ERIUGENA, ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC

AND THE CREATION

john marenbon

The first part of my paper examines Eriugenas knowledge of the tra-

dition of Aristotelian logic. It shows that the logical works available in
his time belonged mainly to a Roman tradition of material available
in Latin before Boethius ; especially important to Eriugena was the
Categoriae Decem, a paraphrase of the Categories from the circle of
Themistius which was misattributed to Augustine. He also very prob-
ably knew Porphyrys Isagoge (in Boethiuss translation) and was influ-
enced by it in presenting creation in terms of the hierarchy of genera
and species. This topic is treated in the second part of the paper. I
consider what Eriugena can mean when he understands the Hexaem-
eron in these dialectical terms and argue that he is referring, not to
the creation of individual animals and humans, but to that of their
genera and species. But for Eriugena, as a realist, once these univer-
sals are created, the essential work of creation is done. This extreme
realism is a reason, I argue, for nuancing the penetrating account by
Christophe Erismann of Eriugena as an immanent realist. Unlike
other exponents of this Aristotelian tradition, Eriugena allows primary
substances and accidents (individual things and their attributes) to be
entirely swallowed up by their species and genera.

The last paper I wrote specifically on Eriugena and logic was, like
this one, based on a talk I had given to a conference organized
by the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies. It was
my very first academic conference, nearly thirty five years ago,
and I took the opportunity to develop a line of argument which
ended in my declaring that Eriugena was not a philosopher. It
was as if someone had announced to an assembly of pious Muslims
that Muhammad was not a prophet. My bluntness left Edouard
Jeauneau who had spent so much time and effort discussing my
research with me, and to whom I owed this premature invitation
in an embarrassing position, and so I am especially glad to have

Proceedings of the International Conference on Eriugenian Studies in honor of E. Jeau-

neau, ed. by W. Otten, M. I. Allen, IPM, 68 (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 349-368.
DOI 10.1484/M.IPM-EB.1.102067
350 john marenbon

been given this opportunity to make amends : in part to Eriugena

himself, and very fully to his greatest living exponent, to whom
this volume is dedicated. The paper begins by looking at early
medieval Aristotelianism in general, and Eriugenas relation to it.
Then it goes on to examine exactly how this tradition is used in
his discussion of creation. This juxtaposition will raise questions
in that dangerous area I trod so foolishly at the beginning of my
career, but here they will be handled more eirenically.

Early Medieval Aristotelianism1

The Aristotle of early medieval Aristotelianism is, of course,
Aristotle the logician. Aristotles non-logical works became part
of the curriculum in the Latin West only from 1200 onwards, and
indirect knowledge of his ideas outside logic was limited. Early
medieval logic is thus, one might be inclined to say, the logica
vetus. But this description is misleading. The title logica vetus
was indeed given to that part of the university logical curriculum
which was seen as old, because it was already being studied before
the whole of Aristotles logic became available. But it corresponds
only very imprecisely to the texts actually used by medieval logi-
cians before the age of the universities. The logica vetus properly
comprises just three works : Aristotles Categories and On Interpre-
tation, and the Isagoge or Introduction to the Categories written
by Porphyry, which had been a standard part of the Aristotelian
curriculum since ancient times. Thirteenth-century manuscripts
also sometimes include, as a hang-over from the twelfth-century
curriculum, two of Boethiuss textbooks De topicis differentiis
and De divisione, but from about 1300 onwards they are very
rarely included.

1 This first, background section is a brief digest of material I have pre-

sented in more detail elsewhere, especially in The Latin Tradition of Logic

to 1100, in Handbook of the History of Logic. 2. Medieval and Renaissance Logic,
ed. D. M. Gabbay and J. Woods (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2008), pp. 1-63 and
La logique en occident latin (ca.780 ca. 1150) : le programme des tudes et
ses enjeux, in Ad notitiam ignoti : LOrganon dans la translatio studiorum
lpoque dAlbert le Grand, ed. J. Brumberg-Chaumont (Studia artistarum 37)
(Turnhout : Brepols, 2013), pp. 137-91. Full references to primary and second-
ary works can be found there.
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 351

Compare this very small collection of texts with that given

in Table One, below, which shows the logical curriculum current
from the late tenth to the end of the twelfth century.
Table One
The standard logical curriculum, from c. 980 c. 1200

Porphyry Isagoge (trans. Boethius)

Aristotle Categories (trans. Boethius)
Aristotle On Interpretation (trans. Boethius)
Boethius De topicis differentiis
Boethius De divisione
Boethius De syllogismis categoricis
Boethius De syllogismis hypotheticis
[In standard use : Boethiuss commentaries on Isagoge (2, esp. the 2nd) ; Cate-
gories ; On Interpretation (2). Also in use, Boethiuss commentary on Ciceros
Topics ; Marius Victorinus, De definitionibus)]

This curriculum, though Aristotelian in its origins, is so strongly

influenced by Boethius that it should most properly be described
as Boethian logic.2 Not only does Boethius provide the transla-
tions in which Porphyrys and Aristotles texts are read, and the
commentaries which bring to bear a wealth of late ancient think-
ing in order to understand them ; he is also author of the logical
textbooks, which means that this curriculum, unlike the logica
vetus of university teaching and manuscripts, covered the whole
of logic : both the elements of arguments (predicables, substance
and accident words, propositions) in the Isagoge, Categories and On
Interpretation, and the methods of argument by syllogistic and by
topical inference in the Boethian textbooks.
Boethius had taken a particular approach to the position of
Aristotelian logic within philosophy as a whole (indeed, within
philosophy and theology as will become clear later) ; a position
which was all the more influential for being, in an important
sense, misunderstood. More than many of his Greek contemporar-
ies, Boethius followed Porphyrys way of syncretizing Plato and

