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The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages

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John Scotus Eriugena, or 'John the Scot', was in Irish monk and Philosopher who worked in 8th century Ireland. Surprisingly from this backwater in Dark Age Europe, one of the finest minds in Western philosophy emerged.

Eriugena is something of a mystery. Little is known about his life, his education, and of his influence. Nevertheless Moran in this monograph manages to untangle fact from fiction and explains his very complex philosophy in wonderful detail.

Eriugena was a highly sophisticated idealist. In this sense he believed Mind, or rather God, was the highest reality and all comes from this. However, Eriugena was also very daring and speculative. He argued God was essentially 'nothing', from which everything comes into existence. By creating the universe God also in a strange way creates himself; a view strangely consonant with the ideas from modern physics which seem to suggest our universe emerged from a big bang and also all matter comes from particles emerging from the vacuum of space. He also argued the human mind is essentially creative of all reality, anticipating later philosophers like Kant, Berkely and Descartes who held human conciousness to be essential in the way the world is constituted for us.

Moran, himself a Professional Philosopher, explains Eriugena's system and influences in good detail, and was one of the reasons I decided to study Philosophy.