Medieval Optimism and a Sober Renaissance: A Comparison of the Anthropologies of John Scottus Eriugena and Marsilio Ficino

Abstract

John Scottus Eriugena (d. 877) and Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the leading humanist philosopher-theologians of their respective periods, espouse anthropocentric cosmologies drawing on an early medieval tradition of Christian Neoplatonism. The similarity of their anthropologies is a testament to the continuity of the Neoplatonic tradition before and after the rediscovery of the Platonic corpus and its Neoplatonic commentators in the Latin West. On close inspection of the metaphysical frameworks which support their systems, it is clear that Ficino and Eriugena are ultimately depending on distinct philosophical spirits, which can be traced back to an early division within pagan Neoplatonism between Plotinian and Iamblichean-Procline lines. The contrast between Ficino’s and Eriugena’s metaphysics is a testament to how the fracture within the Neoplatonic tradition works itself out in its appropriation by Christian thinkers. This article shows how Eriugena’s sympathy for the later pagan developments, mediated to him by the Pseudo-Dionysius, results in a more optimistic anthropology, than Ficino’s use of Plotinus and Augustine. The wider implications of this comparison for study of the Latin West are plain.

Early anthropological interest: Magnus Hundt’s and Galeazzo Capra’s quest for humanity

“…These authors do underscore Fazioli's and my own point that during the Middle Ages a multifarious search for 'how to be human' existed. For examples of this literature: Trinkaus (1982); Anzulewicz (1998); Bryson (2009); Stark (2012). This is also the point Tim Ingold (2017) makes.…”