## 1. Life



Meister Eckhart, also known as Eckhart of Hochheim, was born around
1260, most likely in or near the German village of Tambach near the
Thuringian capital of Erfurt, where he probably entered into the
Dominican order sometime during his late teenage years. It is unclear
where Eckhart completed his initial studies, but the obvious influence
of Albert the Great on his intellectual formation indicates that he
may have studied in Cologne sometime before Albert's death in
1280 (Sturlese 2013: 125-26). What is certain is that Eckhart
eventually made his way to study theology in Paris, where he was made
a lecturer on Peter Lombard's *Sentences* in 1293. Fresh
from the university at Paris, the new *baccalaureus theologiae*
returned to Erfurt in 1293-4, this time as the prior of the
Dominican monastery where he had spent his early years.



In 1302, Eckhart was called to return to Paris for two years to occupy
the external Dominican chair as *magister actu regens*, a
position considered the pinnacle of academic success in the medieval
scholastic world, after which he was called back to Erfurt to serve as
the provincial for the newly-established province of Saxony. There he
was charged with the oversight and administration of at least 47
convents and monasteries in Eastern and Northern Germany and the Low
Countries. During this time, he established three new convents for
women and was additionally appointed general vicar of Bohemia. Yet
Eckhart remained as much an academic as an administrator, and the
status he enjoyed as a scholar and teacher is reflected by the fact
that, in 1311, he was called back to Paris to serve a second term as
*magister*, a distinction previously only granted to Thomas
Aquinas (McGinn 2001: 2ff.; Ruh 1996: 239ff.). In the summer of 1313,
Eckhart left Paris for Strasbourg in the Alsace region to function as
the special vicar for the Dominican Master General. Over the next
decade, he had close contact with several female convents, as well as
with the growing communities of Beguines in the region, and he is
recorded as having made personal visits to the convents of St.
Katharinental, Otenbach, and Unterlinden (McGinn 2001: 10). It is
not unlikely that his encounter with these female religious
communities played a role in Eckhart's increasing focus on his
vernacular preaching during this period (Largier 1998), and some
scholars (e.g., Milem 2013) have even proposed that many of the
Meister's German sermons were aimed at a female audience
interested in pursuing unitive and/or ecstatic religious experiences,
though the exclusivity and aims of his audience in this respect is
(rightly) considered controversial (cf. Wegener 2013).



Ever the scholar, however, Eckhart left Strasbourg sometime between
1323-24 to return to the German center of Dominican learning,
Cologne (Senner 2013). In the years that followed, he was presented
with several lists of purportedly heretical ideas and passages he had
written or preached. The first list, presented to him in 1325 by
Nicholas of Strasbourg (who was otherwise generally supportive of
Eckhart's preaching), likely contained passages from the
*Book of Divine Consolation* drawn up by two
"renegade" Dominicans, Hermann of Summo and William of
Nideggen, who only accused Eckhart of heresy after themselves being
accused of corruption (Tobin 1986: 11; Senner 2013: 50-52). In
response, Eckhart appears to have written a now-lost treatise, the
*Requisitus*, that satisfied Nicholas for the time being.
William was eventually reassigned to a priory in Aachen, while Hermann
was later found guilty of being a false accuser (among other, more
serious crimes) and imprisoned in the priory jail, but it would appear
that both of them would manage to dodge their punishments and continue
to accuse Eckhart of heresy (Senner 2013: 52-53). In 1326 they
presented the Archbishop of Cologne Henry II of Virneburg (who was
significantly less sympathetic to Eckhart's cause than Nicholas)
with their list of 74 purportedly heretical propositions from
Eckhart's Latin and German works. A further list from the German
sermons seems to have been drawn up later, and there may have been
subsequent lists (Tobin 1986: 10). On September 26, 1326, Eckhart
appeared before the diocesan inquisitorial commission to speak to the
charges of heresy in a trial that, as Bernard McGinn notes, was
"unprecedented" for the late middle ages (McGinn 2001:
15). In his defense at these proceedings, Eckhart cleverly appealed to
the distinction between intellect and will central to the debates
between the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Even if he were in error
regarding certain theological statements, he maintained, this was
merely an *intellectual* failure and could not by itself amount
to his having committed heresy, since the latter is, properly
understood, a *volitional* matter (Senner 2013: 61; McGinn
2001: 15). Eckhart thereby publicly declared that he was willing to
retract any and all errors the commission might find.



In the Spring of 1327, Eckhart set off for the papal court at Avignon
to appeal directly to the pope, who set up a commission of theologians
to examine the lists from the Cologne hearings. By this point, the
concern was no longer whether Eckhart was a *heretic* (perhaps
due to the careful distinction he had drawn in his earlier defense)
but rather to determine the *orthodoxy* of the propositions
themselves. The list was ultimately reduced to 28 propositions, all of
which were eventually deemed by the commission to be as
"heretical as the words sound" (LW V:569), indicating that
its members were inclined to take the propositions literally and out
of context, despite Eckhart's protestations that he had been
misunderstood (Senner 2013: 75-76). These articles range from
the claim that the world has existed from eternity to the idea that
God's glory is also revealed in evil to assertions that God is
glorified in those who renounce the pursuit of inwardness, holiness,
reward, or heaven. Many of the articles center on claims that hint at
notions of apotheosis, deification, and/or the identification of the
human soul with the (or a) Son of God. (For a full list, see EE
77-81 and MW 26-28.)



The commission's findings, however, were merely a recommendation
to the pope, and unfortunately, by the time the pope's official
*consistorium* with the cardinals was able to take place,
Eckhart had fallen ill and most likely died on January 28, 1328
(Senner 1997). On March 27, 1329, Pope John XXII issued the bull
*In agro dominico*, which followed the commission's
recommendation in condemning all 28 articles, but ordered them
according to various levels of severity, eleven of them being merely
claimed to be "likely misunderstood". The bull was sent to
Cologne with the order that it be published, so that



> 
> 
> the hearts of the simple [people to whom Eckhart had preached such
> articles] which are easily seduced [...] may not be filled with
> the errors contained in them. (LW V:602; quoted in Senner 2013:
> 84)
> 
> 
> 



Nowhere in the bull or its accompanying documents, however, was
Meister Eckhart himself ever declared a heretic.


## 2. Influences



Although Eckhart was an innovative and controversial figure, he was
also a product of his time--and by those standards not nearly as
heterodox as he is often made out to be. While much has been made of
the accusations against him, there has also been a significant effort
by various Eckhart scholars to rehabilitate the Meister's
orthodoxy and demonstrate his adherence to the theological and
philosophical doctrines from which his thought arose.



Similar to other thirteenth-century Dominicans of the Cologne School
like Albert the Great (d. 1280), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), and
Dietrich of Freiburg (d. 1310)--all of whom exercised a
significant influence on the young Dominican--Eckhart's
thought represents a kind of synthesis between, on the one hand, a
deeply Augustinian and Dionysian Christian Neoplatonism (one strongly
influenced by Proclus and the *Liber de causis*) and, on the
other hand, the late medieval scholastic Aristotelianism of the
universities. Eckhart's own analysis of Aristotle was not
seldomly filtered through the Jewish and Islamic sources available to
him in Latin--most especially in the works of Maimonides,
Avicenna, Averroes, and Avicebron (Palazzo 2013; Schwartz 2002).
Indeed, in Eckhart's Latin works only Aristotle is cited more
frequently than Maimonides, leading Bernard McGinn to claim that
"no Christian author of the Middle Ages [...] knew
Maimonides better or reflected greater sympathy for his view"
(McGinn 1986: 17). In a similar vein, Kurt Flasch (2006 [2015])
characterizes Eckhart as having inherited the "spirit of Arabic
philosophy".



With respect to lesser known figures and movements, Eckhart's
relationship with his female contemporaries, especially Dominican nuns
and the Beguines in Strasbourg--as well as the similarities in
aspects of his thought to the work of Rhineland contemplatives like
Hadewijch of Antwerp (d. 1260), Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. c.1282),
and especially Marguerite Porete (burned at the stake in Paris in 1310
for heresy)--have been the subject of much speculation. It is
still debated as to whether Eckhart was explicitly familiar with
Marguerite's *Mirouer des simples ames anienties*
[*The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls*]. We do know that he
shared a residence with her inquisitor, William of Paris, the year
after her execution, and there are certainly striking parallels
between some of the ideas in Eckhart's sermons and
Marguerite's *Mirouer* (e.g., the metaphor of the
"spark" of the soul and the divine as abyss, the notions
of poverty or freedom of spirit, the negation or
"annihilation" of the self-possessed soul, and the
hypernomian allusions to the detached soul's transcendence of
the virtues). But their thought also diverges in significant
ways--as can be seen, for example, in the stark contrast between
Eckhart's staunch intellectualism and Marguerite's
repeated emphasis on the supremacy of love over reason and intellect.
Thus, whether the parallels between the two more likely suggest a
direct connection between Marguerite and Eckhart, a third party who
exercised influence on both individuals, or the cultural influence of
ideas that were simply "in the air" in the late thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries remains a topic for further research.
(For more on comparisons between medieval women's spirituality
and Eckhart's thought see, among others, Wegener 2013; Hollywood
1995 [2001]; Sells 1994; and the collection of essays in McGinn
1994.)


