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Eriugena
The 9th-century Irish scholar Johannes Scottus Eriugena's main work, Periphyseon (de devisione naturae) is a remarkable attempt at an intellectual synthesis between the Bible and neoplatonist philosophy. O'Meara has brought together the results of the most recent research in this study of Eriugena's Irish background, life in France, and career as a teacher, controversialist, translator, and poet. The book also contains an extended and careful summary of the Periphyseon and the first translation into English of the Homily on the Prologue to St. John's Gospel
- GenresPhilosophyTheology
237 pages, Hardcover
First published July 14, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 15, 2017
This essay is very short and suffers much from what Jacques Maritain's St. Thomas Aquinas suffers from. The author spends a great deal of time arguing the relevance of the subject without actually demonstrating the relevance or explaining (even briefly) Eriugena's thought.
The opening chapters on the life of Eriugena are more historiography than history. O'Meara relies heavily on Maieul Cappuyns' work from 1933, which is nearly impossible to find. He only disagrees wiht Cappuyns when Cappuyns minimizes or undervalues the contributions of Irish education to Eriugena's scholarship. But it is hard to determine how much of this is because of some latent nationalism.
To be fair, the book was published by the Cultural Relations Committee of the Government of Ireland with the express "aim of this series is to give a broad, informed survey of Irish life and culture, past and present" (p. iv) and the Epilogue makes that painfully clear with quotations from Copleston and Gilson about the importance and genius of Eriugena: "Standing like a lofty rock in the midst of a plain." (from Copleston, on page 63) or "an immense metaphysical and theological epic, hardly believable..." (from Gilson, on page 69).
I should remind Professor O'Meara that it is a two-edged sword. Either Eriugena was a genius of the first order, or the product of sophisticated Irish education. It is difficult (but not impossible) to have it both ways
The opening chapters on the life of Eriugena are more historiography than history. O'Meara relies heavily on Maieul Cappuyns' work from 1933, which is nearly impossible to find. He only disagrees wiht Cappuyns when Cappuyns minimizes or undervalues the contributions of Irish education to Eriugena's scholarship. But it is hard to determine how much of this is because of some latent nationalism.
To be fair, the book was published by the Cultural Relations Committee of the Government of Ireland with the express "aim of this series is to give a broad, informed survey of Irish life and culture, past and present" (p. iv) and the Epilogue makes that painfully clear with quotations from Copleston and Gilson about the importance and genius of Eriugena: "Standing like a lofty rock in the midst of a plain." (from Copleston, on page 63) or "an immense metaphysical and theological epic, hardly believable..." (from Gilson, on page 69).
I should remind Professor O'Meara that it is a two-edged sword. Either Eriugena was a genius of the first order, or the product of sophisticated Irish education. It is difficult (but not impossible) to have it both ways
September 8, 2016
O'Meara can explain Plotinus. There is nothing for which he is not qualified.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews