The Philosopher Who Tried to End the World with a Book | John Scotus Eriugena’s Periphyseon

hey what up seeker welcome back in this week's video we're going to be exploring the life and mind of a pantheistic philosopher who lived during the middle ages who tried to end the world as we know it with a book dear brothers and sisters today we consider the figure of chance koto zarizina an influential christian thinker of the corinthian period this scholar knew platonis philosopher theologian poet and mystic that's often touted as the only christian representative of pantheism during the middle ages although this is far from the truth most likely born in ireland around the year 810. not to be confused with the later franciscan philosopher and theologian the subtle dr john dunskodus from scotland our man john scotus origina henceforth scotus has been called the only important latin philosopher for six centuries after augustine as a scholar at the cult of charlemagne in about the year 850 scotus was responsible for translating the works of pseudodionysis the pseudoprographic but hugely important 6th century neoplatonic christian philosopher responsible for introducing christianity to negative theology more in that soon from the greek into latin and wrote a commentary upon him as with many other moments in the history of philosophy this translation the migration of past wisdom into the present mocked the beginning of a rich tradition of christian mysticism and philosophy in western europe besides for his important work as a translator and commentator scotus also wrote a number of works best known today for having written a five volume work parafisian which was later translated and titled on the division of nature the division has been called the final achievement of ancient philosophy a work of astonishing scope a variable christian neoplatonic sumer and a work which synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of 15 centuries legend has it that scotus reached a ghastly premature ending by being stabbed to death by students with their pens in retaliation perhaps for making them think too much and although the cause is most definitely plausible it's unclear whether the stabbing is to be taken literally or figuratively or if this even happened at all to our favorite medieval irish philosopher if you're a teacher and you get it rough from your students just be thankful that they haven't yet conspired to literally murder you if that's any consolation having covered the basic facts and highlights of scotus's life let us now turn to his philosophy the stanford encyclopedia philosophy describes scotus's thought as best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent systematic christian neoplatonism from diverse primarily christian sources neoplatonism being as we mentioned the school of philosophical mysticism beginning with platinus who saw himself simply as revealing the inner truth of the philosophy of plato and the diverse christian sources mentioned being both the eastern christian philosophers and mystics basil the great gregory of nicer pseudo-dionysus maximus the confessor as well as the western thinkers augustine ambrose jerome microbius and boethius but beyond all this name dropping which i only do because i think that the names of these thinkers are worth encountering and familiarizing ourselves with because they're the people you want to get to know in your life if you're looking for some wisdom and it helps understand how they relate to and are influenced by one another think of it as philosophical networking if you will but let us give a summary of scotus's actual thought we'll begin with a truncated overview and then go back into it to pick it apart further detail by detail scotus's system by the way is really worth paying attention to and getting into both because he's a mystical philosopher par excellence whose thinking is as sharp as darts and as warm as melted marshmallows and because his mystical philosophy really stands as paradigmatic for almost all western mysticism to follow with almost all major themes that will go on to perplex the great minds for centuries contained therein scotus presents us with what is essentially a new platonic metaphysic wherein god who is infinite unknown and transcendent beyond the categories of being and non-being so that we cannot even say of god that she is and yet through an elaborate process of self-articulation or self-creation god leaves her divine darkness and non-beingness and emanates into the light of being the unconscious made conscious by speaking the creative word the logos represented by jesus in scotus's thought into existence god sets into motion in a timeless moment the primary cause of all being and because this process takes place in a timeless moment creation is in fact an ongoing and ever-occurring event for scotus the cause comes to effect in the created reality setting a system into motion where the effects i. e creation relies entirely upon the causes and the cause of all causes god if we listen carefully to scotus's metaphysics we'll hear a range of echoes of the important names that we dropped earlier as well as the embryonic reverberations of future thought waiting to unfurl created reality finding itself as it does at the end of a great chain of cause and effects are not only dependent upon their causes but are ultimately destined to return to their source to be re-incorporated back into god to become god again is their aim and and highest purpose all of reality therefore is playing out the divine drama the dynamic process of exiting from and returning to the one the cosmic exhale and inhale now i know what you're thinking to yourself while listening to this zevi this sounds like standard neoplatonism what did mr skodas bring new to the table that we don't already know we don't need a regurgitation of platinus porphyry pucklus and the amplicus okay point well taken so i'll tell you what scotus adds to this pre-existing neoplatonic model of reality what scotus does is he gives us a brand new definition of nature and here we'll see his unique version of pantheism begin to creep in scotus in a daring move of originality applies the categorical label of nature to both the final effect slash result of his system i.