2 There is an excellent presentation of the logical curriculum at this time

in L. Minio-Paluello, Nuovi impulsi allo studio della logica : la seconda fase
della riscoperta di Aristotele e di Boezio, in La Scuola nellOccidente latino
dellalto medioevo (Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sullalto
medioevo 19) (Spoleto : Centro di studi sullalto medioevo, 1972), I, pp. 743-66.
352 john marenbon

Aristotle, by supposing that they each had dealt with different

subject matters Aristotle the sensible world, Plato intelligible
reality, and so their apparently opposing views are not in fact dis-
cordant. Plato is regarded as the supreme philosopher, but Aristotle
should be studied in his own terms. Aristotelian logic, then, is not
to be Platonized, but rather found its own place within a Platonic
curriculum. But early medieval thinkers hardly knew about, and
certainly did not usually think about, this wider Platonic cur-
riculum. They simply got on with doing Aristotelian-style logic,
and developing the branch of Aristotelian metaphysics, seman-
tics and philosophy of mind sketched out in the Categories and
On Interpretation.
The Aristotelianism which Eriugena knew was not, however,
that of Boethian logic, but rather a different sort of indirect
Aristotelianism. Before the time of Boethius, there had been var-
ious attempts to bring Aristotelian logic to a Latin-reading pub-
lic. These textbooks constitute what might be called a Roman
logic. Its character was varied. Some of the Latin writers, such
as Cicero and Marius Victorinus, tried to link logic very closely
to rhetoric. The Topics a work of which Cicero made his own,
highly simplified, oratory-centred version is seen as Aristo-
tles central logical work, and other texts, such as the Isagoge,
as introductory to it. Other Latin writers before Boethius were
more simply concerned to explain Aristotles doctrine : in partic-
ular, Apuleius, whose Periermenias provides an introduction to
syllogistic unremarkable except for its eccentric vocabulary ; and
the unnamed author of the Categoriae decem, a parapahrase com-
mentary which succeeds in providing an uncomplicated introduc-
tion to Aristotles theory of the Categories. These works were
used by a succession of Latin encyclopaedists, from Martianus
Capella, through Cassiodorus, to Isidore of Seville. It was this
Roman logic (see Table Two for a summary) which was the main
source material for logic from the time of Charlemagne until well
into the tenth century. Boethian logic was not unknown : a few
ninth and tenth-century manuscripts centuries contain the Cate-
gories in Boethiuss translation, On Interpretation, and Boethiuss
commentaries (though those of the first commentary on the Isa-
goge and the second commentary on On Interpretation are very
rare). But the Roman tradition was predominant.
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 353

Table Two
The Roman Tradition of logic

(a) The rhetorical branch

Cicero Topics
Marius Victorinus Commentary on Ciceros Topics (lost) [Boethius, Commen-
tary on Ciceros Topics]
Marius Victorinus De definitionibus [in Middle Ages, attributed to Boethius]
Porphyry Isagoge (trans. Marius Victorinus)
(b) The Aristotelian branch
Apuleius Peri hermeneias
Categoriae Decem [circle of Themistius ; in Middle Ages attributed to Augus-
tine]
(c) The Encyclopaedists
Martianus Capella De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii [using Victorinus and
Apuleius]
Cassiodorus Institutiones II.3.1-18 [using Victorinus and Boethius]
Isidore Etymologiae II.25-31 [using Cassiodorus, Victorinus, Categoriae
Decem, Martianus Capella]

Within this tradition, the two most prominent, identifiable writ-

ers on logic in Charlemagnes time emphasized different aspects
of the material. Theodulf of Orleans was especially interested in
logic in much the sense it has today, as a method of constructing
and judging arguments. 3 For this purpose he turned to Apuleiuss
treatise on syllogistic. For Alcuin, by contrast, writing his De
dialectica, the earliest medieval Latin logical treatise, the central
text indeed, the only real logical text which he uses, as opposed
to the encyclopaedists Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville is the
Categoriae Decem.4 The Categoriae Decem takes from the Categories
a subject matter as much metaphysical as logical. In the Catego-
ries, Aristotle laid a foundation for logic by classifying, according
to what they signified, the terms that are subjects or predicates
in an assertoric sentence. Although he does not claim that the ten
categories he distinguishes are an exhaustive or uniquely accu-
rate classification of all things, his text certainly lends itself to
being interpreted in this way, and the Categoriae Decem moves in

3 Theodulf shows his interest in logic in one, long chapter (IV, 23) of the

Opus Caroli regis contra Synodum (Libri carolini), ed. A. Freeman (Monu-
menta Germaniae Historica, Legum sectio III, Concilia 2, suppl. 1), (Han-
nover : Hahn, 1998), a work which he is now known to have written.
4 Alcuins De dialectica is printed in PL 101, 951-76.
354 john marenbon

this direction. The general framework within which the account of

each of the ten Categories is placed does, very clearly, present a
metaphysical scheme, in which a distinction is made between four
sorts of basic entities : primary substances (neither about nor in
a subject) ; secondary substances, that is to say universals gen-
era or species (about a subject) ; particular accidents (in a subject)
and universal accidents (in a subject and about a subject). (So pal-
pably metaphysical indeed is the doctrine of the Categories that
the greatest of Arabic logicians, Avicenna, thought that the text
should not be treated in logic but belonged to metaphysics.)
Alcuin was drawn to the metaphysical doctrine of the Catego-
ries, as transmitted by the Categoriae Decem, because of just one
particular aspect of it. He knew that in his De trinitate Augustine
had used the ten categories as a way of examining the distinction
between God and his creation : only the first of the ten Catego-
ries, essence, may be predicated of God, although the category of
relation can be used, in an adapted way, to talk about the Trin-
ity. Alcuin gave especial weight to these ideas when he abbrevi-
ated and adapted this work of Augustines to make his own De
fide sanctae Trinitatis. Elsewhere, he comments explicitly on their
importance.5 It is probably this connection he made between
Augustine, the doctrine of the Categories and talking about God
which explains why he attributed or, at least, publicized the
attribution of the Categoriae Decem to Augustine, and why he
made this treatise the main source for his De dialectica.

