Zane Leach

This essay concerns the significance of Henry Corbin’s methodology for the ‘Western’ study of Islamic philosophy and its relevance for the revival of traditional metaphysics in postmodernity.  This methodology established itself as an alternative to the traditional Scholastic and modern colonial approaches to the study of Islamic philosophy. Under the influence of Heidegger, Corbin developed a methodology wherein the inadequacies of modern historicism are consummated into a reassessment of traditional metaphysics.  This essay aims to articulate the foundations and demonstrate the justifiability of Corbin’s approach. This is done to elucidate how the metaphysics of Corbin and the Islamic Platonism from which he draws can contribute to the revitalization of contemporary Western philosophy. Ultimately, this essay explores the problem of returning to traditional metaphysics through phenomenological hermeneutics and a corresponding approach to rational mysticism.

This undergraduate thesis is an inquiry into the foundations and implications of Neoplatonic metaphysics in and between Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius. I propose that the systematic coherence of either of these philosophers depends upon a logic originating in and dependent upon a theological grammar revealed by a First Principle understood to exist beyond Being. I argue this position by first establishing the metaphysical framework of Neoplatonism in terms of a line of argumentation leading from the Parmenidean identification of logic and Being to the One beyond Being. From this foundation, I reconstruct Proclus’ and Dionysius’ deductive account of the declension of Being from this Principle. I show that in both cases an aporia arises in attempting to reconcile the absolute unity of the One and the multiplicity of Being. This, I argue, can only be resolved through recognizing the common revelatory source of logic and a theological grammar that permits paradoxical speech about a multiplicity beyond Being. In doing this, I outline the differing forms this takes for Proclus and Dionysius as well as the implications that this bears for the relation between philosophical reason, divine simplicity, revelation, and theurgic activity.