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John Scottus Eriugena Criticism of Categories: Periphyseon Book I

Index of the Section: "History of the Theories of Categories"

Index of the Section: "Ontological Topics in the History of Philosophy"

INTRODUCTION: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONTRIBUTION OF JOHN SCOTTUS ERIUGENA

"The Western philosophical tradition has been characterised, in a somewhat misleading and overgeneralised manner, as centring on the concept of being from the time of the earliest Greek thinkers. Eriugena, inspired by Dionysius, departs from this tradition and regards non-being as equally as important as being in the study of the nature of reality as a whole. For Eriugena ontology is not the most fundamental or universal discipline; in fact, he develops a negative dialectic which counterbalances ontological affirmations and constructions with a radical meontology, giving the most detailed analysis of non-being since Plato's Sophist and Parmenides.

But Eriugena goes farther and anticipates many of the features of the modernist turn in philosophy begun by Descartes (1596-1650). Eriugena begins with a typical Carolingian psychology but is stimulated by Saint Augustine to develop an understanding of the cogito and a deep appreciation of inwardness, which was enriched by his encounter with the anthropology of the Greeks, especially Gregory of Nyssa. He does not stop there, however, but goes on to articulate, in his own terms, what might be called a philosophy of subjectivity. Eriugena sees the human subject as essentially mind. Everything is a product of mind -- material reality, spatiotemporal existence, the body itself. In this sense, Eriugena is a thoroughgoing idealist. Matter is a commingling of incorporeal qualities which the mind mistakenly takes to be corporeal; spatiotemporal reality is a consequence of the seduction of the mind by the senses, which is the true Fall of Adam; the body itself is an externalisation of the secret desires of the mind. But more than that, the true being of all things is their being in the mind. Eriugena takes this to be a consequence of the scriptural revelation that the human mind is an image of the divine mind, and that the divine mind contains in itself the ideal exemplars of all things.

Eriugena inserts this radical view of the human mind and of human nature into his account of the cosmos, his fourfold division of nature. The whole of nature, which includes God, proceeds or externalises itself in its multifarious forms through the operation of the human mind, which is pursuing its own course of intellectual development or enlightenment. In the four divisions of nature, we have not only a typical mediaeval cosmology of a hierarchy of being but also a dynamic process of subjectivity becoming objective, of the infinite becoming finite, the drama of God's and of human self-externalisation in the world, which anticipates the idealist systems of Schelling and Hegel.

(...)

How are we to interpret Eriugena's philosophy?

He made use of the logical and dialectical material available to the ninth century in his metaphysical discussions of the nature of essence, substance, accident, and the categories, but he stands above his contemporaries in offering a unique metaphysical system -- the four divisions of nature -- which introduced to the West not only a new cosmology but also the first important meontology, or study of non-being -- me on."

From: Dermot Moran - The philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A study of Idealism in the Middle Ages - Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. XIII-XIV and 81.

"While one may well attempt to write about the works of Eriugena, one can hardly as yet essay with any confidence to describe his life, so much in connection with him is legend or slender hypothesis. We can say that he was born in Ireland around the first quarter of the ninth century, and that he lived and worked for most of the third quarter of that century at the court of Charles the Bald in the general area of Laon, north-east of Paris. He would appear to have been a teacher who became a philosopher.

His greatest work, written in Latin, was the Periphyseon, known also as De divisione naturae, a comprehensive investigation into all things that are and all things that are not. Here the philosophical doctrines of Augustine in his understanding of Revelation (already significantly, if not consistently, indebted to Neoplatonism) are as far as possible brought into relation with the more direct and prevailing Neoplatonism of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and the Greek Fathers. The result is a synthesis of what we might now call philosophy and theology where the influence of the Neoplatonists dominates. To theologians he is too philosophical; to philosophers, too theological. But as long as Plato is counted a philosopher, then Eriugena must be reckoned a philosopher too. His message is essentially optimistic, and it is conveyed in language that is subtle, often warm, and always distinguished.

Eriugena had more influence in western Christendom than is generally recognized, even if the spirit of the times, guilt by association, and finally a flood of Aristotelianism told against him. The mystics listened carefully to what he had to pass on from the Pseudo-Dionysius, and nineteenth-century German Idealists discovered in him a spirit and a thinking akin to their own."

From: John J. O'Meara - Eriugena - Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988. Preface

THE NAME OF THE PHILOSOPHER

"The subject of this study was named by Archbishop Ussher in his Veterum epistolarum hibernicarum sylloge (Dublin, 1632) 'Scotus Erigena'. This is a pleonasm since, in the lifetime of the man in question and up to the eleventh or twelfth century, Scotus or Scottus meant 'Irish' and Erigena or Eriugena (1) meant 'of Irish birth'. Since he called himself Johannes, that is, John, the name John Scotus Erigena became fairly common after Ussher's time. This had the grave inconvenience of causing confusion between our Irish philosopher of the ninth century and John Duns Scotus, the better-known Scottish (in the present meaning of that term) Franciscan philosopher of the thirteenth.