Eriugena and the Roman Tradition of Aristotelian Logic

Eriugena fits very clearly into the Alcuinian tradition. Despite
his incomparably greater sophistication as a thinker, the Catego-
riae Decem dominates the presentation of logic in the Periphyseon
as much as it does in Alcuins De dialectica, and for the same rea-
son : that it allows him to explain how God differs from his cre-
ation. For Eriugena, however, the difference is even sharper than

5 In his dedicatory letter to the De fide sanctae Trinitatis, Alcuin says that,
according to Augustine, the most profound questions about the Trinity can-
not be explained except through Aristotles Categories : see Epistolae Karolini
Aevi II, ed. E. Dmmler (Monumenta Germaniae Historica) (Berlin : Weid-
mann, 1895), p. 415.
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 355

for Augustine and Alcuin, since in Eriugenas view even essence

(or ousia as he usually calls it) cannot be predicated of God, who,
properly speaking, is not.6
What other logical works did Eriugena know ? He was certainly
very familiar with the presentation of logic in Martianus Capellas
De nuptiis, on which he wrote glosses.7 He may well have used
Boethiuss Commentary on Ciceros Topics another of the texts
in the Roman tradition.8 There is no compelling evidence that he

6 For a more general discussion of this theme, see my From the Circle of

Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic, theology and philosophy in the early Mid-
dle Ages (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd series, 15)
(Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1981). There have been various
studies of the Periphsyeon and the Categories written since : see S. Katz, Two
Views on John Scottus Eriugenas Use of the Aristotelian Categories, Me-
dieval Perspectives 4-5 (1989) : 97 110 ; M. Von Perger, Eriugenas Adapta-
tion der Aristotelischen Kategorienlehre, in Logik und Theologie. Das Organon
im arabischen und im lateinischen Mittelalter, ed. D. Perler and U. Rudolph
(Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 84) (Leiden : Brill,
2005), pp. 239 303, at pp. 239-64 ; C. Kavanagh, The Influence of Maxi-
mus the Confessor on Eriugenas Treatment of Aristotles Categories, Amer-
ican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2005) : 567-96 ; M.M. Wilband, Inge-
nium veterum mirabile laudet : Eriugenas reception of the Aristotelian categories
and their role in the Periphyseon, Dalhousie University (Canada), MA Thesis,
2008. The subject is also studied by Christophe Erismann : see below, n. 12.
7 See Marenbon, Latin Tradition (above, n. 1), pp. 27-29 ; Von Perger,

Eriugenas Adaptation (above, n. 6), pp. 264-301 (with new edition of the
glosses on logic).
8 In Latin Tradition (above, n. 1), p. 30, I argue that he must have

known this work, because, at Periphyseon I 491C-D, CCCM 161 : 69. ll. 2113-
20, he identifies enthymemes as being arguments of the form not (p and not-
q) ; p ; therefore q an idea which is not found in the encyclopaedic accounts
or in Cicero himself, but is proposed in Boethiuss commentary. This parallel
is, however, less direct than I made it seem. Eriugena describes the syllogism
of an enthymeme as one derived from what cannot be posited together at the
same time, and he gives as examples arguments which one should not rep-
resent, as I did, as propositional logic, but as conclusions which follow when
predicates are affirmed or negated of an indefinite subject. He gives, in fact,
three forms : -(1) It is not both a and not-b ; it is a ; therefore it is b ; (2) It
is not both a and b ; it is a ; therefore it is not-b ; (3) It is not both not-a and
b ; it is a ; therefore it is b. (He is wrong, though, to think of (3) as a valid
argument form.) Boethius too, although he is dealing with material which
comes, ultimately, from Stoic propositional logic, is thinking in the same way
about predicates affirmed or negated of the same subject. He gives just the
example of form (1), and he comments that, although any sort of argument
356 john marenbon

was acquainted with any of Boethiuss Aristotelian commentar-

ies or with his translation of Aristotles own text of the Catego-
ries (a great rarity at the time). He does, at just one point in the
Periphyseon, when talking about possibilities as items not included
within the ten Categories, refer his readers to On Interpretation.9
That work does indeed discuss possibility, but the reference is too
general for it to be reliable evidence for Eriugenas knowledge of
the text : Eriugena certainly would not be the first writer to refer
his readers, with a knowing gesture, to a text he in fact knew of
only by report.
Among the important logical texts current in Eriugenas time,
there remains the Isagoge. Everyone assumes that Eriugena knew
this work, in Boethiuss translation. Perhaps he did it was cer-
tainly available at the time. But there are no explicit references
or exact textual parallels which confirm this surmise. The stron-
gest case is that to be made on the grounds that Eriugena uses
the underlying metaphysical theory of the Isagoge in talking about
creation. The case is not completely conclusive, since he might
have absorbed this underlying metaphysics indirectly, especially

