and tricky one of where the Doppelgänger or dark double fits into the story of divine twinship.
Interview Bio:
Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School. His interests include: the development of asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Christianity; ancient philosophy, especially Neoplatonism; the Syriac Christian tradition, especially the spread of the East Syrian tradition along the Silk Road; other philosophical and religious movements of the ancient Mediterranean, including Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Manichaeism; and modern continental philosophy and theology, especially as they intersect with the study of religion.
Works Cited in this Episode:
We have not listed every author mentioned in the discussion of modern authors on doubles – Freud, Poe, Pynchon, and even E.T.A. Hoffman are too well-known and easily-accessible to require bibliographic reference here. However, be sure to check out Sadegh Hedayat, the great Persian master of the macabre, if you haven’t already.
- Henry Corbin. Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ‘Arabī. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1969.
- Idem. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Omega, New Lebanon, NY, 1994.
- Henry Corbin and Philippe Némo. From Heidegger to Suhrawardi. Temenos Academy Review, 6:119–43, 2003.
Recommended Reading:
For an extremely interesting discussion of Corbin by our guest, check out this clip, given at an online talk for the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism.
Also of interest:
- M. Sedgwick. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, USA, 2004 [still the best general work on Traditionalism, and one which can lead one in various directions for further research].
- John Walbridge and Hossein Ziai. The Philosophy of Illumination: a New Critical Edition of the Text of Hikmat al-Ishraq with English Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Introduction. Brigham Young University Press, Provo, UT, 1999 [the Introduction to this excellent crit. edit. and translation of Suhrawardi can serve as an exemplum for the kinds of criticism levelled at Corbin by historians of Islamic thought].
- S. M. Wasserstrom. Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1999 [a history-of-religions discussion of Eranos’ significance. Much more work is needed in this context].
E C J Williams
September 15, 2021
So interesting that the double has a negative shade. Carl Jung notes that when contact is first made with the unconscious it is often in the form of a stranger breaking into the house and is seen as a threat to the individual. If the seeker is not searching for the divine and is simply fated to meet their double would not the first contact be felt as a threat? It is after all a serious challenge to the ego and like NDEs will utterly change everything the individual knows about themselves.
Clark E Aitkins
September 22, 2021
Perhaps I misunderstood when you were talking about the modern notion of a dark double. Seems to me the obvious place to start that investigation would be Jung’s notion of the shadow. I’m not a Jungian, so maybe I misunderstand that as well.
Earl Fontainelle
September 22, 2021
That’s a good point, Clark. I would situate Jung as within a ‘premodern’ or ‘pre-Enlightenment’ mindset – he believes in god, he’s a kind of perennialist, and so on – so he’s not talking about the same kind of ‘dark double’ as an E.T.A. Hoffman or Thomas Pynchon is talking about, a kind of uncanny, but worldly, dark agent. But his concept of the shadow is definitely a huge part of the story of the double in modern thought!