Irish Catholic philosopher and theologian (c. 800 – c. 877)
An Irish monk who knew Greek when almost no one in the West did, and who used it to rebuild Neoplatonism from Christian texts alone — producing a ninth-century metaphysics so strange and total that Bertrand Russell called him the most astonishing person of his century.
Born around 800, John Scotus Eriugena studied Greek in Ireland at a time when the language had nearly vanished from Western Europe. He succeeded Alcuin of York as head of the Palace School at Aachen and translated the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. His major work, De Divisione Naturae, set out to unfold the entire structure of reality from the concept of physis — "all things which are and which are not" — through a dialectical method that wove together the human mind and the divine logos. Scholars have called it the final achievement of ancient philosophy, a synthesis of fifteen cen…
Sourced, dated quotes from John Scotus Eriugena
One man stands head and shoulders above his contemporary scholars: head and shoulders, some hold, above the Middle Ages: John Scotus Erigena.
Synthesizing as it does the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries, this book appears as the final achievement of ancient philosophy.
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