that is found might be called an enthymeme (a conception of the mind, he

explains ; Eriugena calls it (ll. 2113-14) a common conception of the mind),
these are called enthymemata because their brevity makes them particularly
striking examples of such invention : see In Topica Ciceronis V (in Ciceronis
opera omnia V.1, ed. J.C. Orelli [Turin : Orelli, Fuesslini et soc., 1833], pp.
269-395, at p. 364, ll. 25-39). Catherine Kavanagh (Eriugenian Develop-
ments of Ciceronian Topical Theory, in Medieval and Renaissance Humanism.
Rhetoric, representation and reform, ed. S. Gersh and B. Roest (Brills Studies
in Intellectual History 115) (Leiden and Boston : Brill, 2003), pp. 1-30) points
out, possibly too insistently, the importance of topical theory for Eriugena.
She mentions Boethiuss commentary on Cicero, but she turns mostly to his
De topicis differentiis for her comparisons, without committing herself to the
claim that Eriugena knew either of these texts. In fact, everything that is
known about the textual tradition of De topicis differentiis suggests that it
was unknown until a century after Eriugenas death (See Marenbon, Latin
Tradition (above, n.1), pp. 38-39), but Eriugena may well have gained this
knowledge from the commentary on Cicero.
9 Periphyseon II 597B-C (CCCM 162 : 98-99, ll. 2357-2363) : Impossibilia

uero sola uirtute impossibilitatis continentur ; eorum enim esse est impos-
sibilitas in aliqua re intellectuali seu sensibili apparere. De quibus quisquis
plene uoluerit percipere, legat Peri ermenias (hoc est De interpretatione) Aris-
totelem, in qua aut de his solis, hoc est possibilibus et impossibilibus, aut
maxime a philosopho disputatum est.
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 357

through Maximus.10 But it leads neatly to the central theme of the

present volume, and to the second part of this paper.

The Story of Creation and the Hierarchy of Genera and Species

Creation occurs as a theme in the Periphyseon in both a broader
and a narrower way. Eriugenas discussion of the second and third
divisions of universal nature that which is created and creates
(the primordial causes), and that which is created and does not
create is a treatment of creation in the narrower sense, of the
story of creation : the establishment, understandable in one way
as a temporal event, of the universe by God, as recounted in the
opening of Genesis. In the wider sense, however, creation is also
treated in Book I of the Periphyseon, where Eriugena is examining
that which creates and is not created. Although he is not yet com-
menting here on the story of Genesis, he is considering God as cre-
ator God, therefore, in relation to his creation ; though creation
is not here regarded as if it were an event in time.
Eriugenas knowledge and use of the Aristotelian logical tradi-
tion is, arguably, linked to his treatment of creation in two ways,
corresponding to these two different, narrower and broader senses
of the term. Eriugenas presentation of the story of creation can
be linked to his understanding of genera and species. And as
will be discussed in the next section his interpretation of the
Categoriae Decem, and especially of the first Category, ousia is
linked to creation understood in the broad sense.
It is well known that Eriugena explains creation in the nar-
rower sense as a movement from genera to more and more spe-
cialized species : a characteristically logical division, using terms
of decreasing generality so as to produce a neatly-ordered hierar-
chy of things, is made to describe the process of creation. Near
the beginning of Book IV, Eriugena says that Gods command

10 In the preface to his translation of Maximuss Ambigua ad Iohannem, ed.

E. Jeauneau, CCSG 18 : 4 ll. 27-32, Eriugena explains how this text shows
qualis sit processio, id est multiplicatio, diuinae bonitatis per omnia quae
sunt, a summo usque deorsum, per generalem omnium essentiam primo, dein-
ceps per genera generalissima, deinde per genera generaliora, inde per species
specialiores usque ad species specialissimas per differentias proprietatesque
descendens It is exactly this element of Porphyrys thinking which figures
prominently in the Periphyseon.
358 john marenbon

(Genesis 1 :24) that the earth bring forth a living soul in its kind
(genus) should be read to say that it should produce openly in
genera and species what it had in a hidden way causally in its
causes and reasons. Eriugena continues :
And see how divine eloquence shows us the way in which the order
of natural things came about. It says, Let the earth bring forth a
living soul in its genus (in genere suo). First it set down the genus,
because in it all the species are contained and are one, and it is
divided into them, and is multiplied through general forms and
most special species. And it also show this when it says, The cat-
tle, the reptiles and the beasts of the earth according to their spe-
cies. And through this it is understood that the art, dialectic as
it is called, which divides genera into species and resolves species
into genera, is not made by human contrivance but was created in
the nature of things by the author of all the arts, and was discov-
ered by wise men .11

Eriugena is clearly claiming something special here, but what ?

According to Werner Beierwaltes :
Eriugena is convinced that dialectic is not primarily a human
invention, but is grounded in being itself. Being therefore pos-
sesses a dialectical structure that can be adequately translated
into dialectic as a methodology.12

11 Periphyseon IV 748C-9A, CCCM 164 : 12 ll. 272-88 : [Quoniam itaque

in hac omnium communi terra omnia animalia secundum corpus et ani-

mam causaliter et primordialiter creata sunt, quid mirum si diuino prae-
cepto iubeatur animam uiuentem (hoc est animal uiuens) producere, ut quod
causaliter occulte in causis et rationibus habebat, hoc in genera et species
aperte produceret ?] Et uide quomodo naturalem rerum consequentiam diui-
num nobis manifestat eloquium. Producat, inquit, terra animam uiuen-
tem in genere suo. Primo genus posuit, quoniam in ipso omnes species et
continentur et unum sunt, et in eas diuiditur, et multiplicatur per generales
formas specialissimasque species. Quod etiam ostendit dicens : Iumenta et
reptilia et bestias terrae secundum species suas. Ac per hoc intelligitur quod
ars illa, quae diuidit genera in species, et species in genera resoluit, quae-
que dicitur, non ab humanis machinationibus sit facta, sed in
natura rerum ab auctore omnium artium, quae uere artes sunt, condita, et a
sapientibus inuenta ....
12 Language and its Object. Reflexions on Eriugenas valuation of the

function and capacities of language, in Jean Scot crivain, ed. G.-H. Allard
(Cahiers dtudes mdivales. Cahier spcial 1) (Montreal and Paris : Bel-
larmin and Vrin, 1986), pp. 209 28, at pp. 220-21 ; cited in C. Erismann,
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 359