Scholars nowadays, to avoid both pleonasm and confusion, have a tendency to call him Eriugena. This is the name that appears at the head of his translation of Dionysius the Areopagite: 'incipiunt libri sancti Dionysii Areopagitae, quos Ioannes Eriugena transtulit de graeco in latinum': 'Here begin the books of the holy Dionysius Areopagiticus which John Eriugena translated from Greek into Latin.' (2) Eriugena, not Erigena, is attested by the oldest manuscripts of this work. (3) But he was known to his contemporaries and in later times as Johannes Scottus, (4) where 'Scottus' refers to his origins rather than being used as a surname. He refers to himself usually and is also referred to by some of his contemporaries as simply Johannes. (5)5 We shall call him Eriugena."

(1) Formed on the model of Graiugena (Virgil, Aeneid, 3. 550), 'of Grecian birth'.

(2 )Patrologiae Latinae 122, 1035 A-6 A.

(3) See M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1933 p. 5 n. 10.

(4) Ibid. 3. 'Scotus' is also used.

(5) Ibid. p. 5 and n. 4.

From: John J. O'Meara - Eriugena - Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988. p. 1.

ONTOLOGY AND SEMIOTICS IN THE PERIPHYSEON

"In some respects, Western medieval philosophy can be viewed as beginning with the brilliant and controversial ninth-century thinker John Scottus Eriugena. (1) Marenbon values him for his ability to reason abstractly yet criticizes his tendency to system building. However, it is Eriugena's notion of structure which perhaps makes him closer to modern writers than to other medieval ones.

Few would deny that a particular concept of 'structure' is one of the intellectual paradigms of our era. This involves a priority of relation to related terms, such relations being either of opposite to opposite where one opposite exists through or is understood through the other, or else of whole to part where the whole exists through or is understood through the part, or vice versa. (...) Although avoiding the term 'structure' itself, Eriugena builds his metaphysical system with identical components. Priority of relation is underlined by his discussion of the Aristotelian categorical doctrine in Periphyseon I where the category of 'relation' (relatio, ad aliquid) or of 'condition' (habitus) is found to be present in all the other categories. (2) Contrast of opposite with opposite is a recurrent theme of Eriugena's writing, as instanced by the negative and affirmative predicates applied to God (I. 458A-462D, II. 599B-600A, III. 684D-685A, etc.) and the five dichotomies constituting nature (II. 529C-545B); contrast of whole with parts is only slightly less frequent, an instance being God's status with regard to created things of which man's is the microcosmic reflection (IV. 759A-B. Cf. II. 523D-524D). Strict relatedness is clearly the writer's underlying assumption in such cases, since each binary term is said to be dependent ontologically and epistemologically on its counterpart (V. 953C-954A, V. 965A-B).

Eriugena exploits the notion of structure in developing his own variant of the classical Platonic Theory of Forms. The expression of this doctrine, acquired through intermediary Greek and Latin patristic sources, combines ontological and semiotic criteria.

From the ontological viewpoint, (3) there exists a set of transcendent i.e. atemporal and non-spatial principles. These are termed 'reasons' (rationes) in Latin, and 'Ideas' (ideai), 'prototypes' (prototypa), 'pre- destinations' (proorismata), or 'divine volitions' (theia thelêmata) in Greek.(4) They possess a metaphysically intermediate status since they depend upon a prior cause: God (the technical term for such dependence being 'participation' (participatio)), while subsequent terms, created objects, depend on them. (5) According to Eriugenian textual exegesis, when the Bible describes God as making heaven and earth 'in the beginning', it means that the first principle establishes the reasons or Ideas of intellectual or sensible creatures within its Word.(6) Examples of the transcendent principles are Goodness, Being, Life, Wisdom, Truth, Intellect, Reason, Power, Justice, Salvation, Magnitude, Omnipotence, Eternity, and Peace (II. 616C-617A).

