“Dying is the essence of life,” said James Hillman at that moment between his living and his dying, when “time stands still, the hands of the clock point to the ultimate essence”: that standstill of life that is described in greater detail in L’ultima immagine (The Last Image), the book-testament published on the tenth anniversary of his death (2021) and now, on the anniversary of his birth, in English. This recollection of the last days of Hillman’s life bears witness to the work of self-analysis and introspection that he carried out with strenuous lucidity on the threshold between being and non-being: a work on the image and with the image. Because the journey from one state to the other and its inner exploration can only be made up of images, since the psyche itself is made up of them. A profound reflection on soul-making as image-making is the ultimate legacy of Hillman’s thought, captured in the blue region of the transition between the individual soul and the soul of the world.
The video recording of the conference will be viewable on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.
