Meister Eckhart: Analogy, Univocity and Unity

236 Pages·2001·22.22 MB·English

by  Burkhard Mojsisch

MEISTER ECKHART

MEISTER ECKHART
ANALOGY, UNIVOCITY AND UNITY
BURKHARD MOJSISCH
Ruhr- Universität Bochum
Translated with a Preface
and an Appendix by Orrin F. Summerell
B.R. GRÜNER
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri
can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mojsisch, Burkhard.
[Meister Eckhart, English]
Meister Eckhart : analogy, univocity, and unity / Burkhard Mojsisch ; translated with a preface
and an Appendix by Orrin F. Summerell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
1. Eckhart, Meister, d. 1327. 2. Mysticism-Germany-History-Middle Ages, 600-1500. I.
Summerell, Orrin F. II. Title.
BV5095.E3.M6513 2001
189'.5-dc21 2001042857
ISBN 90 6032 465 X (Eur.)
© 2001 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE IX
ABBREVIATIONS XIII
Abbreviations of Meister Eckhart's Works
Other abbreviations
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Viewpoint - A methodological principle 1
1.2. Meister Eckhart's "nâch dem nemenne" 5
1.3. "Per rationes naturales philosophorum" - Eckhart's program 6
1.4. Design 20
2. REASON AND RATIONAL COGNITION OF GOD:
THE NON-RELATIONALITY OF ABSOLUTE INTELLECTUALITY 25
2.1. The turning point 25
2.2. From Albert the Great to Meister Eckhart by way of
Theodoric of Freiberg 27
2.2.1. Albert the Great: The agent intellect as a comparative instance
for the divine reason 27
2.2.2. Theodoric of Freiberg: God as intellectivum and the theory
of the causa essentialis 28
2.2.3. Meister Eckhart: causa essentialis and principium essentiale 31
2.3. The development of thought in the 'Quaestio Parisiensis I' 34
2.3.1. "Intelligere fundamentum ipsius esse" 34
2.3.2. The disjunction 'divine reason - created being' 35
2.3.3. Presuppositions 38
2.3.4. Progressing towards the goal: Divine reason in its
non-relational separateness from everything which it is not 41
2.3.5. The essence of God as reason: Reason as the ground of
divine being 43
2.4. The result of the 'Quaestio Parisiensis I' and an
attendant misgiving 45
Table of Contents
3. ANALOGY 49
3.1. The terminus generalis 'being' and its connection
with the causa essentialis theory 49
3.2. "Esse est deus": Arguments for the identity of being and God 51
3.3. Determinate being as determinate and as being 55
3.4. Analogy and being 59
4. UNIVOCITY 67
4.1. The difference between analogue relation and univocity 67
4.2. Univocal correlationality in the realm of nature 70
4.3. The structure of univocal correlationality in contrast to
analogue relationality in the realms of nature and skill and
in the divine-intellectual realm 72
4.3.1. The paradigm 'justice - the just' 76
4.3.2. The good - goodness and the just -justice in the 'Buoch
der goetlîchen troestunge' and in German sermons 6 and 39 81
4.3.3. The paradigm 'archetype - image' 86
4.3.3.1. Eckhart and Johannes Picardi of Lichtenberg 86
4.3.3.2. Johannes Picardi of Lichtenberg's imago theory:
Characterization and evaluation 88
4.3.3.3. Eckhart 's imago theory 91
5. UNITY 95
5.1. Negatio negationis 95
5.1.1. The unum in Theodoric of Freiberg 's theory of the
transcendentals: privatio privationis as privatio -
The uncancellability of the negative determinacy of the unum 96
5.1.2. The unum in Eckhart: The ground of being or unity 98
5.2. The objective paradox theory: The unum as indistinctum 100
5.2.1. The indistinctum arguments: The indistinct in its distinction
and indistinction over against everything distinct 102
5.2.2. The reception of the indistinctum theory in Nicholas Cusanus 106
5.2.3. The combination of the theoretical components 'analogy',
'univocity' and 'unity' in Eckhart's indistinctum theory 109
5.2.4. Unity, essence, reason, being, nothing in their convergence
and difference 110
5.2.4.1. The priority of the divine reason before that being identical
with it: The transcendental principium as the unity of essence
and being and the perspective of the independence of essence 110
VI
Table of Contents
5.2.4.2. Jakob von Metz: The duplicity of the concept of essence
(essentia secundum se et absolute considerata as the origin of
divine being and essentia qua attributum) and the identity of
absolute essence and reason 113
5.2.4.3. 'Isticheit' in Eckhart: That essence immanent in the
transcendental principium 115
5.2.4.4. Unity, essence, being, reason: Their distinct perspectives 121
5.2.4.5. Nothing as the essentia divina or as transcendental being 122
5.2.4.6. The so-called 'Apologia' as a mirror of changing perspective:
The identity of transcendental being and divine
cognition and the priority of reason as the indistinct 124
6. THE THEORY OF THE SOUL 129
6.1. Eckhart on the edge between progressive orthodoxy and heresy:
His aim of revolutionizing the self-understanding of man 129
6.2. The becoming of God through the I as causa sui 137
6.3. Eckhart's critique of Aristotle 140
6.4.1. The soul and its faculties 143
6.4.2. Letting go as having nothing in common with anything else:
The possible intellect as the possibility of
transcendental-univocal cognition 146
6.5.1. The ground or the spark of the soul in its analogue relationality
and univocal correlationality 152
6.5.2. The univocal theorem of the birth of God in the ground
of the soul: Its meaning and limit 157
6.5.3. The ground of the soul as unity: Leaving one's own and
living out of one's own 162
CONCLUSION 169
APPENDIX:
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF LATIN AND MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN CITATIONS 171
LITERATURE 203
INDEX NOMINUM 217
VII