From the semiotic viewpoint, (7) Eriugena proposes an analysis of the term 'nature' (natura) using a combination of traditional logical principles like the square of opposition (8) and the division of genus into species versus the partition of whole into parts. (9) Within nature, four 'differences' (differentiae) are posited: creating (A), not created (D), created (B), and not creating (C), these combining to form four 'species' (species): creating and not created (1), both created and creating (2), created and not creating (3), and neither creating nor created (4). (10) The relations between 1 and 3 and between 2 and 4 are described as 'opposition' (oppositio), those between A2 and Al, between B3 and B2, between C3 and C4, and between D4 and D1 as 'similarity' (similitudo), and those between B2 and D1, between C3 and A2, between B3 and D4, and between C4 and Al as 'dissimilarity' (dissimilitudo) (I. 441A-442A, II. 523D-528B). This semiotic analysis is applied to metaphysics when species 1 is identified with God as the beginning of the cosmic process, species 2 with the reasons or Ideas, species 3 with the effects of the reasons or Ideas, and species 4 with God as end of the cosmic process. (11)"

(1) The most useful books providing a general introduction to Eriugena's life and works are Cappuyns [1933] and Moran [1988]. See O'Meara and Bieler [1973], Allard [1986], Beierwaltes [1987] and [1990], Jeauneau [1987], for essays on specific aspects of his thought. [for the complete references see the Annotated Bibliography]

(2) Eriugena, Periphyseon I. 466A-467C. References to Eriugena's work give the column numbers of Floss's edition [6.1] which are reproduced in the modern editions and translations and so provide a standard form of reference. Because of his interpretation of pseudo-Augustine: The Ten Categories, Eriugena allows the separate Aristotelian categories of relation and condition to coalesce. On Eriugena's theory see Flasch [1971].

(3) In discussing both Eriugena's and Anselm's notions of structure, I shall distinguish 'ontological' and 'semiotic' components. By the former is meant any aspects of the metaphysical system stated in the texts, by the latter those aspects corresponding to elements in the notion of structure described earlier. Of course, neither Eriugena nor Anselm could have made such a distinction.

(4) II. 529A--C. Elsewhere, Eriugena calls these 'primordial causes' (causae primordiales). See III. 622Bff

(5) II. 616B. 'And they are said to be the principles of all things since all things whatsoever that are sensed or understood either in the visible or invisible creation subsist by participation in them, while they themselves are participations in the one cause of all things: that is, the most high and holy Trinity'. Cf. III. 630A--C, III. 644A--B, III. 646B--C, III. 682B--C.

(6) II. 546A--B. 'But on considering the interpretations of many exegetes, nothing strikes me as more probable or likely than that in the aforesaid words of Holy Scripture -- that is, within the meaning of "heaven" and "earth" -- we should understand the primordial causes of the entire creature which the Father had created before the foundation of all other things in his only begotten Son who is designated by the term "beginning", and that by the word "heaven" we should hold the primal causes of intelligible things and celestial essences to have been signified, but by the word "earth" those of the sensible things in which the entire corporeal world is completed'.

(7) That Eriugena was aware of the linguistic even if not semiotic starting point of his analysis is suggested by his reference to nature as a 'generic term' (general nomen) rather than as a generic entity. See Cristiani, [1981].

(8) The square of opposition was a classificatory schema applied by Greek writers of late antiquity to (a) substance and accident and (b) the numbers 1-10. Thus, in (a) four terms: of a subject (A), not in a subject (D), in a subject (B), not of a subject (C) are grouped into four combined terms: of a subject but not in a subject (1), both in a subject and of a subject (2), in a subject but not of a subject (3), neither of a subject nor in a subject (4) where 1 = universal substance, 2 = universal accident, 3 = particular accident, 4 = particular substance. See Porphyry, On the Categories 78, 25ff. In (b) four terms: generating (A), not generated (D), generated (B), not generating (C) are grouped into four combined terms: generating but not generated (1), both generated and generating (2), generated but not generating (3), neither generating nor generated (4) where 1 = the numbers one, two, three, and five, 2 = the number four, 3 = the numbers six, eight, and nine, 4 = the number seven. See Theo of Smyrna, Exposition of Mathematical Matters 103. 1-16. Such schemata were repeated in Latin texts and thereby transmitted to Eriugena and others: see Marius Victorinus, To Candidus 8. 1-21, Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio I. 5. 16, Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology VII. 738, Boethius, Commentary on Aristotle's Categories I. 169Bff. The square of opposition in antiquity has been discussed by P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, Paris, 1968 148ff., Libera, A. de, 'La sémiotique d'Aristote', in Structures élémentaires de la signification, ed. F. Nef, Brussels, 1976, pp. 28-55. The square of opposition in Eriugena has been examined most recently by D'Onofrio [1990] and Beierwaltes [1990] 17-38. An analogous schema applied to propositions was also traditional and certainly known to Eriugena; see Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology IV. 400-1.

(9) See Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology IV. 352-4.

(10) I. 441A-442B. Eriugena himself seems to envisage a diagram in the form:

Eriugena's Square of Opposition

The notation A, B ... 1, 2 . .. is not provided by Eriugena.

(11) I. 442A--B, II. 525A, II. 526C-527A, II. 527C. The fourfold schema is repeated later in Periphyseon but with no additions to the basic doctrine. Cf. III. 688C-689A, IV. 743B--C, V. 1019A--B.

