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Antoine Faivre

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French academic (1934–2021)
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Antoine Faivre
Born5 June 1934
Reims
Died19 December 2021(2021-12-19) (aged 87)
NationalityFrench
Academic work
DisciplineWestern esotericism

Antoine Faivre (5 June 1934 – 19 December 2021) was a French scholar of Western esotericism. He played a major role in the founding of the discipline as a scholarly field of study, and he was the first-ever person to be appointed to an academic chair in the discipline. Together with Roland Edighoffer he founded the predecessor to the journal Aries in 1983, which in 2001 was relaunched with Wouter Hanegraaff as its editor.

Until his retirement, he held a chair in the École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne, University Professor of Germanic studies at the University of Haute-Normandie, director of the Cahiers del Hermétisme and of Bibliothèque de l'hermétisme.

Thought

Antoine Faivre affirmed occultism, gnosticism and hermeticism share a set of common characteristics that include the faith in the existence of secret and syncretistic correspondences – both symbolic and real – between the "macrocosm and the microcosm, the seen and the unseen, and indeed all that is". Those doctrines believe in alchemic transmutation and on an initiatric transmission of knowledge from a master to his pupil.

According to Hanegraaff, Faivre's criteria for what constitutes Western esotericism can be seen as essentially describing an "enchanted" worldview, as compared to Max Weber's notion of "disenchantment". Hanegraaff also traces Faivre's notion of "correspondences" back to the Neoplatonic concept of sympatheia.

Personal life and death

Faivre died on 19 December 2021 at the age of 87.

Bibliography

  • Les vampires: Essai historique, critique et littéraire, Paris, Le Terrain vague, 1962
  • Kirchberger et l’Illuminisme du XVIIIe siècle, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1966
  • Eckartshausen et la théosophie chrétienne, Paris, Klincksieck, 1969 (reprinted with a preface by Jean-Marc Vivenza, Hyères, La Pierre Philosophale, 2016)
  • L’ésotérisme au XVIIIe siècle en France et en Allemagne, La Table d’Émeraude, Seghers, 1973
  • Mystiques, théosophes et illuminés au siècle des lumières, Hildesheim, Olms, 1976
  • Toison d'or et alchimie, Milan, Archè, 1990. English transl. Golden Fleece and Alchemy, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993, reprint 1995
  • Philosophie de la nature (physique sacrée et théosophie, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles), Paris, Albin Michel, 1996 (Prix de philosophie Louis Liard, de l'Académie des Sciences morales et politiques).
  • The Eternal Hermes (From Greek God to Alchemical Magus), Grand Rapids, Phanes Press, 1996
  • Accès de l'ésotérisme occidental, Paris, Gallimard ("Bibliothèque des sciences humaines"), vol. I, 1986, 2nd ed., 1996, vol. II, 1996. English transl. vol. I : Access to Western Esotericism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994, vol. II: Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, Studies in Western Esotericism, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2000
  • L'ésotérisme, Paris, PUF, 1992, 3e éd., 2003
  • De Londres à Saint-Pétersbourg: Carl Friedrich Tieman (1743-1802) aux carrefours des courants illuministes et maçonniques, Milan, Archè, 2018

References

  1. ^ Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; Brach, Jean-Pierre; Pasi, Marco (22 June 2022). "Antoine Faivre (1934–2021): The Insider as Outsider". Aries. 22 (2): 167–204. doi:10.1163/15700593-02202017. hdl:11245.1/90e21c9b-e2d8-484a-8b4b-699d2d9e4036. ISSN 1567-9896.
  2. McCalla, Arthur (October 2001). "Antoine Faivre and the Study of Esotericism". Religion. 31 (4): 435–450. doi:10.1006/reli.2001.0364. ISSN 0048-721X.
  3. ^ Cusack, Carol M. (1 September 2008). Esotericism, Irony and Paranoia in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (pdf). University of Sydney. pp. 64–65. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 May 2021. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  4. ^ Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (2013). Western esotericism: a guide for the perplexed. Guides for the perplexed. London New York: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4411-8713-0.
  5. Notre Frère Antoine Faivre est passé à l'Orient Éternel (in French)

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