Martina Roesner: L’influence de Jean Scot Érigène sur la pensée de Maître Eckhart
The possible influence of John Scotus Eriugena on Meister Eckhart’s philosophy and theology is a question that has received comparatively little attention in scholarship. The present paper argues that Eriugena has indeed had an impact on Eckhart’s thought, not only through the Clavis physicae but also through his sermon Vox spiritualis aquilae and, more importantly, his scholia on Pseudo-Dionysius, which are taken almost word for word from his Periphyseon. These marginal commentaries were sometimes (wrongly) considered as part of the original text and integrated into Eriugena’s Latin translations of Dionysius’s works, as was the case with the manuscript of the Corpus Dionysiacum held by the Dominican convent in Paris, where Eckhart stayed repeatedly as a student and as a professor. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Eckhart takes up Eriugena’s idea that John the Evangelist had to be “deified” in order to know the eternal Logos in all his depth, and extends this notion to all human beings through his doctrine of the “birth of God in the soul”. Eckhart’s two commentaries on Genesis, by contrast, develop certain key notions of Eriugena’s doctrine of creation as it is described in his Periphyseon: God is not “this or that” but above all determinations and needs to externalise himself in a finite creation in order to know his own essence. This creative process presents itself as an irradiation of divine intelligibility that makes the whole world appear, not as a set of solid objects but as a “tissue of light”.
Keywords: John Scotus Eriugena – Meister Eckhart – deification of man – metaphysics of creation – metaphysics of light