From: Stephen Gersh: Structure, sign, and ontology from Johannes Scottus Eriugena to Anselm of Canterbury. A reply to Marenbon - in: Reading Plato, tracing Plato. From Ancient commentary to medieval reception - Aldershot, Ashgate 2005, Essay XIII, pp. 125-126 (some notes omitted).

THE MEANING OF NATURA IN THE PERIPHYSEON

(in preparation)

THE FOUR DIVISION OF NATURA IN THE PERIPHYSEON

The Periphyseon begins by setting out a fourfold division of universal nature (...) into: (1) that which is not created and creates, (2) that which is created and creates, (3) that which is created and does not create, and (4) that which is not created and does not create. God, as creator, constitutes (1); the primordial causes -- which are both like Platonic Ideas and the Stoic seminal reasons Eriugena learnt about in Augustine's Literal Commentary on Genesis -- make up (2); (3) is the created world of men, animals and things and (4), like (1), is identified with God, but God as the Final Cause to which all things return. The underlying course of universal history, seen as the progress from (1) to (4), is described in the five books of the work, which takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil. Book I is mainly devoted to showing that God does not belong to any of Aristotle's ten categories. Drawing on pseudo-Dionysius' negative theology, Eriugena argues that God does not even belong to the first category, that of ousia (substance or essence) as Augustine had held. The remaining four books are structured round an exegesis of the story of creation and fall in Genesis, in which Eriugena discovers not only an account of divisions (2) and (3) but also that of the return of all things at the end of time to the uncreated and creating God of (4).

From: John Marenbon: Introduction to: John Scottus Eriugena and Anselm of Canterbury by Stephen Gersh - in: J. Marenbon (ed.) - Medieval philosophy - Routledge history of philosohy - Vol. II, Chapter 6 - New York, Routledge, 1998, pp. 120-121.

CATEGORIES IN THE PERIPHYSEON

Categories are discussed in an Appendix to Book I (462D 8 - 524B 12): numbers are that of columns in Heinrich Joseph Floss (ed) - Joannis Scoti opera quae supersunt omnia in: Jacques-Paul Migne (ed.) - Patrologia Latina - vol. 122, Paris 1853, coll. 439-1022 and are reproduced in modern editions and translations.

Index of Book I: Introduction: Definition of physis-Natura (441A- 1 - 441B 4); Chapter I: Peri physeos merismou; Chapter II: De natura creante et non creata (451C 11 - 462D 8); Appendix: (462D 8 - 524B 12).

"The first book of Eriugena's Periphyseon can and should be read as a text within the tradition of commentary on the Categories. Although the object of Eriugena's remarks is the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem, the paraphrase of the Categories that, in the era of Constantius and Theodosius, originated in the school of Themistius, his treatment of predication is altogether systematic and is at least as conformable to Aristotle's text as is the commentary of Ammonius. (1) That the Categoriae decem is a text derivative from that of Aristotle, Eriugena well understands. (2)

Since there is no evidence than, apart from the Categoriae decem, Eriugena enjoyed access to the Corpus Aristotelicum, it seems that he could not have brought, as did Ammonius, the interpretative weight of such works as the Metaphysics to bear on his understanding of the Categories. Thus, for Eriugena, but unlike Ammonius, matter has no place in the category of substance.

Since Eriugena, is treating the categories, upholds it as a cardinal principle that all the categories, considered in themselves, are incorporeal, (3) he already has grounds for thinking that corporeal beings, with their matter, are at least as marginal as Ammonius had understood them. Believing, as he does, that substance -- in itself -- is incorporeal, Eriugena maintains that whatever inhere in substance is likewise incorporeal. (4) So the investigation of substance, for Eriugena, requires no investigation of matter.

As Eriugena would have it, the category of substance does include genera, species, and individuals but, because no substance is extended, no substance may be corporeal. The contents of the category of substance are, therefore, purely formal. As being purely formal, they are completely immaterial."

(1) The text of Categoriae decem is in: Aristoteles latinus I, Categoriae vel praedicamenta, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, Bruges/Paris 1961.

(2) Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae periphyseon. De divuisione naturae (Liber primus), ed. I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Dublin 1968, 493A

(3) ibid., 478D-479A.

(4) ibid., 478D-479A.

From: Jack C. Marler - Ammonius and Eriugena: On matter and predication - in: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Alexander Fidora, Pia Antolic (eds.) - Erkenntnis und Wissenschaft. Knowledge and Science / Probleme der Epistemologie in der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Problems of Epistemology in Medieval Philosophy - Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2004, p. 19.

Annotated Bibliography of the Philosophical Work of Eriugena (First Part)

Annotated Bibliography of the Philosophical Work of Eriugena (Second Part)