## 3. *Lebemeister* or *Lesemeister*? Eckhart as Mystic, Theologian, and Philosopher



In much contemporary spiritual literature, various popular new-age
tomes, and not a little academic scholarship, Meister Eckhart has been
characterized first and foremost as a mystic--and only
secondarily as a theologian or philosopher. This characterization has
to do, in part, with the recovery of Eckhart's vernacular works
by nineteenth-century Romantic and Idealist movements in Germany for
whom the so-called "mystics" symbolized the
representatives and custodians of "true" religion (Schmidt
2003). (Eckhart's more "scholarly" Latin writings
were not discovered until the second half of the nineteenth century by
which time he had already been claimed for mysticism.) Relatedly,
Eckhart's vernacular works lent themselves well to a growing
interest in religious perennialism and a desire in the burgeoning
fields of religious studies, philosophy of religion, and religious
psychology to locate parallels between the attitudes, experiences, and
ideas found in Christianity and those of other religious and spiritual
traditions (Griffioen 2021: 9-12). Already in Volume 2 of
*The World as Will and Representation* (1844), Schopenhauer
compared Eckhart's ideas with those found in Buddhism, Sufism,
and the Upanishads (Schopenhauer 1844 [2018]), and Rudolf Otto
compared the Meister to Shankara in his influential 1926 *Mysticism
East and West* (Otto 1926 [1932]). Since then, Eckhart has often
been set alongside other figures sometimes claimed for
mysticism--e.g., Abraham Abulafia, Ibn 'Arabi, Rumi,
Zhuangzi, and Zhu Xi, to name just a few--and his work has been
compared to traditions as wide ranging as Advaita Vedanta,
Confucianism, Sufism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and Zoharic Kabbalism,
among others. Indeed, Eckhart remains a significant touchstone for
scholars of comparative mysticism today. (For a few direct comparisons
see, e.g., Ueda 2018, 1977; Griffioen & Zahedi 2018; Zarrabi-Zadeh
2016; Wolfson 2013; Zheng 2016b, 2016a; Heitz 2007; Shah-Kazemi 2006;
Suzuki 1957.)



Eckhart's modern reception as a mystic is unfortunately also due
to entrenched scholarly biases, both past and present, against
medieval vernacular spiritual and theological writing. Quite often,
the category commonly referred to as "vernacular
mysticism" has been misleadingly set up as an irrationalist foil
to medieval scholasticism, leading to the outright dismissal as
"non-philosophical" of many traditions and genres of late
medieval religious writing--especially those penned by women and
laypersons (Griffioen 2022). And although Eckhart belonged to neither
of these social categories, his connections to such groups and the air
of heterodoxy surrounding his later work may have played a significant
role in the perpetuation of his contemporary reputation as a mystic
and his partial exclusion from the scholastic canon. (It is telling
that, although an English translation of Eckhart's German
sermons appeared already in 1909, his Latin works have never been
completely translated into English.)



At the same time, in contrast to his Beguine counterparts,
Eckhart's role as a speculative thinker and champion of natural
philosophy did not go wholly unnoticed. For example, his adoption by
German Idealists like Franz von Baader and G.W.F. Hegel transformed
the Dominican master into "the father of modern
speculation" in the German-speaking world (Moran 2013:
669-70) and served to make him culturally and philosophically
relevant in a way "unmatched in the German intellectual sphere
in the second half of the nineteenth and for much of the twentieth
century" (O'Regan 2013: 666). However, this also resulted
in twentieth-century German philosophers like Martin Heidegger
adapting Eckhartian terms like *Gelassenheit* ("the state
of letting-go" or "releasement") for their own
philosophical purposes, further obscuring the Meister's own use
of such terms, as well as the rebranding of Eckhart by the National
Socialists as the progenitor of a uniquely "German"
Christianity (Moran 2013: 675). However, although Eckhart's
playful use of his vernacular tongue was indeed distinctive, and there
is certainly a Rhenish-Flemish spiritual tradition to which he can be
said to belong, there is nothing particularly "German"
about his theology. (Or, if there is, he has other
"German" thinkers like Albert or Dietrich to thank for
it.)



More recently, scholars like John Caputo have seen in Eckhart's
thought an early critique of what has come to be known as
"ontotheology" (Caputo 1975), placing him squarely in a
historical lineage of thinkers taken to anticipate contemporary
phenomenology and Continental philosophical theology. Others like Kurt
Flasch place Eckhart in a more recognizably analytic lineage, focusing
on his



> 
> 
> attempts to prove those theses generally considered essential tenets
> of Christian thought with what he considers to be a purely rational
> method. (Flasch 2006 [2015: 15-16])
> 
> 
> 



Still, we should not be so hasty to completely disassociate Eckhart
with "mystical theology" altogether, at least as the term
was commonly understood in the late middle ages, in which it was
associated less with religious experience and more with a special kind
of *hermeneutical expertise* (Griffioen 2021: 1-2;
Jantzen 1995: 59ff.). Several places in the Dominican's work
discuss his self-described aim as a teacher and preacher to uncover
the "mystical" (i.e., "hidden") meanings lying
under the surface of Holy Scripture, a task that for Eckhart was
simultaneously speculative and practical, involving both the pursuit
of truth and the edification of the soul. Moreover, although Eckhart
rarely speaks of anything resembling mystical
*experience*--in fact, his work might be better
characterized as "anti-experiential" (Yadav 2016; Van Dyke
2010)--the ideas expressed in both his German sermons and his
Latin writings do appear to set out a spiritual program of the kind
that has traditionally been identified with apophatic (and especially
Dionysian) mysticism. For this reason, we might do better to think of
his work as embodying a kind of *speculative
mystagogy*--an edificatory spiritual itinerary grounded in a
complex philosophical cosmology and anthropology, fused to a
sophisticated Trinitarian doctrine of God, and culminating in (without
aiming at!) the intellectual realization of the unity of the Divine
and human natures.



Indeed, to assume that Eckhart's intellectual and pastoral tasks
were completely divorced from one another fails to capture the
richness of his thought. Eckhart has often been called both a
*Lesemeister* ("master of learning") and a
*Lebemeister* ("master of living"), and it does not
seem inappropriate to characterize him as simultaneously occupying the
roles of mystic, theologian, and philosopher, even in his written
works (McGinn 2005: 108ff.; Ruh 1996: 229ff.). However we choose to
label him, Eckhart's thought has been taken up (and adapted,
revised, or repurposed) by a wide range of figures and movements,
including proponents of Thomism, negative theology, ecological
theology, liberation theology, analytic philosophy, Continental
philosophy, phenomenology, feminist theory, Marxist theory, and other
intellectual circles--as well as by spiritualists, artists, new
age gurus, and those simply seeking spiritual or existential guidance,
demonstrating his relevance for thinkers and movers from all walks of
life.


## 4. Saying and Unsaying: Language and the Philosophical Eckhart



Just as it is difficult to separate Eckhart the philosopher from
Eckhart the theologian or Eckhart the mystic, it is often equally
difficult to systematically tease apart Eckhart's speculative
metaphysics from his epistemological, practical, and pastoral views.
To be sure, with respect to the debate between the Dominicans and the
Franciscans regarding the primacy of intellect versus will, Eckhart
falls decidedly on the side of his order, emphasizing that intellect
and our rational nature (Middle High German:
*vernunfticheit*) are "nobler" than the will.
However, this does not mean that Eckhart's philosophical focus
is solely or even primarily on the *cognitive* or even the
*rational*, at least as these terms are employed today. Even if
he agrees with his fellow Dominicans that human beings' rational
nature represents the aspect in which they most closely resemble the
Divine, not only does the late medieval understanding of
"rational nature" goes far beyond the mere ability to
reason, Eckhart himself claims that true wisdom and genuine knowledge
of God involves leaving reason (or at least discursive
reason*ing*) behind (Van Dyke 2019, 2022). This
"sapiential" approach establishes a tight connection
between cosmology (the "top-down" order of reality and
divine creation), the pursuit of wisdom (the "bottom-up"
order of knowledge and human intellection), and the perfection of the
human being (a rightly-ordered will grounded in the divine reality).
Still, as discussed in more detail below, creating, knowing, and
willing all involve fundamental motions of intellection for Eckhart:
ontologically on the part of God (in "birthing" creation
via an "overflowing" act of divine causal knowing),
epistemically and spiritually within the human being (in
"birthing the Word" in the depths of the soul via the
non-teleological "non-activity" of silent
contemplation).



One way of thinking about how the various vertices of Eckhart's
thought are connected to each other is to explore his nuanced approach
to and use of *language* in the pursuit of what his student,
Heinrich Seuse (Henry Suso), would later characterize in his widely
read *Horologium Sapientiae* as the highest form of philosophy,
a *philosophia spiritualis* (one which Seuse took Eckhart to
embody). Not only does the Meister engage in a kind of "serious
play" with words and language in both his Latin and German
writings, much of his work ultimately revolves around the ways in
which words, especially understood as "signs" or
"images", can both reveal and obscure. This tension is
played out in a dynamic, distinctly Eckhartian dialectic that moves
back and forth between saying and "unsaying" (Sells 1994),
univocity and equivocity (Mojsisch 1983 [2001]; Wendlinder 2014),
speech and silence (Duclow 1984)--between the limits of finite
human language and the self-communication of the Divine Intellect in
the "Eternal Word" (i.e., Christ). In fact, despite his
strong apophatic tendencies, the speculative aspect of Eckhart's
mystagogy might best be characterized as a *philosophy of the
Word*, according to which the second person of the Christian
Trinity (understood as the divine *logos* or scholastic
*ratio*) represents the metaphysical threshold between the
human and the divine, as well as the medium by which the timeless,
singular Godhead (the "One" of Neoplatonist philosophy) is
"translated"--linguistically, epistemically, and even
ontologically--into the discursivity and multiplicity
characteristic of the grammar, thought, and very existence of
creatures.



Therefore, although it is to some extent misleading and anachronistic
to carve up Eckhart's thought into distinct philosophical
subdisciplines, to borrow one of Eckhart's favorite
"hermeneutical keywords" (Ruh 1985: 96)--namely
*in quantum* (MHG: *als verre*)--it may
nevertheless be helpful to explore his philosophical views *insofar
as* they might be said to fall under various contemporary
philosophical categories, using his approach to language,
interpretation, and communication as a guide. In practice, however,
these different aspects of his philosophical system were not intended
to be thought independently of one another.