TRANSLATOR' s PREFACE
The past two decades have witnessed a torrent of consequential international re
search on the life and work of Meister Eckhart, research which has pursued ever
more specialized investigations into the historical late-medieval and even re
gional context of this life and work and delivered important new information
about its chronology, its sources and its influence.1 Without a doubt, and not sur
prisingly, the standard of this research, which has resulted as well in critical edi
tions of new texts of Eckhart and other associated thinkers, his predecessors and
his epigoni, has been largely established in German-language studies, although
other European continental research cannot be ignored. Likewise, these years
have witnessed a surge in English-language studies and translations of Meister
Eckhart: Meister Eckhart the theologian, the teacher, the preacher, the poet, the
master of language, the spiritualist, the mystic - this, too, in conjunction with
such varyingly proximate themes as, for example, the later Martin Heidegger's
doctrine of being, orthodox Christian theology, medieval religiosity, existential
ism or a Zen Buddhist apprehension of nothingness. This reflects the remarkable
fact that hand-in-hand with the increasing specialization of and advancements in
international Eckhart-scholarship, the thought of Meister Eckhart has attained a
broad popularity, and this not just in the Anglo-Saxon realm. The work of this
Dominican magister whose life spanned the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries has gained a new and pressing relevance.
Against the background of this diverse reception of Eckhart's work, and for
all of its justified appeal, the reason - indeed, the genuine necessity - for the pre
sent translation of Burkhard Mojsisch, Meister Eckhart. Analogie, Univozität und
Einheit (Hamburg 1983) is relatively straightforward: There simply is no compa
rable book-length analysis in the English language approaching the thought of
Meister Eckhart the philosopher within the rich and complex philosophical tradi
tion in which this thought is embedded and from which it draws its authority.
The scrupulously argued thesis of the present study is that the concepts of anal
ogy, univocity and, finally, unity fundamentally define Eckhart's program of
1 For an overview of recent literature on Meister Eckhart see the bibliography and research
reports by Nikiaus Largier: Bibliographie zu Meister Eckhart (Freiburg/Schweiz 1989).
Meister Eckhart. Perspektiven der Forschung, 1980-1993, in: Zeitschrift für deutsche
Philologie 114 (1995) 29-98. Recent Work on Meister Eckhart. Positions, Problems, New
Perspectives, 1990-1997, in: Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévale 65 (1998)
147-167 .
Translator's Preface
thought as a theory of the relation of man and God, of man and man, of God and
God, of self-relation. Only by setting Meister Eckhart the philosopher in philo
sophical-historical relation to Albert the Great, Aristotle, Dionysius Pseudo-
Areopagita, the Liber de causis and the Neoplatonic heritage, Theodoric of Frei
berg and Thomas Aquinas as well as Eckhart of Gründig, Jakob of Metz and Jo
hannes Picardi of Lichtenberg can both the genuine novelty and the profound
continuity of Eckhart's thought be adequately comprehended; and it is only out
of this setting that any further systematic comparisons can be fully developed. As
Burkhard Mojsisch asserts in the preface to the German original of this study: "A
new interpretation of Meister Eckhart deserves the title 'new' only when it suc
ceeds in depriving Eckhart's thought of the appearance of unclarity, in displaying
the constitutive significance of previously ignored philosophical-historical and
systematic connections for this thought and so evoking a principle rethinking in
reflecting about this thought". Letting Eckhart speak and be heard for himself
means, first of all, allowing him to address us clearly out of the tradition in which
he thinks.
The present need compelling the remarkable turn in both academic scholarship
and popular culture to Meister Eckhart, whose thought radically challenges the va
lidity of intellectual, historical and cultural categories which would indiscriminately
fix the content of its particular moments, can only be met - that is, it can be both
assayed and eventually fulfilled - only when this thought is apprehended in its
genuine lucidity. This translation of Burkhard Mojsisch's study aims at promoting
a rethinking of Eckhart's thought in its philosophical-historical context by provid
ing the English-speaking world with an interpretation of Meister Eckhart different
in kind from the way in which he has hitherto been understood. It is the careful in
terpretation of the metaphysical dimension of the return of the soul, by means of a
certain detachment from or letting-go of the determinate otherness of all creatureli-
ness, into its ground or spark, into that something in the soul congruent with the
pure unity of the Godhead itself, into that conterminousness where, according to
Meister Eckhart, God is above being and above distinction, where "God's ground is
my ground and my ground is God's ground".2 Not I as creature nor God as creator,
but the Godhead itself as this metaphysical ground - whereby one must not forget
that for Eckhart Scripture is metaphysics3 - composes the - acknowledged or unac
knowledged - hub of the many theological, pedagogical, linguistic and spiritual
perspectives on Eckhart's thought, that is, insofar as they apprehend this thought at
2 Cf. Pr. 5b; DW I, 90, 8.
3 Cf. In Ioh. n. 160; LW III, 131, 13-132, 6.
X