If this were all to which Eriugenas approach to dialectic

amounted, then it would be unremarkable. Aristotle himself was
sure that the division of things into genera and species was not a
human invention : it cuts nature at its joints. The entire medie-
val tradition followed him, out and out nominalists, such as Abe-
lard and even Ockham included. The nominalists, of course, did
not think that the genera and species are themselves realities of
any sort, but they accepted that the classification of things they
set out as the fundamental structure of reality just as firmly as
Eriugena did.
What, then, is Eriugena claiming which is distinctive ? Answer-
ing this question faces two sorts of difficulty. One of them is the
result of Eriugenas lack of precision in describing the primor-
dial causes (that which is created and creates). The first step in
investigating Eriugenas position would seem to be to find out
in more detail about these primordial causes, since in his system
they are the intermediaries for Gods creation, and so any judge-
ment about how this creation takes place is a description of how
they exercise their causal power. But, on investigating the text
of the Periphyseon, it turns out that there is no fixed list of the
primordial causes. One list gives goodness, essence, life, reason,
intelligence, wisdom, virtue, blessedness, truth, eternity, mag-
nitude, love, peace, unity, perfection. Another begins similarly,
with goodness, essence and life, but then diverges from the other,
though not completely, adding wisdom, truth, understanding, rea-
son, virtue, justice, health, magnitude, omnipotence, eternity,
peace, before adding indefinitely and all the virtues and reasons
which the Father made once and at the same time in the Son, and
according to which the order of all things from topmost to bot-
tom is put together.13 The vagueness, however, turns out not to be
problematic in this context, because, despite the proliferation of
primordial causes, Eriugena conceives the hierarchy of genera and
species as originating from just one of them : ousia (essence). What
part the other primordial causes play in creation remains unclear.
Some, such as life and reason, could be seen as differentiae in the

Lhomme commun. La gense du ralisme ontologique durant le haut moyen ge

(Paris : Vrin, 2011), 221, n.3.
13 Periphyseon III 622B- 623C, CCCM 163 : 7 l. 133 9 l. 195 ; Periphyseon

II 616C, CCCM 162 : 125 ll. 3168 -76.

360 john marenbon

generic hierarchy. Others, such as health, magnitude and virtue,

might perhaps be responsible for the creation of accidents (of the
sort their names indicate) which affect substances.
The second difficulty is deeper. It consists just in trying to under-
stand what on earth Eriugena might mean when he speaks, as he
does, explicitly, of creation as taking place by moving down through
the generic hierarchy, from ousia at the top. Clearly, Eriugena
does not think that there was at some time a living thing which
was neither an animal nor a vegetable, nor an animal which was
not some particular sort of animal. But, in this case, what does
the generic table have to do with creation, since each level of the
hierarchy except for the most specific species at the very bottom
is filled by labels for these not-fully-specified entities ? The answer
turns out to be simple, but somewhat bizarre. When Eriugena
describes creation in terms of the generic table, he is not talking
about the creation of any of the particular things in the world
trees, dogs, horses and so on but about the creation of their gen-
era and species. As a realist, he regards these universals as real
entities, which therefore need to be created. Moreover, once the
primordial cause essence has created its various genera and spe-
cies (and, perhaps, other primordial causes have created universal
accidents), then as will become evident all the important work
of creation has been done.

Ousia and Creation

The view of the world which is indicated by Eriugenas fusing
the story of creation with the generic table is developed in more
detail in his account of ousia and its relation to creation in the
broader sense : how things are constituted in dependence, ulti-
mately, on God : not the story of creation, but the world as a cre-
ated thing. Eriugena has already developed this theory in Book
I of the Periphyseon, before he comes to discuss the primordial
causes and the story of creation, and he develops and clarifies it
in passages of Books III and IV.
The best way to come to an understanding of Eriugenas com-
plex, rich, though sometimes baffling, theory about ousia is, now,
to read Christophes Erismanns new study of what he calls imma-
nent realism, where the large section on the Periphyseon, almost a
book in itself, is the most penetrating philosophical study of this
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 361

writer yet written.14 Erismann draws together Eriugenas scattered

remarks in the Periphyseon on ousia, genus, species and bodies into
a coherent whole by placing them into the framework of imma-
nent realism, a position on the problem of universals which he
traces back to Porphyry and forward to the material essence real-
ism held, early in the twelfth century, by William of Champeaux.
Eriugena, on his view, was the first person fully and explicitly to
propound this view. The immanent realist holds that type univer-
sals, such as living thing, man and horse, are completely present
in each of the individuals of the type, and not in any way divided
mereologically among them. Cicero, then, is wholly and completely
Man just as Plato and Socrates are. Individuation is through a
bundle of accidents. Even in a crowded stadium, there is just one
substance, Man, present, though we talk of there being many indi-
vidual men, because of the diversity of accidents. But and it is
here that this realism differs sharply from Platonic realism these
universals do not exist outside the individuals, and so there can
be no uninstantiated universals.
Erismann assembles a great deal of information to show that
Eriugena was an immanent realist. There are, however, two quite
important ways in which, I wish to suggest, Eriugena was not
himself an immanent realist, although the framework of imma-
nent realism still provides a good way to draw together his ideas.
Immanent realists believe that there are no uninstantiated uni-
versals, but Eriugena does not seem to hold this view. Not only is
there no textual evidence that he did, but one of his statements
is clearly incompatible with it. Discussing the definition of man,
Eriugena rejects the standard Aristotelian definition, Man is a
mortal rational animal capable of sense and instruction, as not
grasping what is essential to man, but merely based on what is
extrinsic to the essence. By contrast, the proper, essential defini-
tion of man is : a certain intellectual notion eternally made in
the divine mind.15 From this it would follow that the definition of

14 Lhomme commun (above, n. 11), pp. 193-282.

15 Periphyseon IV 768 BC, CCCM 164 : 40 ll. 1072 -76 and <19> ll. 88-93
N. We can therefore define man thus : man is a certain intellectual notion
eternally made in the divine mind. A. This is the truest and most trustwor-
thy definition of man, and not just of man, but also indeed of all the things
that are made in the divine wisdom. (Nor do I fear those who define man
362 john marenbon

man is fulfilled, so that man exists, so long as there is this notion

in the divine mind, and even if there are no individual men.
Moreover, there is a very important difference between the
generic hierarchy as presented by Porphyry and accepted by
almost every late ancient and medieval logician, and the form it
takes in the Periphyseon. According to Porphyry, the very first
division in his tree is of ousia (usually translated as substance)
into corporeal and incorporeal. The further divisions into living
thing, animal and man are all specifications of bodily substance.
According to Eriugena, by contrast, bodies are not part of what
it is for something to be a man, but come about as a result of a
coming-together of accidents.16 For Porphyry, then, Man is a spe-
cies of bodily men, and bodily men come as individual, separate
entities. The problem for him is to explain how this individuation
takes place, and the answer he gives which many later thinkers
would find inadequate is that it happens by virtue of accidents.
For Eriugena, men do indeed have bodies, and it is for this reason
alone that they are individuated. But the fact they have bodies
that the species Man appears in a number of distinct, individual
bodies is accidental. The bodies are not part of what it is to be
a man, and they have no part in Eriugenas account of creation as
the successive division of ousia into genera and species. Eriugena
does not, then, like Porphyry, say that particular substances (what
is neither in a subject nor said of a subject) are individuated, and
then try to explain that individuation by invoking accidents. Sub-
stances themselves are, for him, never individual, although there
is a world of individual bodies, which are not substances, but
concourses of accidents. This is why, in an astonishing passage,
Eriugena denies the central distinction, at the basis of Aristote-

not according to what he is understood to be, but from what are understood
around him, saying, And what is stranger they call this definition essen-
tial (oysiadis), whilst it is not substantial, but taken extrinsically from around
the substance, from those things which occur because of the generation of the
substance.) The section in parenthesis is a passage which Jeauneau thinks of
as a sort of footnote, but added by Eriugena himself.
16 See Periphyseon I 502A 503D, CCCM 161 : 83 l. 2568 85 l. 2635 ;

Periphyseon III 664A, CCCM 162 : 65 ll. 1861-65. Erismann (Lhomme com-
mun, pp. 268-79) presents a thorough collection of passages from Eriugena on
accidents, bodies and individuation, and a fine discussion (although the view
given is different from the one I develop here).
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 363

lian logic, between a subject (that is to say, a particular thing,

which is neither in nor about a subject) and about a subject :
For, according to the opinion of the dialecticians, everything
which exists is either a subject, or about a subject, or in a sub-
ject, or in a subject and about a subject. But when true reason
is consulted, it replies that there is nothing that distinguishes a
subject and about a subject. For if, as they say, Cicero is a sub-
ject and first substance, and man is about a subject and second
substance, what difference is there according to nature but that
the one is in number, the other in species, when species is nothing
other than the unity of numbers, and number nothing other than
the plurality of species ? If, therefore, the species is whole and one
and individual in the numbers and the numbers one individual in
the species, I do not see what distance there is so far as nature is
concerned between a subject and about a subject.17

This passage indicates very clearly how Eriugena both fits squarely
within the Aristotelian logical tradition (in the Roman version
familiar in his time), and yet falls outside it. He structures central
aspects of his metaphysical thought in the terms provided by this
tradition, but he puts them together in ways which go entirely
against the basic assumptions of Aristotelian logic of any sort. It
is for this reason that Erismanns placing of him in the tradition
of immanent realism needs qualification. He learns from this tra-
dition and possibly he may have influenced its development. But
for himself he should be considered as a sort of Platonist, rather
than an Aristotelian. There are no particular substances. There
are particular bodies, but they are produced by accidents, and
particular accidents, just like particular substances, disappear
from Eriugenas world, as they collapse into their universals :

17 Periphyseon I 470D-471B, CCCM 161 : 42 ll. 1224-35 : Nam iuxta dia-

lecticorum opinionem omne quod est aut subiectum aut de subiecto aut in
subiecto aut in subiecto et de subiecto est. Vera tamen ratio consulta res-
pondet subiectum et de subiecto unum esse et in nullo distare. Nam si, ut
illi aiunt, Cicero subiectum est et prima substantia, homo uero de subiecto
secunda que substantia, quae differentia est iuxta naturam nisi quia unum
in numero alterum in specie, cum nil aliud sit species nisi numerorum unitas
et nil aliud numerus nisi speciei pluralitas ? Si ergo species tota et una est
indiuidua que in numeris et numeri unum indiuiduum sunt in specie, quae
quantum ad naturam distantia est inter subiectum et de subiecto non uideo.
364 john marenbon