## 5. Faith and Philosophy: Eckhart's Hermeneutical Approach



The best way to understand Eckhart's views on the relationship
between revelation and reason, faith and philosophy, is to explore its
relevance with respect to his views on the interpretation of Scripture
in the *Opus tripartitum*--a novel orientation toward
exegesis that would become increasingly prominent in his later work,
perhaps as a result of his encounter with Beguine spirituality (Ruh
1996: 303; Largier 1998). To begin with, Eckhart explicitly maintains
in several passages that the truths of Scripture are wholly
commensurate with those derivable via natural philosophy, and in the
*Commentary on John* he writes that



> 
> 
> holy scripture can be interpreted [...] so that what the
> philosophers have written about the natures and properties of things
> agree with it, especially since everything that is true, whether in
> being or knowing, in scripture or in nature, proceeds from one source
> and one root of truth.
> 
> 
> 



He even goes so far as to claim that



> 
> 
> Moses, Christ and the Philosopher teach the same thing, differing only
> in the way they teach, namely as worthy of belief [Moses], as probably
> or likely [Aristotle], and as truth [Christ]. (*In Ioh.* n.185;
> LW III:154-5; quoted in McGinn 1981: 27)
> 
> 
> 



Importantly, however, the exegetical tendency in Eckhart to blur the
boundaries between theology and philosophy is not a matter of
downplaying the centrality of revelation; rather, it is more
expressive of his desire to demonstrate just how much philosophy can
be found "hidden under the image and surface of the literal
sense" of Scripture (*In Gen. II* n.1; LW I/2:333; EE 92;
cf. also Tobin 1986: 25ff.).



In this sense, Eckhart's approach to the question of revelation
and reason is less akin to later Enlightenment projects that would
subject purportedly revealed Scripture to rational verification.
Rather, it is just the other way around: reason and natural philosophy
can *also* be used to illuminate the truths and "hidden
meanings" revealed in Scripture (Ruh 1996: 295). Unlike
philosophy, Eckhart thinks, Scripture by itself does not
*prove* the truths revealed within it, but rather
"parabolically intimates in hidden fashion [...] what we
[elsewhere] prove and declare about matters divine, ethical and
natural" (*In Gen. II* n.4; LW I/2:336; EE 95). The job
of the exegete and the preacher, then, is to extract this hidden (or
"mystical") meaning from the text and to clarify it for
the audience, using whatever tools she has at her
disposal--including those of rational argumentation and natural
philosophy. Thus, in his discussion of John 1:1 ("In the
beginning was the Word"), Eckhart notes that



> 
> 
> in interpreting this Word and everything else that follows my
> intention is the same as in all my works--to explain what the
> holy Christian faith and the two Testaments maintain through the help
> of the natural arguments of the philosophers. (*In Ioh.* n.2;
> LW III:4; EE 122-3)
> 
> 
> 



However, unlike the traditional "fourfold" hermeneutical
method employed by many medieval scholars, which usually appeals to
each of the literal/historical, allegorical, moral/tropological, and
anagogical/eschatological senses of particular Biblical passages in
turn, Eckhart's biblical exegesis largely divorces what we today
would call the "literal" reading of the text from the
meaning he draws out of it in ways that often strike modern readers as
remarkably idiosyncratic. There is some evidence that Eckhart's
hermeneutical method seems to have been intentionally
disruptive--a way of shocking his medieval audiences out of their
complacency and opening them up to new and "deeper" ways
of (philosophically, theologically, and spiritually) encountering
familiar passages (Tobin 1986: 23). His so-called
"parabolic" method takes a dehistoricized and
decontextualized approach to Scripture, in which a passage is
dissected into individual words, phrases, or sentences, which are then
given particular philosophical, theological, or metaphorical glosses
and sometimes recombined with other similarly interpreted biblical
passages in what McGinn calls "a dense web of
intertextuality" (McGinn 2005: 112). It also provides multiple,
not necessarily commensurate interpretations, so that "the
reader can freely take now one and now the other as seems useful to
him" (*In Ioh.* n.39; LW III:33; EE 135). This pragmatic
approach served an explicitly pastoral function, insofar as the
preachers and clerics under Eckhart's tutelage would have
encountered different situations in their vocations that might call
for different approaches to Scripture. But it was also intellectually
legitimate, Eckhart thought, insofar as every true sense "comes
from the Truth itself" (*In Gen. II* n.2; LW I/2:334; EE
93). In fact, for Eckhart, all remotely true senses found in Scripture
can be understood as *literal* senses, "since the literal
sense is that which the author [...] intends, and God is the
author of holy scripture" (*ibid*.).



From an epistemic standpoint, Eckhart may have seen this polyphonic
hermeneutical method as providing a way for finite and limited humans
to mirror the infinite and all-encompassing divine
perspective--namely, by using a kind of deliberate
*multi-perspectivity* to achieve a more comprehensive and
objective "God's-eye view", one which (in the human
case) discursively subsumes all things under the unified aspect of the
divine *logos*, allowing the human mind to reflect, albeit
imperfectly, the timeless, or eternally present,
*nu/nunc* of the divine Intellect (McGinn 2005: 112).


## 6. *Esse* or *Intelligere*? Eckhart on God and Creation



Perhaps due to this pragmatic and multi-perspectival approach, Eckhart
is not always entirely clear when it comes to the nature of God on
which, if any, of the so-called *transcendentals* or divine
perfections (being, truth/understanding, unity, or goodness) he takes
to have conceptual or metaphysical priority. For example, in the
opening sentence to the "Prologue to the Book of
Propositions" in the *Opus tripartitum*, Eckhart appears
to follow his Dominican predecessor Thomas Aquinas in giving
*being* place of priority--though he subtly reverses
Thomas's emphasis on the idea that God is being itself,
asserting instead: *Esse est deus* (*Prol. op. prop.*
n.11; LW I/2:29; PQP 93). Elsewhere, he speaks of God as
"existence itself" (*In Exod.* n.21; LW II:28; TP
48), or as "the fullness of all existence [*plenitudo omnis
esse*]", which "can have nothing outside of it"
(*ibid*. n.48; LW II:52; TP 58). However, in the first of the
*Parisian Questions*, Eckhart boldly states that



> 
> 
> it is not my present opinion that God understands because he exists,
> but rather that he exists because he understands. God is an intellect
> and understanding [*intellectus et intelligere*], and his
> understanding itself is the ground of his existence. (*Qu.
> Par.* 1 n.4; LW V:40; PQP 45)
> 
> 
> 



In fact, not only does Eckhart claim here that "among [the]
perfections intelligence comes first and then being or
existence" (*ibid.* n.6; LW V:43; PQP 47), he claims that
"everything in God transcends existence" (*ibid.*
n.8; LW V:44; PQP 48) and that "nothing in him has the nature of
being" (*ibid.* n.10; LW V:46; PQP 49).



These seemingly inconsistent statements themselves correspond to two
ways the Meister discusses God's creation of the universe and
the status of the creatures that emerge from God's creative act.
The first involves what Bernard McGinn (2001, 2005), following Alain
de Libera (1990), has called a *metaphysics of flow*, involving
a sort of "spilling over" of the divine plenitude of being
into creation. The second--perhaps best described as a form of
*causative epistemology*--maintains that the
divine's thinking or knowing all things is what both formally
grounds and efficiently causes those things to come to be. The former
account of creation, in which Eckhart commonly uses maternal metaphors
to represent creation as a kind of ontological "emanation"
from the "pregnant" Godhead (McGinn 2001: 84-85), is
commonly cited in discussions of the Meister's
"mystical" Neoplatonism. The latter account, in contrast,
is sometimes invoked by contemporary scholars to highlight the
Dominican's adherence to a form of Aristotelian intellectualism
and his commitment to the doctrine of the primacy of intellect over
will (or, for Eckhart, even over being itself). To see how Eckhart can
consistently maintain both views, it will be important to more closely
examine both his doctrine of analogy and his understanding of the role
of the divine *logos* as an intermediary between God and
creature. First, however, it will help to take a brief look at each of
these accounts on their own.


### 6.1 The Boiling (Over) of Being: Eckhart's "Metaphysics of Flow"



In his discussion of Exodus 3:14 ("I am who I am"),
Eckhart speaks of God as "the fullness of existence and full
existence [*plenitudo esse et plenum esse*]" and
"nothing else but pure existence [*nihil aliud nisi purum
esse*]" (*In Exod.* n.74; LW II:77; TP 68). This
"pure naked existence [*purum esse et nudum
esse*]", he maintains, is "without any accident,
without anything foreign, [pure] substance without quality, without
this or that form" and is "above accident, species, and
genus" (*In Exod.* n.15; LW II:21; TP 45-6).
Moreover, like Avicenna, Aquinas, and most of his contemporaries, he
affirms that God's qualityless existence is identical with
God's essence. Adapting for his own purposes the metaphors of
"boiling" employed by scholastic thinkers like Albert the
Great and Dietrich of Freiburg, and drawing heavily on the mystical
imagery of birthing, metalworking, liquid, light, and mirrors
reminiscent of contemplative authors like Bernard of Clairvaux and
Marguerite Porete, Eckhart writes:



> 
> 
> [...] the repetition [in *I am who I am*] indicates
> [...] a "boiling" or giving birth to itself
> [*bullitionem sive parturitionem sui*]--glowing in itself,
> and melting and boiling in and into itself, light that totally forces
> its whole being in light and into light [*lux in luce et in lucem
> se toto se totum penetrans*] and that is everywhere totally turned
> back and reflected upon itself. (*In Exod.* n.16; LW
> II:21-22; EE 46)
> 
> 
> 



He continues, citing John 1:4 ("In him was life"):



> 
> 
> "Life" expresses a type of "pushing out"
> [*exseritionem*] by which something swells up in itself [*in
> se intumescens*] and first breaks out totally in itself [*se
> profundit primo in se toto*], each part into each part, before it
> pours itself forth and "boils over" on the outside
> [*effundat et ebulliat extra*]. (*ibid.*)
> 
> 
> 



