Cambridge Platonists and Eriugena

NATALIA STROK

Lisboa

Conferencia; ISNS Lisbon Conference; 2014

Universidade de Lisboa

The starting point of this paper is to have a new look on the history of philosophy and, specifically, on the history of Platonism. I will establish two points in the temporal line: the philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena (ninth century) and seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists? thought. There is no evidence that links these two so that we could say that the former influences the latter; but I will set a fact that brings a contact: the first modern edition of the Periphyseon was published in England in 1681 by the Cambridge Greek Professor Thomas Gale. Eriugena is the most important philosopher of the Carolingian Kingdom. In him, the Latin tradition of Augustine and the Greek tradition of pseudo Dionysius are reunited. His philosophy proposes that God creates all things and in this creation He creates Himself as the only essence of everything. It is a system of próodos and epistrophé that also contemplates the Christian dogma, since the próodos includes Adam?s fall and the epistrophé needs the incarnation of the Verb in Christ. Eriugena affirms that philosophy is the true theology and that theology is the true philosophy; and this coincidence gives us a key to approach his thought. The group known as the Cambridge Platonists cannot be regarded as a philosophical school, due to its heterogeneity. Nevertheless, the specialised bibliography says that they are followers of Plato and Plotinus?s philosophy, but that they also know Aristotle, the Stoicism, the Scepticism, medieval philosophers such as Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, and the modern philosophy of their own time. Something characteristic of this group is that they have a theological base and, therefore, they maintain the coincidence between faith and reason. In their metaphysics, spirit has primacy over matter and, because of that, they reject the mechanical philosophy. In this paper, I intend to open these questions: could the presence of the group named Cambridge Platonist have aroused such an interest in a philologist like Thomas Gale so as to make him prepare the first edition of the Periphyseon? Would a Cambridge Platonist, like Henry More or Ralph Cudworth, have any interest in the work of John Scottus Eriugena? What does the Periphyseon have to offer to a ?platonik?? I would like to point out that, even though I will not be able to answer all these questions in the present paper, I will do my best.