abstract:In this paper I examine the mostly hidden influence of John Scottus Eriugena in the phenomenological tradition. German Idealist philosophers, broadly speaking, embraced the work of John Scottus Eriugena. The classical phenomenologists (Husserl, Heidegger), however, followed their mentor Franz Brentano in showing a distinct affinity for the Aristotelian tradition with little interest in or sympathy for Christian Neoplatonism. Heidegger, however, developed a strong and life-long interest in Meister Eckhart and gradually it became more generally recognised that Eckhart’s conception of the divine stands in opposition to traditional ontotheology. The phenomenological tradition showed very little interest in Eriugena until the groundbreaking work of Werner Beierwaltes and more recently the original interpretations of Jean-Luc Marion. However, there was one significant exception to the neglect of Eriugena in phenomenology and that is the student of Husserl, phenomenologist and Leibniz scholar Dietrich Mahnke (1884- 1939) who discusses Eriugena incisively in his Unendliche Sphäre und Allmittelpunkt. Beiträge zur Genealogie der mathematischen Mystik (1937). Mahnke’s work places Eriugena at the centre of the discovery of the infinity of the divine and of the created universe. Mahnke had a strong influence on Alexandre Koyré, Hans Blumenberg and Karsten Harries, all of whom have been seeking to diagnose the impact of the discovery of infinity on the nature of modernity. Through Mahnke the radical thought of Eriugena entered the phenomenological tradition.