Eckhart's use here and elsewhere of *bullitio*
("boiling") and *ebullitio* ("boiling
over") is central to his metaphysics of flow. The former term
refers to the timeless divine emanation of the Trinity within the
Godhead. Put in terms of the transcendentals, the Father (here
identified with "Oneness" or "Unity")
eternally begets the Son ("Truth" or
"Wisdom"), and together they "breathe" or
"spirate" the Holy Spirit
("Love"/"Goodness") (cp. *In Sap.*
n.28; LW II:348; TP, 150). This "inner boiling" or
"swelling" is, for Eckhart, a purely formal emanation. It
does not result in any new beings but rather merely represents the
internal dynamism of the Godhead--i.e., the eternal
"unfolding" of the divine perfections within Godself. The
latter *ebullitio*, on the other hand--the "boiling
over" or "outflowing" of God's overabundant
fullness of being into the world--represents God's
constant, wholly free act of creation *ex nihilo* that not only
grounds the being of all creatures (as their formal cause) but also
gives rise to their existence (as their efficient cause) and orders
them to their proper ends (as their final cause). Put in more
Neoplatonist terms, it represents the Eckhartian version of the
ontological *exitus*--the "fall" or
"departure" from divine unity into created multiplicity.
On this view, only God has "true being", and creatures
are, strictly speaking, *nothing*. Since, for Eckhart,
"whatever is outside of God, inasmuch as it is outside of being
is not something else or [even] something at all" (*In
Ioh.* n.215; LW III:181, quoted in Tobin 1986: 39), whatever being
creatures might be said to have is derivative of the *puritas
essendi* that is the Godhead and wholly dependent on their
participation in it.



Importantly, according to the Meister, although God's inner
boiling is *conceptually* prior to God's ebullitive act,
and although the Father is *logically* prior to the Son and
Spirit, there is no *temporal* distinction between the
unfolding of the divine persons within Godself and the flowing out of
the universe from the Godhead (*In Gen. I*, n.7; LW I/2:65; EE
84-5). When considered from the divine perspective, God's
inward-directed activity of begetting and spirating Godself and
God's outward-directed activity of forming, birthing, and
sustaining all of creation occur simultaneously in the "eternal
now" and might be said to constitute a single, unified,
always-occurring event of divine superabundance. However, viewed from
our limited and finite human perspective, creation is conceived as a
temporal unfolding of the Trinitarian divine image in the
"flowing out" (*uzganc/uzfliessen*) of
Being--one which secondarily "in-forms" Truth and is
ultimately expressed in creation through the self-giving nature of
divine Love.


### 6.2 The Primacy of Intellect: Eckhart's Causative Epistemology



Whereas Eckhart's metaphysics of flow characterizes God as a
kind of *fullness of being* "boiling over" into
creation, his account of creative divine intellection, while
continuous with a long medieval tradition of theories of divine causal
knowledge, rests on a somewhat surprising idea of God as
*non*-being, a kind of *nothingness*, or better:
*no-thing-ness*. This negative characterization of God is also
reflected in the metaphors Eckhart employs in his vernacular sermons
when he speaks of God variously as a "desert"
(*VeM* n.25; DW V 119; EE 247), an "abyss"
(*Pr.* 29; DW II:84 ; TP 289), a "wasteland" or
"wilderness" (*Pr.* 10; DW I:171; TP 265), or
simply "the divine nothing" (*Pr.* 71; DW III:228;
TP 324).



This identification of God with utter non-being, as opposed to total
fullness of being, rests on Eckhart's approach to
*intellectus* more generally. In human beings, for example, the
intellect, as a natural power of the soul, is a capacity to take on
the representations or "cognitive forms"
(*species*) of the objects that it cognizes and, ultimately, to
become in some sense identical with them (an idea Eckhart takes over
from Averroes: cf. Flasch 2006 [2015: 184ff.]). However, when
considered apart from its objects, the created intellect is, strictly
speaking, *nothing*. Its objects lend it form and content, but
taken by itself it is "none of the things it knows"
(*Qu. Par.* 2 n.2; LW V:50; PQP 51) and therefore, unlike the
objects it cognizes, cannot be considered a determinate thing--a
"this or that" (*esse hoc et hoc*). The intellect
is, Eckhart maintains, "neither here, nor now, nor a definite
thing [...], [it] is not a being, nor does it have an
existence" (*Qu. Par.* 2 n.7; LW V:52-3; PQP 53).
It is more like an emptiness or void--one able to be cognitively
(in)formed by its intentional objects. Indeed, given Eckhart's
commitment to the identity of the intellect and the intelligible, in
order to come to know anything, the intellect must itself be nothing.
It must be "'unmixed' with anything [...] so
that it might know everything" (*Qu. Par.* 2 n.2; LW
V:50; PQP 51).



Further, on Eckhart's view the "cognitive forms"
that mediate the object to the intellect also lack existence. They may
properly be said to "have" objects, but they themselves
are not substances in which accidents inhere. Neither are they
accidents because, although they are found *in* the soul or
intellect, they do not inhere in it or ontologically depend on it, as
an accident would in relation to its subject (*Qu. Par.* 2 n.5;
LW V:51; PQP 52). And what is neither substance nor accident is,
simply put, not a being. Instead, the *species* for Eckhart is
much more like a relation of intentionality--a way of being
directed *toward* entities--than an entity itself (Caputo
1975: 108), since on his view such relations are not themselves
existents. Thus, while Eckhart appears to build on Aquinas's
distinction between the object (the "*quod*") of
knowledge and the means (the "*quo*") by which the
object is known, he goes beyond Thomas's approach to knowledge
by explicitly characterizing both as non-being (Caputo 1975: 104).



Interestingly, unlike many of his late medieval counterparts, it
appears to be this "nothingness" of the human intellect in
its sheer potentiality and indeterminateness that Eckhart sees as most
closely mirroring the divine intellect. Indeed, in contrast to the
Albertian tradition, it is the *possible* intellect, not the
agent intellect, on which the Meister models the divine mind (Keenan
2013; Goris 2009; Mojsisch 1983 [2001]). For Eckhart, in order to
understand God as the true ground (*fundamentum*) of Being (and
of all created being*s*), God cannot himself have being or
otherwise be a being. Rather, God must first and foremost be a
"nothing"--i.e., a *no(n)-thing*. Since
intellect in and of itself is fundamentally characterized by a kind of
indeterminate nothingness (one capable, however, of conceiving
everything), it is more properly said of God than of any other
attribute, name, or perfection one might ascribe to him. It is in this
sense that Eckhart can assert in the *Parisian Questions* that
God's understanding is prior to (and the foundation of)
God's existence.



Eckhart famously illustrates this point in German Sermon 9 (DW
I:141ff.; TP 255ff.) by employing the architectural and sartorial
imagery common to many of his vernacular works (and found in much
thirteenth-century Beguine mystical literature). He claims that, while
considering God under the aspect of being (*in dem wesene*) is
not illegitimate, to do so is still to qualify God in some
way--to make of him something determinate--and therefore
merely to see God as he resides in the "antechamber"
(*vorburge*) of the temple in which "he shines as
holy". Likewise, approaching God under the aspect of will or
love is to encounter a God still enshrouded (*verborgen*) in
the "mantle of goodness" (*kleide der guete*).
Considering God under the aspect of intellection
(*vernunfticheit*), on the other hand, is to witness the
wholly "naked" (*bloz*) Godhead in his true
"temple", unclothed and "stripped
[*entkleidit*] of [all] goodness and being".



Of course, the non-being of the intellect considered in itself is
where the comparison between the human intellect and the divine mind
ends:



> 
> 
> Here the imagination fails. For our knowledge is different from
> God's. His knowledge is the cause of things whereas our
> knowledge is caused by them. (*Par. Qu.* 1 n.8; LW V:44; PQP
> 48)
> 
> 
> 



On Eckhart's view the human intellect is largely
*receptive*, its potentiality actualized by the
already-existing objects in the world that it passively receives. The
nothingness of the divine intellect, in contrast, is essentially
*productive*. It "reaches out" to those things that
are not and, in cognizing them, simultaneously causes them to be. Put
in more contemporary terms, human cognition is characterized by a
mind-to-world direction of fit, with the direction of causation
proceeding from world to mind. With respect to God, things are exactly
the other way around. Divine intentionality causes the world to fit
with what the divine mind eternally understands.



Eckhart's idea here is that the divine intellect
"pre-conceives" both being itself and the entirety of
knowable forms within it, and in God's knowing them (as their
*ratio*), they come to exist. Considered merely as essences or
forms that have their principle in the divine mind, they are said to
be pre-contained "intellectually" like a house in the mind
of an architect (*In sap.* n.21; LW, II:34; TP 148), which has
no being until the architect herself "trans-forms" the
idea into a real building. However, in the divine intellect they are
neither individually distinct nor determinate, but are rather
contained as a unity. Moreover, because of the utter Oneness of God,
as well as Eckhart's Aristotelian commitment to the identity of
intellect and intelligible, the unity of the *ratio* of the
forms in the divine intellect is nothing other than God himself, in
the form of the eternal *logos*. (On this point, see
 Section 8
 below.) Thus, when the divine intellect knows, it simultaneously
knows itself and the whole world, and in knowing itself as the formal
cause of creatures, its self-giving intentionality gives rise to them
as their efficient and final cause. The potentiality of the divine
intellect, therefore, is perhaps best thought of as a
*pluripotential prescience* (or "pre-science"), an
originative "potency" eternally exercised as the divine
mind knows itself.



Importantly, however, despite his views on God's intellective
"conception" of the world, Eckhart need not be viewed as a
pantheist, or even a panentheist. Rather, the universe and everything
in it *reflect* the rationality of the divine mind, even as
they are distinct from it. To put it in more Eckhartian linguistic
terms, the existence of the universe is "synonymous" with
(and wholly dependent upon) God's act of knowing it (Milne 2010:
10), but it is not identical with God, even if God is in some
essential sense "in" it (though not as a proper part). In
any case, with regard to God Eckhart's ontology is distinctly
epistemological (insofar as he gives primacy to intellect over being),
and his epistemology is distinctly ontological (insofar as the
"self-reflective" activity of the divine mind is the cause
of what it knows).