We should understand similarly about the accidents of first sub-

stance. For what is said to be in a subject is not other than what
is said to be at once in and about a subject. For discipline, to take
the example, is one and the same thing in itself and in its many
species. Therefore there is not one thing, the particular discipline
of each thing, which is called by the dialecticians just in a subject,
and another thing, discipline in general, which is called by them
in a subject and about a subject, on the grounds that it subsists
in a subject (that is, first substance), and is predicated about a
subject (that is, the particular discipline of something). But it is
one and the same in the whole and in its parts.18

There remain, however, some passages about ousia in Book I of

the Periphyseon which, at first sight, seem not to fit into this
extreme, but none the less consistent view. These are the parts of
Eriugenas work which I found so disconcerting when I first wrote
about it. The two most striking are these :
Gregory the Theologian also confirms with many arguments that
no substance or essence whether of a visible or invisible creature
can be comprehended by the intellect. For, just as God himself in
himself beyond every creature is comprehended by no intellect,
so too considered in the most secret recesses of the creature made
by him and existing in him, he is incomprehensible. Whatever
is perceived by the bodily sense or considered by the intellect in
any creature is nothing but some accident of the incomprehensible
(as has been said) essence of each thing. For through quality or
quantity or form or matter or some differentia or place or time is
known not what it is, but that it is.19

18 Periphyseon I 471A-B, CCCM 161 : 42 ll. 1235-44 : Similiter de acciden-

tibus primae substantiae intelligendum. Non aliud est enim quod in subiecto
dicitur et aliud quod in subiecto simul et de subiecto. Nam disciplina,
ut exemplo utar, una eadem que est in se ipsa et in suis speciebus nume-
risque. Non aliud igitur uniuscuiusque propria disciplina, quae a dialecticis
in subiecto dicitur solummodo, et aliud generalis disciplina, quae ab eisdem
in subiecto et de subiecto uocatur ueluti in subiecto (prima scilicet substan-
tia) subsistens, de subiecto (id est propria alicuius disciplina) praedicetur ; sed
una eadem que est in toto et in partibus.
19
Periphyseon I 443B-C, CCCM 161 : 5 ll. 61-73 : Gregorius etiam theologus
multis rationibus nullam substantiam seu essentiam siue uisibilis siue inuisi-
bilis creaturae intellectu uel ratione comprehendi posse confirmat. Nam sicut
ipse deus in se ipso ultra omnem creaturam nullo intellectu comprehenditur,
ita etiam in secretissimis sinibus creaturae ab eo factae et in eo existentis
consideratus incomprehensibilis est. Quicquid autem in omni creatura uel
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 365

you will find that ousia is altogether in itself incomprehensi-

ble in all the things that exist, not just to the sense but to the
intellect, and so it is understood to exist from these things, as it
were from what are around it I mean from place, quantity, and
situation, to which time is also added. Wherefore essence is known
to be surrounded, within certain boundaries that have been placed
round it so that neither do the accidents seem as if they subsisted
in it, because they are extrinsic, nor can they exist without it,
because it is their centre, around which revolve times, and places,
quantities and situations from everywhere are placed there.20

Eriugena is claiming that ousia can never be grasped, even by

the intellect : it is known merely from what surrounds it mat-
ter, accidents (such as quantity and quality), time and place, and
differentiae, and even so it is merely known that it is, not what it
is. The impression is given, as I once complained, that behind the
apparent world of individuals, Eriugena has discovered another,
mysterious one of ousiai.21 This ousia, I went on to say, is a mys-
tical notion, which fits [Eriugenas] scheme all the better by being
indefinable and epistemologically redundant.

sensu corporeo percipitur seu intellectu consideratur nihil aliud est nisi quod-
dam accidens incomprehensibili, ut dictum est, unicuique essentiae. Nam aut
per qualitatem aut quantitatem aut formam aut materiem aut differentiam
quandam aut locum aut tempus cognoscitur non quid est, sed quia est.
20 Periphyseon I 471B-C, CCCM 161 : 43 ll. 1247-57 : inuenies OYCIAN

omnino in omnibus quae sunt per se ipsam incomprehensibilem non solum

sensui sed etiam intellectui esse, atque ideo ex his ueluti circumstantiis suis
intelligitur existere, loco dico, quantitate, situ ; additur etiam his tempus.
Intra haec siquidem ueluti intra quosdam fines circumpositos essentia cognos-
citur circumcludi ita ut neque accidentia ei quasi in ea subsistentia uideantur
esse, quia extrinsecus sunt, neque sine ea existere posse, quia centrum eorum
est, circa quod uoluuntur tempora, loca uero et quantitates et situs undique
collocantur.
21 Early Medieval Philosophy (480 1150). An introduction (London : Rout-

ledge, 1983), p. 69. My comments on these passages here go back to remarks

I made in the conference I have recalled at the beginning of this paper, which
were published (with some changes) as John Scottus and the Categoriae
Decem, in Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, ed. W. Beierwaltes (Abhand-
lungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse,
1980, 3) (Heidelberg : Winter, 1980), pp, 117-34, reprinted in J. Marenbon,
Aristotelian Logic, Platonism and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the
West (Variorum Collected Studies series 696) (Aldershot and Burlington, Ver :
Ashgate, 2000), esp. pp. 124-25.
366 john marenbon

