Eriugena and Mu’tazilites: a story of interaction between Christian West and Islamic East

ABSTRACT This essay explores the interaction between Christian West and the Islamic East via the ninth-century scholar Eriugena and the Mu’tazilites. Both were committed to the search for the basic and unitive truth lying at the heart of their beliefs. Though coming from different cultural traditions, these prominent thinkers had a happy opportunity of sharing the experience of their intellectual quest while shedding light upon the most essential in human beings – their reason – which enabled them, properly ordered and manifest, to articulate creation as an integral reality in which no discrepancy between essence and existence is found. It is suggested that the dialectic, developed by Eriugena and his Islamic contemporaries, could well support a shared search for unity in our own day.