Launch of Annual Eriugena Lectures

The UCD School of Philosophy, the Newman Centre and the Department of Philosophy of Maynooth University support a new annual event, the  "Eriugena Lectures", co-organised  byDragos Calma (UCD/Newman Centre) and Michael Dunne (Maynooth University) . 

Prof  (opens in a new window)Wouter Goris from the University of Bonn will deliver the 2025 "Eriugena Lectures" to which you are kindly invited to attend

Lecture 1: Absolute Indifference – From Hegel to Avicenna, and Back Again[ Tuesday, September 23, from 4 to 6pm,  UCD Campus  G107-ART]

Lecture 2: Unitive Containment – The Parisian Lectures of Duns Scotus[ Thursday, September 25, from 4 to 6pm, Maynooth University]

Lecture 3: Objective Reality and Concrete Totality – From Duns Scotus to Hegel[ Friday, September 26, from 4 to 6pm, UCD Campus, NEWM G108]

The central proposal of Wouter Goris' lectures is to show that both Duns Scotus (13th c.) and Hegel defend the assimilation of intellectual intuition within a single speculative science that grasps itself as a progressive articulation of the contents of self-knowledge of the Absolute. (i.) The starting point is the shift from the logic of being to the logic of essence in the Science of Logic. Hegel makes this transition through the concept of ‘absolute indifference’, which he ‘detaches’ from the concept of essence. (ii.) Then, we situate the problem of the absolute indifference of essence in the broader context of the history of philosophy. We focus notably on Avicenna’s fundamental interconnection between being, essence and unity, which raises the question of the possibility of a full conception of the singular. (iii.) The systematic thread between these two shifts, viz., from the logic of being to the logic of essence and, further, to the logic of the concept, is verified by the function of the ‘adequate concept’ in John Duns Scotus and Hegel’s Science of Logic. The individual concept is in no way opposed to the indifference of essence to existence and individuality. (iv.) The same notion of correspondence of concept and reality, with which Duns Scotus establishes a complete conceptual determination of the singular, concludes in the Science of Logic the immanent and continuous self-determination of the concept: “The idea is the adequate concept.” (GW 12, 173)