In one sense, then, Eckhart's metaphysics of flow and his
doctrine of causative knowledge appear to stand in tension with one
another. One affirms the identity of being and God (*esse est
deus*), construing being as God's most fundamental
attribute, that out of which all creation (over)flows. The other
negates being of God (*esse formaliter non est in deo*) and
gives God's intellect priority of place over existence. On the
one hand, this kind of tension is not out of character for Eckhart and
perhaps simply represents one more example of what might be called his
*dialectic apophaticism*--or the attempt to show how God
both grounds and utterly transcends the standard categories of human
cognition and language by pushing common scholastic tropes to their
conceptual limits. It may also simply be a product of Eckhart's
pragmatic commitment to presenting various models of God that his
audiences could "freely take [...] as seems useful"
to them, as discussed in
 Section 5
 above. On the other hand, a closer look at the Meister's
doctrine of analogy, when combined with his emphasis on the importance
of *in quantum*-qualifications, might reveal one way in which
Eckhart's intertwined views on language and metaphysics create a
space in which God can legitimately be said to be both
"being" and "non-being".


## 7. Signs of the Divine: Eckhart's "Metaphysics of Analogy"



Much has been written on the extent to which Eckhart's views on
analogy draw on and/or depart from those of his philosophical
predecessors (e.g., Aristotle, Proclus, Augustine, Maimonides, Albert
the Great, Dietrich of Freiberg, Henry of Ghent, and especially Thomas
Aquinas)--as well as on whether his approach endorses an analogy
of attribution, proportionality, or both/neither. Earlier scholars
tended to view Eckhart's doctrine of analogy as largely
derivative of (and perhaps even deficient by comparison with) these
scholars, but more recent work has focused on the ways in which his
position represents something distinctive and innovative. (For a
comprehensive overview, see Hackett & Weed 2013.) In any case,
like his medieval contemporaries, Eckhart saw analogy as an important
means of spelling out the relationship between God and creatures.



There were several understandings of analogy in play in the late
middle ages, but the theories one is most likely to encounter have to
do with either the so-called "analogy of attribution" or
the "analogy of proportionality". Different thinkers
employed these terms in different ways, but in general "analogy
of attribution" was used to refer to a relation between items in
which some predicate or property is "properly" or
"primarily" said of one of the objects of comparison,
while the others are related to it in a lesser,
"derivative" or "secondary" sense (e.g.,
causally or as a sign). "Analogy of proportionality", on
the other hand, postulates some relevant similarity in the way the
subject and predicate of the respective objects of comparison are
related. The former approach to analogy maintains the radical
(ontological, epistemological, and semantic) gulf between God and
creatures. It thereby helped medieval theologians guard against
worries concerning idolatry and the anthropomorphization of God, while
still allowing them to positively identify conceptual lines along
which a (usually causal) relationship could be postulated between God
and creatures with respect to a particular attribute or property. The
latter approach, however, preserves the intuition that our human
language can actually express genuine truths about God without
committing a category mistake, thereby helping to bridge the gap
between God and creatures (Tobin 1986: 35).



With respect to the transcendental perfections discussed at the
beginning of
 Section 6,
 Aquinas had attempted to "synthesize" analogy of
attribution and proportionality in what is sometimes called an
"analogy of participation". Roughly speaking, he proposed
that God has being, wisdom, goodness, and unity essentially, whereas
creatures can only be said to *be* (and to be good, wise, one,
etc.) in a secondary and deficient sense--and only insofar as
they "share" or "participate" in these
properties as they are in God, of whom they are properly and primarily
predicated, and with respect to whom they stand in a relation of
causal dependence (Ashworth & D'Ettore 2021). However, even
(or especially) with respect to *being*, Aquinas appears to
have thought that, despite the immense gulf between God and creatures,
"being" could be properly attributed to both God and
creatures (Tobin 1986: 35). Even though God *is* Being whereas
creatures only "have" being, in some important sense
creatures still have their own "proper being" (Hackett
& Weed 2013: 219).



Eckhart, too, seems to have a doctrine of analogy that makes
participation central to understanding the relation between God and
creatures, but he goes beyond both mere attribution and structural
proportionality to a more radical participational view than that
espoused by his Dominican predecessor. Like Aquinas, he agrees that
"God alone properly speaking exists and is called being, one,
true, and good", and he further agrees that "everything
that is being, one, true, or good does not have this from itself but
from God and from him alone" (*Prol. gen.*, n.4; LW
I:132; PQP 79). However, whereas Thomas indicates that attributes like
"being" or "goodness" can be predicated of
both God and creatures (albeit to radically different degrees or
levels of perfection), Eckhart restricts the proper attribution of
predicates to only one of the analogates:



> 
> 
> The things which are analogous to something have nothing in themselves
> by which they are in a positive way rooted to the form which is the
> basis of the analogy. (*In Eccli*. n.53; LW II:282; quoted in
> Tobin 1986: 45)
> 
> 
> 



*Pace* Aquinas, then, on Eckhart's approach creatures do
not have their own "proper", albeit derivative, being. Any
being creatures might be said to have can only be
"borrowed" (Hackett & Weed 2013). Or, as he puts
it:



> 
> 
> [E]very created being radically and positively possesses existence,
> life, a wisdom from and in God, not in themselves as a created being.
> (*ibid.*; TP 178)
> 
> 
> 



Likewise, the goodness of creatures is not an "imperfect"
or "secondary" way of instantiating what God exhibits
perfectly. It simply *is* God's goodness to which the
creature's goodness refers. Considered in and of themselves,
creatures and their properties are nothing--mere "signs
pointing to what is real" (Tobin 1986: 64).



In this sense, the relation of analogy for Eckhart is not a matter of
degree or level of perfection, nor is there any form of proportional
symmetry in the relations between subject and predicate in God and
creatures. There is only one proper attribution of the predicates
"is", "one", "wise", and
"good", namely to God, and their attribution to any other
being merely refers one immediately back to the divine essence. So in
God the predicate "is-good" and goodness express a
relation of (essential) identity, whereas in creatures, "is
good" is merely related to God's goodness in the mode of a
sign. Eckhart tries to explain this idea in his defense against the
list of 49 articles brought against him. There, he claims that



> 
> 
> the good man and goodness are one. The good man insofar as he is good
> signifies [God's] goodness alone, just as something white
> signifies only the quality of whiteness.
> 
> 
> 



He continues:



> 
> 
> These two things, being good and goodness, are univocally one in the
> Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are analogically one in God and in
> us considered as good. (*Resp.* n.82; LW V:278; EE 73)
> 
> 
> 



Still, even if God and creatures differ with respect to the modes in
which they signify the divine perfections, it nevertheless appears
that, for Eckhart, the *meaning* (in the sense of *ratio
propria*) of terms like "being",
"goodness", "unity", "wisdom", is
univocal whether said of God or creatures, even if it is God alone who
is properly the subject of such attributions. (On the significance of
univocity in Eckhart's doctrine of analogy, see Mojsisch 1983
[2001].) This might lead one to question whether his doctrine really
is one of *analogy* at all.



Whatever the case, like many medieval thinkers, Eckhart's
metaphysics and semantics were deeply, perhaps inextricably,
intertwined. This makes things doubly difficult for Eckhart as a
philosopher and theologian, since it might turn out on his view that
there is very little we can say about anything whatsoever. For
example, with respect to ourselves as creatures, if we care about the
cultivation of virtues and the pursuit of the good life, we want to be
able to talk about things like "this just woman" or
"that virtuous person". We also tend to naturally speak of
ourselves as though we really *exist*, have properties, do
things, think about stuff, gain knowledge, and so on. But if we really
"are" nothing more than mere signs pointing to the divine
essence, it would seem that there is very little we can say about
our-*selves* at all. With respect to God, on the other hand,
the problem is exactly reversed, especially for theologians like
Eckhart with strong apophatic leanings who think that the divine
radically transcends the limits of human language. If terms like
"being", "good", "one" are all
only "properly" predicated of the divine essence, yet that
essence is simultaneously thought to radically surpass all human
understanding, let alone anything we might say about it, then it might
seem the most appropriate approach to God is simply to *remain
silent*.



This is certainly an attitude Eckhart sometimes appears to endorse, as
when he writes that "the very best and noblest attainment in
this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within"
(*Pr.* 101; DW IV/1:355; MW 33). Yet despite his insistent
injunctions to move past concrete "images" and ultimately
to give up the attempt to "capture" God in language,
symbol, or story (see
 Section 9
 below), his hermeneutical approach as discussed above together with
the rich imagery he employs in his preaching (e.g., the images of the
Godhead as pregnant mother, desert, abyss, wilderness, etc., as well
as the descriptions of the uncreated "ground" of the soul
as a castle, a spark, a nobleman, etc.) imply that the Meister thought
that imagery and positive language about God (and creatures) had at
least some role to play in helping the individual make both epistemic
and spiritual progress (Griffioen & Zahedi 2018).



