Originally written January of 2023
“The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one seeing, and one knowing, and one love.”
The following is a brief survey of Meister Eckhart I wrote for an individual study comparing Hegel & Goethe and their influences while in college. There is much to say about the man, but I shall limit myself to these few words: I began to study him as he very simply presents his own experience of God— something that was radical for the 1300s. As such he prefigures the first in a wave of heterodox thinkers in the early modern period with Ficino, Mirandola, Bruno, and most significantly Martin Luther. Precisely with Luther (regardless of whether it was moral or not) do we see an entirely new age of history begin, one in which reasoning and justification are the centerpieces of life. No longer is blindly following tradition or authority possible when the entire religious, cultural, political, linguistic, etc. landscape is in upheaval. It was against this rational confusion & terror that the widely recognized inaugurator of modern philosophy, the Jesuit Descartes, complained about the difficulty of certainty and decided to even entertain doubting God. Eckhart, as the forefather of all these changes, ought then to be carefully examined lest we be without understanding of the root of this all, failing to understand our contemporary predicament and most tragically, ourselves.
[ 1/27/24 – I have since revised my thoughts on implying Eckhart to be the sole progenitor of these changes. I see it more as the gradual appearance of many Western mystics, perhaps resulting from the Western Catholic Church’s greater emphasis on rationality which inevitably vindicates itself as individualistic (hence being mystics). I am unsure. Whatever the case, Eckhart invariably belongs to this group of mystics from which modernity is but a stone’s throw away.]
The Man From Whom God Hid Nothing
Of any philosopher of the long scholastic age, none are as anachronistic as Meister Eckhart (I may only concede Eriugena as a close second). Though preaching and writing only a few decades after his brothers in the Dominican order in the 14th Century, St. Albert Magnus and St. Aquinas, Eckhart as a treasure results from his wonder in the neoplatonism of the Eastern Orthodox Church (through rare access to Pseudo-Dionysius) as a means of articulating his more experiential relationship with God. For this reason he has a rather ambiguous relationship with the Catholic Church, but has remained a source of fascination for Orthodoxy (Lossky for example, wrote his dissertation on Eckhart). Philosophically, Eckhart’s work provides a fascinating connection between Aristotelian Scholasticism and Neoplatonism. His work came to be revered as many of its insights became explicit in the German Idealist tradition, with Hegel upon finding Eckhart remarking, da haben wir es ja, was wir wollen!
Eckhart holds that our own self-knowledge is simultaneously knowledge of God (Selbsterkenntnis ist Anschauung des Gottes, pg.17). His approach to this view appears to come from his influence from St. Augustine (who is well known to be heavily influenced by Plotinus), whom Eckhart quotes as saying, “Gerade wie es um Gott ist, so ist es auch um die Seele. Seht, wie sie gebildet ist nach dem Bilde der Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit”. This, of course, comes from the concept of Imago Dei, which Eckhart takes seriously in his study of man. He located the origin of faith in the mediating Kraft of the soul: Erkennen, being the trinity of Gedächtnis, Wille und Vernunft. Like the trinity of God, man has these three Kraft, which are united in one nature. Eckhart even says that, just as “Gott hat die Voraussicht aller Dinge und bildet alle Dinge in seiner Voraussicht… Also ist es auch mit der Seele”(pg.19). A common theme is Eckhart’s articulation of how God’s Bild relates to that of Man.
In this theme, we see him indirectly echoing Church Fathers such as St. Athanasius, whose quotes such as “God became man so that men might become gods” (On the Incarnation), provide a clear foundation for Eckhart’s “Seht, darum minnet Gott, dann werdet ihr Gott mit Gott” (pg.22). This concept of deification or Gott werden is known in Eastern Orthodox theology as Theosis (θεοσις), and becomes a key concept throughout Eckhart’s sermons. Especially in Von der Abgeschiedenheit, wherein he claims that Abgeschiedenheit allows one to be in such theosis with God that “…da er noch in Gott war und zwischen ihm und Gott kein Unterschied bestand, ehe Gott die Kreaturen schuf” (pg.23). There is a clear streak of the neoplatonic cosmology throughout the sermons, of transcendence and emanation or creation along the lines of Plotinus’ hypostases shown on the right. What Eckhart refers to as the “Gottheit” most conforms to Plotinus’ “The One” or “Εν”, something that is utterly transcendent, the very one Natur Eckhart that refers to grounding the three persons of the Trinity. It is also notable that his commitments as a (Thomist) Dominican shine through when talking about the central role of Erkennen, and how these commitments are radicalized using this neoplatonic framework of transcendence.
