This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Body and material substance in the 'Periphyseon' of John Scottus Eriugena Heber-Percy, Colin The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Oct. 2021 Body and Material Substance in the Periphyseon of John Scottus Eriugena by Colin Heber-Percy PhD THESIS DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY KING'S COLLEGE LONDON UNIVERSITY OF LONDON MAY 2006 .0105 UlT, / Body and Material Substance in the Periphyseon of John Scottus Eriugena An Abstract It has been argued (by Richard Sorabji among others) that in the Periphyseon John Scottus Eriugena (? 800 - ?877) presents an immaterialist theory of corporeal substance.I argue that as it stands this claim requires qualification. At Points in the Periphyseon Eriugena's theory of body presupposesa material substrate. In Part One of this study I aim to show - by an analysis of Eriugena's definitions of form, substance,and matter - that the immaterialist and substrate theories, although prima facie inconsistent with one another, combine to form a single unified theory of body understood `dialectically. ' In Part Two I argue that, by mapping the philosophical notions of processio and reditus onto the Christian doctrines of Fall and Resurrection, Eriugena develops a theory of body according to which diversity is illusory (punishment for sin), and the `created' reality (man's pre-lapsarian state) is radical simplicity. The Fall is a fall into diversity, into effect; the Resurrection is a return to simplicity, to the Cause. Eriugena has primarily been thought of, both by his contemporaries and modern commentators, as a metaphysician, a liberal arts master, a Neoplatonist. Without denying that he is all or any of these, it is the aim of this study to show that his body his masterpiece - and in particular theory of - serves a practical purpose: to bring fallen human nature back into alignment with God. Through a radical de-historicizing of the doctrir:.es of Fall and Resurrection, and a dialectical understanding of the relation that obtains between Creator and creation, Eriugena presents a theory of body and material substance that is at once wholly ascetic and profoundly optimistic. 2 CONTENTS Part One 0 Introduction 6 i) Aims and Objectives 6 ii) The Problem 7 0 Chapter One : Form 13 Introduction 13 I Two Forms 14 A) Qualitative Form 14 i) Are QFs Bodily? 15 B) Substance and Substantial Form 17 i) SF and Body 21 ii) Body: Two Descriptions 24 II Substance and Accident 28 III Substance and the Contemplating Mind 35 i) Substantial non-being 39 ii) Virtus, Vis and Potestas 41 Conclusion 45 . Chapter Two : Matter 47 Introduction 47 i) Creation and Formless Matter 47 I The Problem : Two Theories 51 A) Eriugena's Immaterialist Theory 51 i) Accidentium Quandam Compositionem 52 ii) The Categories 53 B) Eriugena's Substrate Theory 58 60 i) Materia Informis -a definition ii) Recapitulation 65 II The Quantum Solution 66 III Dialectic : How Body is Grouped Intellectually 74 i) Conclusion 80 IV Two Objections 81 i) Individuation 82 ii) Visibility 90 3 Part Two " Introduction 96 " Chapter Three : The Fall 99 Introduction 99 Part One - The Fall I Two Possibilities 103 i) There is no Fall 104 ii) The Fall is identical to Creation 106 II Matter and Evil 110 III Matter as Punishment 114 IV Two Bodies, Two Creations 116 i) Conclusion 120 Part Two - Paradise Introduction 122 IA Tale of Two Tree, : The Fall as Epistemic Crisis 123 i) The Gnoston 124 II The Six Parts of Man 130 III Conclusion 134 i) The Fall as Guide for Living 136 is ii) There no Fall -a reprise 137 " Chapter Four : The Return 142 Part OZe - Death and Resurrection Introduction 142 I The Return 145 II Death and Dissolution 152 i) The Resurrection of the Body 154 ii) Death and Ignorance 159 iii) The Scope of the Return 164 III The Incarnation. 166 IV Summary 171 Unification Part Two - Return as Introduction 172 I Unification 173 4 0 Conclusion 186 i) Contemplation 187 0 Bibliography 190 000 ABBREVIATIONS I Sheldon-Williams I. P. (ed. and trans. ), Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon Liber Primus (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae vol. VII, Dublin, 1968) II Sheldon-Williams I. P. (ed. and trans.), Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon Liber Secundus (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae vol. IX, Dublin, 1972) III Sheldon-Williams I. P. (ed. and trans.), Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon Liber Tertius (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae vol. XI, Dublin, 1981) IV Jeauneau,Edouard (ed.), 0' Meara, J. J., Sheldon-Williams, I. P. (trans.) Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon Liber Quartus (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae vol. XIII, Dublin, 1995) V Jeaun.eau, Edouard (ed.) CCCM CLXV Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon Liber Quintus (Turnholti, 2003) CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis CSEL Cofpus Scriptorium Ecclesiasticerum Latinorum CCSL Ccrpus Christianorum Series Latina MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PG Patrologia Graeca PL Patrologia Latina w I 5 PART ONE Introduction i) Aims and Objectives: In its final analysis, the Periphyseon' of John Scottus Eriugena is an extended meditation upon the relation between God and creation. It is the aim of this study to offer a detailed examination of the role of body and material substance within that relationship. In Part One we shall attempt to demonstrate that Eriugena's various accounts of body and material substance can be taken to express a single coherent thesis. In Chapters One and Two we shall look at form and matter respectively. By the end of Part One it is hoped that we shall have a resilient model of Eriugenian body. Part Two shall then be taken up with an attempt to illustrate the role played by the body in the unfolding of Eriugena's broader metaphysics and theology. Chapter Three studies the role of body in the Fall; and Chapter Four ponders the death of the body, its resurrection and the return of human nature to God. The problems under discussion in Part One are, in a sense,internal to Eriugena's metaphysical schema. The problems that shall form the focus of Part Two are, as it were, external to the theory itself: is it now possible to show that the account of body developed in Part One is consistent with the incontrovertible teaching of Holy Scripture? In this sensethe present study mirrors the form of the Periphyseon itself, being into lion's roughly divisible two parts - the metaphysical groundwork occupies the ' For the title of the Periphyseon, see Sheldon-Williams, I. P., "The Title of Eriugena's Periphyseon," Studia Patristica, 3 (Berlin, 1961) pp. 297-302 6 share of the opening sections; the later work consists in showing how the theory of body reached in Part One finds endorsement through scriptural exegesis. ii) The Problem: Influenced by his freshly absorbed Greek sources, the relationship between God and creation is conceived by Eriugena in terms of a Procession from God and a Return to 2 God. So, for example, in the Preface to his translation of Maximus the Confessor's Ambigua, Eriugena claims that Maximus reveals what sort of thing Procession is, namely a multiplication of the divine goodness through all the things that are, descending from the highest to the lowest, firstly from the general essenceof all things, then through the most general genera, next through the more general genera, then the more specific species to the most specific species through differences and properties. And likewise, what sort of thing Reversion of the divine goodness is, namely a congregation, through the same stages from the infinite and multiplex variety of those things that are to the simplest unity of all things, which is in God and is God; so that God might be all things, and all things might be God. 3 Even at this early stage in our investigation it is worth noting that the `movement language' of procession and return, is translatable, according to Eriugena, into language that does not imply movement: multiplication and congregation. This `static' rendering of classical Neoplatonic metaphysics will prove crucial to our analysis in Part Two of the Fall and Return as `alignments' of the will and the intellectual, perceptive faculties rather than as historical processes. 2 See Jeauneau, E, "The Neoplatonic Themes of Processio and Reditus in Eriugena, " Dionysius 15 (1991). For a clear and unequivocal expression of the view that the Periphyseon is an attempt to frame a new metaphysical structure for understanding the relation between God and man, see Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989) p.