My reading of the passage could hardly have been more mis-

taken.22 It is indeed true that, for Eriugena, behind the world of
individuals, there is another world, but it is neither mysterious
nor mystical : it is a world, not of ousiai, but of ousia and its
divisions into genera and species, the substantial world behind
the world of individuated bodies which are produced by a com-
ing-together of accidents. In the two passages Eriugena is saying
that, on the one hand, when we perceive a natural thing either
sensibly, through the accidents which constitute and characterize
its body, or intellectually, as a man or an animal, for instance,
we do in some sense cognize ousia, the primordial cause, which
is completely present in every genus and species, through which
it (and everything else besides God) is created. But, even where
our cognition is intellectual and not merely sensible, we do not
grasp what ousia is. How could we ? To grasp is to define : ousia
is defined as it is divided into genera and species. Nothing more
can be said about it than that it is. For this reason, Eriugena
compares ousia to God. Both are indefinable. But Eriugena is just
making a comparison. He is not confusing ousia and God. Ousia
is undefined because it comes before the process of definition ; but
God is undefined in an ever stricter way, becomes he comes before
even that threshold of definition which is to exist undefined, as
ousia does. God himself comes to exist only through his self-man-
ifestation in creation.

Conclusion
The aim of this paper is to place Eriugena, especially in his treat-
ment of creation in both the wider and narrower sense, in relation
to the early medieval Aristotelian tradition. It will now be clear
that, in one way, he fits closely with that tradition, since he fol-

22 Paige E. Hochschild (Ousia in the Categoriae Decem and the Periphyseon

of John Scottus Eriugena, in Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval and Early

Modern Thought, eds. M. Treschow, W. Otten and W. Hannam (Brills Stud-
ies in Intellectual History 151) (Leiden : Brill, 2007), pp. 213-22) pertinently
criticizes my conclusions in the article cited in n. 21 above about Eriugenas
treatment of ousia in these and other passages. His own reading, however,
which stresses the Platonic elements Eriugena discovered within the Aristote-
lian notion of ousia in the Categorae Decem, does not in my view fully compass
the strangeness and extreme character of Eriugenas position.
 eriugena, aristotelian logic and the creation 367

lows Alcuin in his extensive use of the Categoriae Decem, especially

to think about the relationship between God and his creation
even though he ends by coming to exactly the opposite conclu-
sion from the one Alcuin took from Augustine, since God him-
self is related to creation precisely by not being ousia. Eriugenas
knowledge of other logical texts seems not to have stretched
beyond that of his contemporaries. On the other hand, looking
back from the perspective of the eleventh century, there is a sharp
discontinuity between Eriugenas attitude to the logical tradition
and the approach which became universal. From the later tenth
century onwards, logicians followed Boethius in treating Aristote-
lian logic in its own Aristotelian terms. No one followed Eriugena
in what might be called his universalism his view that only
universal substances exist. In some manuscripts of the Categoriae
Decem from the late ninth and tenth centuries there are, indeed,
signs of Eriugenian influence, in glosses which interpret passages
in often outrageously inappropriate Eriugenian terms. But this
material all but disappears from the gloss tradition by the end of
the tenth century, as logicians concentrate on the sober business
of understanding Aristotelian doctrine.23
This Boethian approach in logic had its parallel in theology,
especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In his opuscula
sacra, Boethius had developed a procedure for dealing with theo-
logical problems in which, as in his logical writings, Aristotelian
ways of thinking about the sensible world were given space to
develop in their own terms. His method is to take a logical theory
(such as the Categories) or a physical one (for instance, Aristote-
lian ideas about mixing and mereology) and apply it to God by
developing it in its own terms, connected with sensible reality, so
far as possible, and then showing at exactly what point it fails to
fit the divine, or needs ad hoc adaptation to do so. The greatest
thinkers of the period, Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, and most
of their more sophisticated colleagues, followed this Boethian
model.24 By doing so, they could develop philosophical ideas with

23 See Marenbon, From the Circle (above, n.6), pp. 116-38.

24 See J. Marenbon, Boethius, in The History of Western Philosophy of Reli-
gion, ed. G. Oppy and N. Trakakis, II Medieval Philosophy of Religion (Dur-
ham : Acumen, 2009), pp. 19-31, at pp. 21-22 and J. Marenbon, Boethius (New
York : Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 66-95, 171-72.
368 john marenbon

considerable independence within a theological framework ; and, to

simplify drastically, the same basic approach was followed by the
great university theologians of the three following centuries.
Eriugena knew Boethiuss opscula sacra and took some ideas
from them, but he was influenced by their approach to theology
no more than by Boethiuss approach to logic. In the Periphyseon,
no space is left between the philosophical explorations in which he
engages, and the theological vision he wishes to communicate. All
Eriugenas extraordinary resources of argument and conceptual
imagination are put to the service of working out his radically
more-than-negative theology.25
When I revised my conference paper of 30 years ago for publi-
cation, I removed the allegation that Eriugena was not a philos-
opher, replacing it with the milder opinion that he was not the
creator of a philosophical system.26 Although this observation is
true if a system is philosophical only when its aims and presup-
positions are not set by religious doctrine, it would apply equally
to Abelard, or Aquinas, or Ockham or even, perhaps, Leibniz.
The distinctive character of the Periphyseon is better captured by
pointing to the monolithic nature of Eriugenas method. Eriugena
tries to fuse together Christian and Platonic concepts, and even,
as illustrated here, the ideas of Aristotelian logic, rather than
allowing different sorts of thinking about different types of sub-
ject each to develop in its own terms. It is an admirable achieve-
ment, but not everyone will regret that his medieval successors
took a different approach to logic and to theology.

25 See S. Weiner, Eriugenas negative Ontologie (Bochumer Studien zur Phi-

losophie 46) (Amsterdam : Grner, 2007).

26 Marenbon, John Scottus (above, n. 21), p. 133.