Eckhart's use of the qualifier *in quantum* is again key
here. This "reduplication", as he calls it, is used to
"exclude from the term in question everything that is other or
foreign to it even according to reason" (*Resp.* n.81; LW
V:277; EE 72). Take the example of a caterpillar. If we are
considering it merely *insofar as it is a locomotive animal*,
and we understand animal legs merely as "weight-bearing
anatomical structures used for locomotion", it might not be
inappropriate to say that a caterpillar has 16 legs. However, the
caterpillar will someday turn into a butterfly, and butterflies are
insects. If we are therefore specifically considering the caterpillar
*insofar as it is an insect*, and given that insects *per
definitionem* have 6 legs, it will be more appropriate to
understand the caterpillar as having 6 legs and to characterize the
other weight-bearing locomotive structures differently--e.g., as
"prolegs". We can also consider it insofar as it is, e.g.,
a living thing, a creature, a being, or very hungry--and what
counts as a fitting characterization of it may change according to the
conceptual, metaphysical, and pragmatic restrictions imposed on it by
the qualifying class or context to which it is indexed. In this sense,
then, Eckhart thinks that it is not always inappropriate to speak of
creatures as possessing "being" or even as "being
wise" or "being good", so long as we always keep in
mind that when we speak of the creature *insofar as it has
being*, we are speaking about *created being*--i.e.,
"borrowed" being--not "absolute" or
"pure" being. So even if created beings are technically
"nothing" when compared to the divine *esse*,
insofar as they are considered *under the aspect of their
creatureliness*, they may appropriately be said to possess being,
truth, goodness, and unity, albeit in a radically qualified and
restricted sense that always necessarily points back to the
divine.



Importantly, invoking the *in quantum* qualifier does not
require sacrificing metaphysical or conceptual precision. In fact, the
use of *in quantum* indicates both a logical and a metaphysical
connection between two terms that can only be set in relation to each
another if the one is related to the other as a mode or sign
(Beccarisi 2013: 122). If anything, such qualifications are supposed
to better preserve precision by clarifying which aspects of the
subject are under discussion in which context. Eckhart is therefore
careful to consistently apply the driving principle behind his
doctrine of analogy--namely, that what is said of one analogate
must be denied of the other. (This derives from a causal principle the
Meister cites from the *Book of Causes* that "nothing is
formally in both a cause and its effect if the cause is a true
cause": *Par. Qu.* 1 n.9; LW V:43; PQP 48.) When combined
with the *in quantum*-strategy, this allows Eckhart's use
of analogy to be "reversible", especially as concerns
*esse* and *intelligere* (McGinn 2001: 92). That is, if
we are speaking of God as an eternally creative and overflowing
plenitude of being, then in predicating "being" of God we
must deny it of creatures and affirm their nothingness. On the other
hand, if we are concerned with the existence of creatures (or with
construing "being" as the first of created things, as per
the *Book of Causes*), then we must reject the attribution of
being to God (Beccarisi 2013: 113). In the latter case,
*intelligere* becomes a clearer and more appropriate way of
speaking about the divine than *esse*, given the special kind
of non-being that constitutes intellect (*insofar as it is pure
intellect*), as discussed above. Consequently, when we view
ourselves as genuinely existing beings, we are considering the human
being in the mode of creaturely existence, and this appropriately
retains the gulf between the divine-*qua*-creator and the human
being-*qua*-created. However, when we view ourselves as
"nothing" in comparison to the absolute being of the
divine, we locate in that nothingness the very mode in which human
beings are made *ad imaginem Dei*--namely, insofar as they
possess that very same mode of non-being, i.e., *intellect*. In
this way, Eckhart's "metaphysics of analogy" (Libera
1980) attempts to preserve intuitions concerning both God's
utter transcendence and the real presence of God in creation.



Nevertheless, adherence to these two principles--the *in
quantum*-principle and the analogical principle--might also
take Eckhart's semantics past traditional scholastic metaphysics
and to usher his audience into a dialectical space in which, for
example, negation can itself be negated to come to an even deeper
understanding of God's utter fullness and transcendence (which,
paradoxically, is what Eckhart thinks is needed to allow the
individual to be capable of apprehending God's utter
*immanence* in the ground of the soul, as will be discussed
below). For example, when Eckhart discusses *unum* with respect
to God, he notes that



> 
> 
> the term "one" is a negative word but is in reality
> affirmative. Moreover, it is the negation of negation which is the
> purest form of affirmation and the fullness of the term affirmed.
> (*In Sap.* n.147; LW II:485; TP 167)
> 
> 
> 



Elsewhere, he clarifies:



> 
> 
> The One itself is the negation of [the] negation [...] which
> every multitude that is opposed to the One includes. The negation of
> negation is the core, the purity, and the repetition of the
> affirmation of existence. "I am who am". (*In Ioh.*
> n.556; LW III:485; TP 185)
> 
> 
> 



As Bernard McGinn puts it, the divine unity



> 
> 
> "negates" everything that we know "is"; but
> the negation of all that is [...] opens up vistas into a new
> world in which our distinctions between what is and what is not no
> longer pertain. God as *negatio negationis* is simultaneously
> total emptiness and supreme fullness. (McGinn 2001: 93-94)
> 
> 
> 



Still, this understanding of *unum* as *negatio
negationis* is not mere wordplay; it represents an attempt on
Eckhart's part to explode the strict conceptual divide between
what-is and what-is-not that permeates and constrains human thought
and language.


## 8. A Unified Onto-*logos*? The Divine Word as Principle and Mediator



Eckhart's reversible doctrine of analogy, when taken together
with the *in quantum* principle, allows him to characterize God
in ways that alternately give Being, Intellect, and Unity conceptual
primacy among the transcendentals, and there is some controversy over
which divine attribute, if any, he ultimately took to be most
fundamental. Of course, Eckhart himself might have countered that such
a question posed *simpliciter* and without qualification is
just another instance of trying to say what cannot be said. In any
case, it does not seem wrong to characterize Eckhart's
metaphysics as heavily intellectualist, even where he centers Being or
Unity (or occasionally even Goodness). At the same time, it is an
intellectualism centered not only on *thinking* or
*cognition* but also crucially on *speech* and the
*communication of being*--in the case of God, through an
singular, eternal, self-communicating speech-act.



Indeed, for Eckhart, "being" just *is* acting in
the sense of communicating something intelligible: "To exist is
to communicate" (Dobie 2010: 32). This is exemplified most
perfectly in God, whose "inner boiling" is characterized
by its wholly self-sufficient intellectual activity, in which the
Father "speaks" (and thereby generates) the Son, and the
Father and the Son together "breathe" out the Holy Spirit
in their bond of divine love. As Eckhart formulates it in his analysis
of John 1:1 ("In the beginning was the Word"):



> 
> 
> Under the name "Beginning" or "Principle",
> understand the Father, under "Word" the Son, and because a
> word cannot exist without a breath, consequently also understand the
> Holy Spirit. (*In Ioh.* n.82; LW III:70; EE 152)
> 
> 
> 



However, as we have seen, the intellection of God is not wholly
self-contained in the internal activity of *bullitio*. Rather,
God's self-communication is also outward-directed, and it is
this notion of "ebullitive" divine speech that allows
Eckhart to better express how it is that God's intellection is
essentially causative: In speaking the Word in love, God "boils
over" into creation and thereby also "speaks" the
world into existence. There is therefore a very real sense in which we
might characterize Eckhart's views on God and creation (whether
in the context of viewing God as *esse* or
*intelligere*) as a *verbal ontology* (Duclow 1984).



Eckhart's ontology is verbal not only in the sense *that*
God the Father speaks but also regarding *what* is spoken (even
if in a strict sense the activity of God's speaking and the
content of God's speech is identical). In fact, it is the
"Word" or *logos* spoken by the Father that lies at
the center of Eckhart's philosophical theology and unites the
approach to God-as-intellect in the *Parisian Questions* with
that of being-as-God in the prologue to the *Opus tripartitum*.
Eckhart use of the term *principle* is key here. As was not
uncommon for his time, Eckhart interpreted the phrase "*In
principio*" that opens both the book of Genesis and the
gospel of John as referring not only to the temporal beginning of the
universe but also to the "principle" that designates the
origin of and *ratio* underlying all creation. Thus, when
considering God under the aspect of plenitudinous being, Eckhart tends
to use *principium* to designate the internal principle of the
Trinitarian Godhead. This principle is equated with the Neoplatonic
"One" (understood either as the conceptually
pre-Trinitarian Godhead itself or as God the Father), who is the
fontal source or "generator" of the Son and Spirit in the
internal activity of *bullitio*--which, as we have seen
above, culminates in the expressive *ebullitio* of divine
plenitude into creation (McGinn 2001: 75).



Of course, the Godhead's "overflowing" of being into
creation puts God in the role of efficient cause, whereas Eckhart
focuses his energies predominantly on the divine viewed as the
*essential* or *formal* cause of creation (such causes
being the proper domain of metaphysics, according to the Meister).
Here, it is the act of divine intellection in the form of the
*verbum in principio*--i.e., the second person of the
Trinity, the Son--that stands at the center of the
Meister's account of the relation between God and creation. In
his receptive role as the person of the Trinity most immediately
generated by the One, the Son can appropriately be called "the
principle *from* the principle", as he "receive[s]
the power to flow" solely from the Father, who is "the
principle without principle" (*In Ioh.* n. 656; LW
III:570; quoted in McGinn 2001: 75). At the same time, in his role as
the content of divine speech--that which is spoken by (but is
also one with) the Father--the Son contains the *ratio* of
all intelligible forms and can thus be characterized as "the
Word *in* the principle" (*In Ioh.* n.12; LW
III:12; EE 126). In this respect, the Son, as emanated by the One, is
both the representation or "image" of the Father and
himself "the blueprint of all creatures" (*Pr*.
117; DW IV/2:1123; SW 245), who in turn are the images and signs
pointing back to the divine. The Son *qua* Word, Idea, or
*logos* is thus simultaneously the receptive
"conduit" of *ebullitio* and the active,
intellectual formal cause of (and ultimate exemplar for) all creation.
Any genuine reality that particular creatures might have from the
Divine is mere "formal being" (*esse formale*), but
the Word contains their being "virtually" (*esse
virtuale*), a mode of being which Eckhart considers to be
"prior and more eminent" (*In Ioh.* n.38; LW
III:32-3; EE 135), insofar as the latter is eternal and
unchanging, whereas the former is transient and mutable. Thus, even if
there was no time "before" creation, when we consider the
universe under the aspect of being still-uncreated, "everything
in the universe was not mere nothing, but was in possession of virtual
existence" in the Word (*In Ioh.* n.45; LW III:37; EE
137). Importantly, this "virtual existence" that things
have in their "principle" or "Idea" is the
"really real" mode of existing (McGinn 1981: 40).
Everything else is just an image.