Keeping with the Platonic tradition, we see him explicitly disregard that which is geschafft, or vergangliche in passages such as “Leer sein von aller Kreatur ist Gottes voll sein, und vollsein mit aller Kreatur ist Gottes leer sein”(pg.25). Eckhart goes as far as to advocate for Plotinus’ idea of the undescended soul where he identifies his true self with this transcendent element of God, “Und darum bin ich ungeboren…”. His advocacy is part of a larger idea: that God, is not just a name, it is an ineffable, nameless, and transcendence itself, which one may reach through their own abgeschiedenheit, “Und wenn die Abgeschiedenheit auf das Höchste kommt, dann wird sie durch Erkennen frei aller Kenntnisse und durch Minne liebelos und Erleuchtung finster” (pg.27).
The essence of what Eckhart is trying to achieve is a particular kind of theosis. For background, and as a philosophical note, it is strictly incorrect to say that God exists, because God is not predicated on (does not depend upon) existence in order to have Being. Instead, God is existence, and is unpredicated. Eckhart’s goal here then is achieving this same state of unpredicatedness, for which abgeschiedenheit stands in for: he goes to the point of being able to say “In meiner ewigen Geburt wurden alle Dinge geboren und ich ward Ursache meiner selbst und aller Dinge.” (pg.39). It is interesting to parallel this with the first lines of the central Daoist text of Lao Tzu, the Daodejing– “The name that can be named is not the eternal name [of God]… for naming is the origin of all particular things”. Eckhart is not only trying to return, or transcend to pre-fall Eden, where love and knowledge do not exist (as these concepts do not yet have a determinate bestimmt identity against evil, man has not yet ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) but is trying to transcend to God beyond all nominal concepts: “Darum bitten wir, daß wir ‘Gottes’ ledig werden…” (pg.37) or “Wir aber sagen: Nicht in der Erkenntnis noch in der Minne. Sondern es ist in der Seele ein Etwas, aus fließt Erkenntnis und Minne…” (pg.38).
Another perspective Eckhart offers on that which is created, is his sermon Vom tätigen und schauenden Leben, where he claims that “… alles Geschaffene ist nur ein Mittel”. But what is curious is that this Mittel is “zwiefach”, consisting of both Tun and des Tuns ledig sein, both Maria and Martha (pg.31). Even towards the end he reaffirms that “Maria mußte erste eine Martha werden, ehe sie wirklich eine Maria werden konnte” (pg.35). This notion of having to pass through both of these shapes, of the Tun characterized by Martha and the des Tuns ledig sein characterized by Maria, for them to realize themselves is very reminiscent of Hegel’s bestimmung durch Gestalten des Bewusstseins, in which his famous phrase, the “List der Vernunft”, comes into play, that one has to pass through something that is farther from what is true, in order to arrive at what is more true. In this same spirit, Eckhart says “Die Meister aber gelangen durch Werke der Tugend zu so hohen Erkenntnissen, daß sie sich eine jegliche Tugend beispielsweise besser einbilden konnten als Paul … in seiner ersten Verzücktheit” (pg.30) with die Meister compared to Martha, who needs to understand that Eins ist not, and Paul compared to Maria, needs to lerne zu Leben Tätigkeit, that both may reach Vollkommenheit.
It is difficult to emphasize both how unique and eccentric Eckhart’s writings were in 14th century Catholic Germany. We must remember his role as a pioneer in translating Latin philosophy, or his own Latin sermons, into Mittelhochdeutsch, taking it from a language of minnesingers to a language of philosophy and abstraction, and secondly, as offering an alternative to the dominant scholasticism of his day. It is no surprise then, what value Martin Luther found in Eckhart through Tauler, where Eckhart, unlike any of his contemporaries, shifted the onus from the institution of the church to a radical unmediated relationship with God. Such a shift is very clear when understood in the light of the Platonic bias of the creator in favor of the created, and more explicitly, Luther’s rejection of Aristotle (representing hylomorphism and scholasticism).
Notes:
“Er soll so ledig allen Wissens sein, daß keinerlei Vorstellung Gottes in ihm lebendig ist” (pg.38) – Hegel claims something similar, that the abstract concept of God, and his mere Vorstellung are aufhebt.
“Was du Böses tust, tust du dir selbst zum schaden” (pg. 42).
“In mir selbst is also Gottes Minne und seine Natur, sein Wesen und seine Gottheit” (pg.45)
“Das Widerspiegeln meiner Seele, aber ist Gott und bleibt doch, was sie ist” (pg.46).
“… Gott nichts so gleich komme, als ‘Wesen’: Denn alles, was Gott ist, das ist Wesen” (pg.48) – God is not one being among many, but inheres all being within Him (panentheism)
“So auch ist der Mensch: er konnte es nicht glaube, daß Gott ihn so lieb hatte, bis daß Gott sich endlich selber ein Auge ausstach und menschliche Natur annahm” (pg.50)
“Wenn ich ein Konig ware und wusste es nicht, so ware ich kein Konig” (pg.58)
For the quotations see:
Eckhart, and Schmid Noerr Friedrich Alfred. Vom Wunder Der Seele Eine Auswahl Aus Den Traktaten Und Predigten. Philipp Reclam Jun, 2011.
Threshing Floor 