e this world and the highest principle in his metaphysical system i. e god the one both god and creation are subsumed within the same category of natura nature this is a stunning and subversive categorization let us understand why what scotus does here is to both radically redefine nature and simultaneously redefine god nature is defined as universitas rerum the totality of all things that which contained within itself the primary divisions of all things namely the division between that which is and that which is not being and non-being nature assumes that most primal of categorical divisions nature or god or shall we say deosivnatura you feel me nature or god is divided up by scotus into four divisions one nature which creates and is not created which is god as the ground of being or the origin of all things two nature which is created and creates that is the causes that we mentioned earlier paralleling the platonic ideas or forms three nature which is created but does not create which is the created effects namely the material world as it appears to us 4 nature which is neither created nor creates which is god as non-being the final end and goal of all things that into which the phenomenon of creation ultimately returns and is folded back into if you thought you had a foreshadowing to nicholas of kuza there you heard right this innovative and challenging schema presents us with a few wild ideas firstly creation for scotus does not mean that god creates something other than herself outside of herself the way creation is generally understood by more literal readings of genesis but rather that god emanates the world from god's self as a self-expression of god's essence a theophany literally a showing of god creation therefore or rather emanation is a process of the divine unfolding itself as opposed to something other than the divine coming into being coming into existence this line between creation and emanation although hardly ever a clean-cut distinction runs right down the very heart of the history of religious thought and cosmological slash about physical speculation splitting a chasm between the literalist orthodox straight lace thinkers on the one side the side of creation and the allegoricist's mystics and pantheists on the emanationist side the reason scotus takes this animation stance towards creation is because of his understanding of god as fundamentally infinite which means that there can be nothing outside of god because true infinity by definition includes everything i want you to watch closely as the importance of this theme develops both in this class and in the following ones and allow me to quote scotus here for you so that you know that i'm not just making this up the creative nature permits nothing outside itself because outside it nothing can be yet everything which it has created and creates it contains within itself but in such a way that it itself is other because it is super essential that what it creates within itself super essential is a funny way of scotus amalgamating apophatic that is unsaying or negative theology where god transcending any categorization and language can only be spoken of in terms of what god is not with the cataphatic positive theology where we do ascribe affirmative terms to god by fixing the prefix super before a characteristic of property scotus can have his language and eat it he can in our example refer to god's essence but deny that he's talking about essence as we know it by calling it super essential secondly and hugely importantly scotus via his divisions of nature and emanationist scheme is able to overcome the distrust and disdain of the physical material world our world found so abundantly in neoplatonism skirts instead believes that by contemplating the world and nature all around us we're contemplating nothing other than the exquisite theophanies the ever-present divine self-revelation and far from taking us further from god relishing and delighting in nature when properly seen is a path that leads us back to the one back to god back to love thirdly and this point might be obvious scotus's presentation of nature as comprising of both god and the world and his emanations theory lead us right to his belief of god in all things his pantheism in his own words god is both beyond all things and in all things for he who only truly is is the essence of all things and while he is whole in all things he does not cease to be whole beyond all things whole in the world whole around the world whole in the sensible creatures whole in the intelligible creatures whole creating the universe whole created in the universe whole in the whole of the universe and whole in its parts since he is both the whole and the parts and he is neither the hull nor the parts here we get a strong taste of not only scotus's unique pantheism but we see the rigorous side of his thinking in his theory of holes and parts as applied to god as applied to the infinite what would be called in philosophy today his mirology even though scotus teaches the identity and unity of god and creation he rejects the simplistic view that god is the hall of which creation is merely a part making it clear that god can only be spoken of as a whole metaphorically as we are starting to see scotus's pantheism isn't so simple and straightforward because in addition to his emphasis on the imminence of god and creation to quote scotus it follows that we ought not to understand god and the creature as two things distinct from one another but as one is the same for both a creature by subsisting is in god and god by manifesting himself in a marvelous and ineffable manner creates himself in the creature scotus also stresses god's transcendence above and beyond the world always careful to balance out his imminent statements as a result scotus's depiction of god oscillates between apparently contradictory descriptions where god is both identical with creatures in one sense but utterly differentiated from them in another to quote both beyond all things and in all things affirming in one breath the infinite unbridgeable difference and gap between god and creation and simultaneously that creation is nothing other than god's self-expression and ultimately culminates in its return to god on the inhale this tension these dual truths which seem to be entirely at odds is what we may call scotus's dialectic giving birth to what's been called a dialectical apophatic cataphatic pantheism i'm kidding i just made that up so how to resolve this tension well not all tensions are supposed to be resolved but at the very least we can understand the larger setting of scotus metaphysics to appreciate the context the zetsum levin of this tension and paradox scotus's whole system in good mystical and neoplatonic fashion can be described in two moves or rather in a single motion made up of two moves an outflowing and a return an exit a fall a descent followed by a reversal an epistrophe a restoration back to the source the basic sketch of these two movements is first the outflowing the procession the exodus from god from the one channeled through the causes flowing out through them to the effects this world us humans according to the schema are stuck down here at the bottom of the chain not aware of our true divine nature distracted as we are by the fleeting temporary appearances the fantasies that trap our perception in this delusional thing we call space and time if you're watching this and you're like xavi what is space and time don't worry it's a basic bro thing for people on a much lower frequency level than you you might remember it from when you were once basic once is a complicated term because it implies temporal categories but it's okay jokes aside there's good news for us humans trapped in this world of duality space and time shadows of true existence because through intellectual contemplation and divine illumination making us aware of the divine self-manifestation the theophany that we truly are we can come to a state of hypnosis literally being made one with god and even possibly a state of theosis literally being made god deification in which there is a complete identification between the self and the divine which is the ultimate goal of all being for scotus to be reincorporated and reunited back into their source quote as voices blend in the choir as a droplet of what emerges with the stream god shall be all in all the use of the future tense here by scotus is somewhat misleading since time itself is a feature of our unrectified unresurrected fallen basic state our true work state being one of timelessness so in truth we already are and always have been one with god even though we may not know it a point which many a mystic would agree with as well as the observation that this state of being this timeless union or merger with god scottish refers to as paradise or heaven and conversely the state of being in which we refuse to let go of the circumstances and fantasies that ensnare us scotus calls hel helpful scotus isn't some burning fiery place bad people go to after they die that is just some story we tell kids to scare them into behaving well real hell is a life lived in the delusion and shadow of deprivation of the vision of god the vision of the fundamental unity interdependence and coexistence of all reality flowing from the one divine source and returning to the one and when that vision is absent in its void festers jealousy hatred separation ego guilt shame exploitation fear war anxiety and high interest shark loans and mirroring classic theology that you were taught as a child just now entirely re-read scotus tells us that any perceived distance and difference between the human and god is merely a result of quotes and accidents produced by sin a concept which should be familiar to anyone familiar with jewish mysticism's reading of isaiah 59 2.