John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born ( – c. 877) was an Irish Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm". He wrote a number of works, but is best known today for having written De Divisione Naturae ("The Division of Nature"), or Periphyseon, which has been called the "final achievement" of ancient philosophy, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries". The principal concern of De Divisione Naturae is to unfold from φύσις (physis), which John defines as "all things which are and which are not", the entire integrated structure of reality. Eriugena achieves this through a dialectical method elaborated through exitus and reditus, that interweaves the structure of the human mind and reality as produced by the λόγος (logos) of God. Eriugena is generally classified as a Neoplatonist, though he was not influenced directly by such pagan philosophers as Plotinus or Iamblichus. Jean Trouillard stated that, although he was almost exclusively dependent on Christian theological texts and the Christian Canon, Eriugena "reinvented the greater part of the theses of Neoplatonism". He succeeded Alcuin of York (c. 735–804) as head of the Palace School at Aachen. He also translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite and was one of the few Western European philosophers of his day who knew Greek, having studied it in Ireland and in Byzantine Athens. A later medieval tradition recounts that Eriugena was stabbed to death by his students at Malmesbury with their pens, although this may rather be allegorical. Name The form "Eriugena" is used by John Scotus to describe himself in one manuscript. It means "Ireland (Ériu)-born". "Scottus" in the Middle Ages was the Latin term for "Irish or Gaelic", so his full name translates as "John, the Irish-born Gael". "Scotti" was the late Latin term for the Irish people, with Ireland itself being Scotia (or in the Medieval period "Scotia Major", to distinguish it from Scotia Minor, i.e. modern Scotland). The