Eckhart's verbal "onto-*logos*" not only
reconciles the idea of God as absolute (plenitudinous) being and pure
(intellectual) nothingness, it also shows how his views on analogy and
univocity are related. On the one hand, insofar as the Word is the
*conduit* or *medium* of divine speech, it can be
understood as the pure intellect--the "no-thing" that
is "beyond being"--through which the principial
Godhead flows, thereby lending or communicating being to creatures as
an essential (and final) cause. In this respect, the divine activity
of *ebullitio*, in which all things are created
*through* the Word, establishes an *analogical*
relationship between God and creatures, since there are clear
relationships of causal dependence and superiority in play. But
insofar as the Word is the *content* of divine speech--the
expression of God thinking Godself and containing all things as one in
the divine mind--it *grounds* the essences of creatures
and thus represents a *univocal* cause of the perfections in
things, as well as the very ground of the human soul (McGinn 2001: 77;
Mojsisch 1983 [2001: 33]).


## 9. Birthing the Word and Being in the World: Eckhart's Mystagogical Ethics



As noted above, for Eckhart there is ultimately no clear-cut
distinction between *theoria* and *ethica*, nor between
his metaphysics and his mystagogy. As with many mendicant orders of
the period, the goals of the Meister's academic work and his
mission as a preacher and provincial were "inextricably united
in their understanding of the apostolic goal" (Hollywood 1995
[2001: 120]). And while much of the more "practical" and
"mystical" aspects of Eckhart's thought come out in
his vernacular works, the Meister's Dominican emphasis on
intellect over will and the key role of the *verbum* that we
find in his more systematic works remain ever-present themes
throughout the Eckhartian corpus. In fact, for Eckhart the intellect
is the aspect of the human being that most directly reflects the image
of the Godhead. It is also importantly the space where the Eternal
Word can be "born" within us, a concept central to
Eckhart's mystagogical and moral approach.



However, when speaking of the intellect insofar as it images God or
"births" the Word in the soul, Eckhart is not referring to
the traditional notion of intellect understood as one of the three
main "powers" of the soul (i.e., memory, intellect, and
will). As with his treatment of the divine nature of which it is an
image, he means the intellect *insofar as it is
intellect*--which, as we saw above, he takes to be pure
negativity or "no-thing-ness". This is not the human
intellect insofar as it apprehends or "takes in" the
environment around it via the senses, nor even insofar as it reasons
abstractly or performs certain cognitive operations to extract
intelligibles from its sensory input. Rather, it is nothing but
*pure potentiality*--a wholly receptive *intellectus
possibilis* (Largier 2002: 849). To put it in more Eckhartian
terms, it is the soul taken in its bare ("naked")
intellective essence or *ground* (MHG:
*grunt*)--which Eckhart characterizes as an uncreated,
eternal aspect of the soul, one related univocally, not analogically,
to its Creator (Connolly 2014: 162; Kern 2013: 246). Insofar as it
images the Godhead in being wholly one and simple (*ein und
einvaltic*)--"neither this nor that" (*diz
noch daz*), but a "something" (*waz*) higher
than any particular thing or created power--it transcends memory,
reason, will, and even contingent being itself (Largier 2002:
764-65). It even lies beyond the purview of God understood as
Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. Only the Godhead itself, insofar as it is
"one and indivisible [*einvaltic ein*], without mode
[*wise*] or properties [*eigenschaft*]", can
enter into the soul's ground (*Pr.* 2; DW I:[43-44]; MW
81). As bare intellect, absent any contingent or created object that
could serve to distract it, the soul is able to take on--and
become one with--its proper object, i.e., the eternal
*logos* as communicated in an outpouring of self-giving love by
the Father. Thus, the eternal unfolding of the Trinity is, according
to Eckhart, one that also takes place in the ground of the soul.



Thus, the Eckhartian parallel to the Neoplatonic
*reditus*--the final end and fulfillment of the human
being--is the "return" to and unification with the
*einvaltic ein* in the ground of the soul. Yet just as the
"overboiling" of the Godhead into creation proceeds by way
of the eternally true *logos*, the return to God can only take
place through the Word in the ground of the soul. In the soul's
ground, Eckhart claims, the human being as an intellective *imago
dei* is like a *biwort* or
*adverbium*--i.e., a "secondary word" that
accompanies a princip(i)al Word to form a single unit of meaning. Thus
he claims, "where the [eternal] Word remains
within"--in its intellectual ground--"there the
soul should be an ad-verb and work one work with God in order to
receive its happiness in the same inwardly hovering knowledge where
God is happy" (*Pr.* 9; DW I:158; TP 260). In this sense,
the ultimate "happiness" of the human being is not
distinct from God's happiness. United in the ground via the
Word, the soul's activity is nothing other than God's
activity, and what it is for the human being to flourish just is to
participate in divine happiness.


### 9.1 Images for De-Imaging: Birthing the Word Without a Why



Eckhart uses various metaphors in his vernacular discussions of the
soul's ground. In some places, he speaks of a
"temple" or a "little castle"
(*burgelin*)--a place in which God can
"reside". In others, it is a "sprout" or
"little spark" (*vunkelin*)--the
intellective power or potential to, like God, "work in
nonbeing". As the highest (or "richest") aspect of
our humanity, it is sometimes referred to as a "nobleman".
Yet, as with his account of God's creation of the universe, the
driving metaphor behind much of Eckhart's language about the
ground of the soul is that of *pregnancy* and *birth*.
Although his language is in keeping with a longstanding Christian
tradition of allegorically representing the human soul as a female
(the MHG word *sele* and the Latin *anima* are
both feminine nouns), and despite taking on familiar tropes from
Rhenish-Flemish bridal mysticism as well as the common scholastic
understanding of women's bodies as mere "passive
receptacles"--Eckhart is perhaps at his most creative (or
at least his most emphatic) when discussing what he calls the
"birth of the Word" in the human soul. (For an extended
discussion of the ways in which Eckhart's views both perpetuate
and subvert medieval gender stereotypes and norms see Hollywood 1995
[2001], especially Chapters 5 and 6. For Eckhart's own extended
reflections on the birth of the Word in the soul, see the famous
"birth cycle"--*Pr.* 101-104--which
the Meister likely composed for the Advent/Christmas season; DW
I/1V:279-610; MW 29-61.)



One of Eckhart's most interesting allegorical uses of these
metaphors involves his innovative reading of Luke 10:38 (which Eckhart
translates as "Our Lord Jesus Christ went up into a citadel and
was received by a virgin who was a wife") and his discussion of
the ways in which the soul itself should be like a "virgin
wife". Roughly speaking, Eckhart's claim is that the soul
must be "stripped" of all the external objects of
consciousness that serve to distract it and "emptied" of
all its finite attachments. When it is pure, naked, and unsullied by
worldly things--"void of alien images" (*von allen
vremden bilden ledic*) as Eckhart puts it--the soul becomes
truly "free" and unobstructed ("offering no
hindrance to the highest Truth"), and therefore "a maiden,
a virgin" who can receive the "empty and free and
virginal" Jesus, i.e., the Truth that is the Word. When the
intellect is thusly "freed" and
"bare"--when it is turned inward toward itself and
brought back down to its objectless *grunt* (which is also
univocally God's ground)--it is thereby transformed into
the passive vehicle of the Eternal Word. In fact, Eckhart goes so far
as to claim that, once it has become purged of external images and
creaturely things, God *cannot* refrain from thusly
"impregnating" the receptive soul:



> 
> 
> When God finds you ready, He has to act, to overflow into you, just as
> when the air is clear and pure the sun has to burst forth and cannot
> refrain, (*Pr.* 103; DW IV/1:484; MW 58)
> 
> 
> 



and elsewhere, "he is forced to do it; he must do it of
necessity" (*Pr.* 14; DW I:234; TP 272).



The claim that God is forced to do anything with respect to the human
being, let alone enter into their soul, may appear quite radical at
first glance, but when we recall that the ground of the soul is the
univocal point of connection to the divine, and that this connection
is, for Eckhart, fundamentally *intellectual*, we may think of
the Meister's necessity claim less as making a causal assertion
(e.g., "the emptied soul *causes* God to enter the
soul") and more as expressing a fundamental truth to be
discovered by the subject. Indeed, the problem of human beings as
creatures occupied with finite things is first and foremost an
*epistemic* one: We neither understand what we, at our core,
really *are*--namely, the images and
"offspring" of God--nor how to "want"
properly (Connolly 2014: 141). We need to be "still", to
empty ourselves of worldly distractions and illusory attachments, to
be able to "hear" and come to understand the Word that is
eternally communicated by the Father in the ground. In this sense, it
is not as though God is absent in us and then becomes present due to
some action of ours that we undertake of our own initiative. Rather,
for Eckhart, our task as human beings is to come to be able to
*listen* to--and thereby *apprehend*--the Word
that is eternally and always poured out into in us. (It is also
noteworthy that Eckhart shifts the traditional Christian emphasis on
the beatific *vision* in which one sees God face to face to the
modality of spiritually *hearing* the self-communication of the
divine.) Further, just as a pregnant person is, in a very real sense,
*one* with that which they have conceived, the
"pregnant" soul and God are *united* in the
ground--thereby again preserving the identity of the intellect
and the intelligible.



In this sense, then, only the soul "stripped bare" of its
objects and attachments--a soul that has been wholly
"de-imaged" (*entbildet*) can truly
*conceive* the divine already within it. However, this
"birth" is not, according to Eckhart, something we can
simply *will* to bring about--at least not in the ordinary
sense of prudential means-ends reasoning. First, Eckhart is emphatic
that God should not be sought for the sake of any reward or external
state such as heaven, eternal bliss, or even the rapturous experience
of God itself. In other words, the return of the soul to God is not a
mere means to some further desirable or pleasurable end. It is
identical with our ultimate end, our *telos*, and should be
sought for its own sake. Neither is it an end that can be reached by
adopting particular methods or techniques. According to Eckhart, God
should not--indeed, cannot--be sought in such "special
ways" as devotion, prayer, meditation, good works, or even
divinely inspired religious ecstasy: "Whoever seeks God in a
special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden in it"
(*Pr*. 5b; DW I:91; MW 110). Rather, Eckhart says, the soul in
its ground must always act as God acts, i.e., "without [a]
why" (*ane warumbe*). When we give ourselves wholly
over to God, and the Word is born in the ground of our souls, God will
simply act *through* us, such that our actions are God's
actions and therefore performed simply for their own sake without some
further "why" or "wherefore".


### 9.2 Learning to Let Go: Negative Virtue and Non-Attachment



The idea that God cannot be found in ways puts those who wish to
follow Eckhart's spiritual advice in a tricky position. On the
one hand, the Meister claims that God cannot be sought in means and
that we should give up our attempts to find God via spiritual,
mystical, or moral techniques. On the other hand, he often seems to
imply that we can and even *should* do something to put
ourselves in a position that would allow the intellectual conception
of the Word to be "triggered" in us:



> 
> 
> All God wants of you is for you to go out of yourself in the way of
> creatureliness and let God be within you,
> 
> 
> 



he exclaims.



> 
> 
> My dear friend, what harm can it do you to do God the favor of letting
> Him be God in you? Go right out of yourself for God's sake, and
> God will go right out of Himself for your sake. (*Pr*. 5b; DW
> I:91; MW 110)
> 
> 
> 



Eckhart also extols the active pursuit and cultivation of certain
habitual ways of being that he takes to be most valuable in freeing
the self from its worldly attachments and keeping our
"creaturely impulses" in check (Connolly 2014: 185),
thereby opening up the very possibility of becoming receptacles for
the divine. Whereas the more traditional Aristotelian and Christian
virtues tended to revolve around moral and spiritual
*formation*, Eckhart's focus on cultivating attitudes of
"detachment" (*abgescheidenheit*) and
"releasement" or "letting-go-ness"
(*gelazenheit*) created a set of more Stoic-sounding
*negative virtues* (Griffioen & Zahedi 2018) that could
assist the individual in the pursuit of the *un-formation*
(another sense of *entbildung*) of their sinful souls (see,
e.g., *BgT*; DW V:12; MW 527; see also Wackernagel 1993).
Insofar as the cultivation of such virtues can lead a soul from
division to unity, from distraction by attachment to the world to a
focus on knowledge of one's "true" self (and
therefore of God), the soul can be "purified in the exercise of
virtues", creating the conditions for the ascent "into the
life of unity" and the realization of oneness with the Word in
the ground of the soul (*Pr.* 9; DW I:136; MW 405).



Understanding Eckhart on these points is not easy, and scholars have
struggled with this mystagogical aspect of his thought. However, the
Meister was not the first to grapple with the tension between activity
and passivity, between human action and divine grace, that inevitably
appears when classical philosophy comes into contact with Christian
theology. To some extent, much of his philosophical thought might even
be characterized as an attempt to provide a metaphysics that can make
sense of these aspects of Christian doctrine. Whatever the case, the
common thread in Eckhart's mystagogical *and* moral
thought seems to be that attachment to anything distinct from God
hinders the soul from true freedom and keeps God and the soul apart
from one another (Milne 2016: 97). This includes those seeking God via
such methods as "prayer, fasting, vigils, and all kinds of
outward discipline and mortification", since any "work to
which you are possessively attached" is something that



> 
> 
> involves the loss of freedom to wait on God in the here and now, and
> to follow Him alone in the light wherein He would show you what to do
> and what not to do, every moment freely and anew, as if you had
> nothing else and neither would nor could do otherwise. (*Pr.*
> 2; DW I:28-29; MW 78)
> 
> 
> 



Indeed, it is perhaps the notion of *possessiveness* that
characterizes the fundamental problem of the human being. True freedom
involves a kind of self-dispossession, and a letting go of the
attachment to the "mine-ness" of one's actions. This
for Eckhart is the kind of spiritual "poverty" that
results in genuine freedom. Here, the Meister mirrors many of his
Beguine predecessors (and not a few of his Muslim Sufi counterparts)
in characterizing human freedom, *not* in the modern sense of
freedom from external constraint, or even the ability to do otherwise,
but rather as acting in consonance with that which is wholly unified
and thereby wholly unencumbered by the hindrances of multiplicity,
division, and internal conflict--namely, with the divine will
(Griffioen & Zahedi 2018). In fact, Eckhart's emphasis on
dispossession takes him even further. It is not merely sufficient that
our will be in *conformance* with God's will, but rather
our actions should be a result of God's acting *through*
us: "If our will is God's will, that is good, but if
God's will is our will, that is far better" (*Pr.*
25; DW II:9; MW 92).


### 9.3 "Fruitful Virginity": Being in the World and the Christian Life



Importantly, however, although becoming appropriately
*abgescheiden*, *gelazen*, and *entbildet*
can be the ladder one climbs up to eventually throw away for a life of
unity in, with, and through participation in the "wayless
way" of the divine life of the Trinity--this
"virginal" conception of the Word in the soul liberated
from attachment *to* the world is not the end of the story. So
long as we remain embodied created beings, we are always beings
*in* the world (even if we are no longer *of* it). The
"letting-go" involved in true spiritual poverty is itself
a *negatio negationis*--a turning of nothingness
"from a simple negation of creation into a way of being in the
world" (Howells 2010: 38). Put in the terms of Sermon 2, the
"virginal" soul must also "bear fruit" and be
a "wife". It is not enough to be merely
"pregnant" with the divine *logos*, the soul must
also continually "birth" the Word in itself, such that God
can work through the soul and thereby bring it to a "deeper mode
of participation in the truth and goodness of all things" (Milne
2016: 107). For this reason, even if Eckhart's selective focus
on negative virtues like releasement and detachment, together with his
repeated warnings that God cannot be sought in ways or by technical
means, might make one question whether Eckhart's thought can
really be considered to contain any sort of normative *ethical*
force, there is nevertheless a role for the traditional virtues and
virtuous moral action to play in his conception of the good life.



First, Eckhart seems to think that it is better for us to be created
as we are than to have always rested in God and perfect self-awareness
(Milne 2016: 101). Like the "nobleman" in the parable of
the ten pounds (Luke 19:12), who "went to a distant region to
receive royal power for himself" and (on Eckhart's
reading) returned home wealthier, our lives, too, are richer for
having "flowed out of God's will" into creaturely
bodies endowed with reason and having experienced the moral and
epistemic struggle involved in our return to the Creator (*Pr.*
15; DW I:245; MW 270). Even the inclination to sin, Eckhart thinks, is
itself beneficial for human beings, insofar as the "perfection
of virtue comes by struggle", and the struggle against our
sinful inclinations "makes [us] ever more zealous to practice
virtue strongly" (*RdU* n.9; DW V:213; MW 494).



Second, as part of this return, the cultivation of the traditional
moral and theological virtues can be a useful--perhaps even
necessary--preparation for the life of detachment and spiritual
poverty. Indeed, Eckhart cautions that his words regarding leaving
images and goal-oriented actions behind are



> 
> 
> only for the [already] good and perfected people, who have so absorbed
> and assimilated the essence of all virtues that these virtues emanate
> from them naturally, without their seeking. (*Pr.* 101; DW
> IV/1:354; MW 33)
> 
> 
> 



Third, and most importantly, the soul united with God in pure
detachment--although in some sense having transcended the
virtues--nevertheless continues to act virtuously in the world,
though she does not act for the sake of anything else, even of virtue
itself (Connolly 2014: 190ff.). Rather, her will and God's will
are a *singular* will, such that she acts wholly freely
*in* virtue, but unbound by the constraints that even morality
would place on her. As Eckhart exhorts his audience, "You should
traverse [*durchgan*] and transcend all the virtues,
drawing virtue solely from its source in that ground where it is one
with the divine nature" (*Pr.* 16b; DW I:276; MW 117; cf.
also TP 278). When this happens, Eckhart thinks, "all virtues
should be enclosed in you and flow out of you in their true being
[*wesenliche von dir vliezen*]"
(*ibid*.).



It is with this in mind that Eckhart turns the Mary and Martha story
on its head in Sermon 86 (*Pr.* 86; DW III:481-503; MW
83-90), claiming that it is not Mary, sitting enraptured at the
feet of Christ, who represents the moral and spiritual exemplar.
Rather, this role is played by Martha, who busily tends to the guests
and the housework, being "so well grounded in her essence that
her activity was no hindrance to her". Although Mary has
correctly grasped what is most valuable and worthy of
worship--and therefore begun her journey of spiritual
progress--according to Eckhart, we might suspect that she
nevertheless "sat there a little more for her own happiness than
for spiritual profit". Martha, on the other hand, is
"unhindered" insofar as all her works are "guided by
the eternal light". In contrast to her contemplative sister, who
is just beginning her "schooling" in "learning how
to live", the experienced and busy Martha has already progressed
to being "with things and not in them". Eckhart concludes
the sermon by noting that "some people hope to reach a point [of
spiritual progress] where they are free of works", but that
"this cannot be" (*Pr.* 86; DW III:492; MW 89). In
this sense, then, there is ultimately no distinction for Eckhart
between the *vita activa* and the *vita
contemplativa*:



> 
> 
> It is actually the same thing, for we take only from the same ground
> of contemplation and make it fruitful in works, and thus the object of
> contemplation is achieved. (*Pr.* 104; DW IV/1:580; MW 48)
> 
> 
> 



Indeed, as has been shown repeatedly throughout this entry,
Eckhart's "philosophy of the Word" attempts to bring
these two strands together with the help of an intellectualist
metaphysics that places divine thought and speech--the eternal
*logos* and *ewig wort*--at its (silent and still)
core.