Who is meister eckhart?

Answer 1

Meister Eckhart - or more accurately Eckhart von Hochheim - was a Dominican friar who lived from approximately 1260 until 1328. Not much is known about his early life, but it is likely that he was born in Thuringia, Germany, and went on to join the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) in Erfurt. He probably studied in Cologne where he could well have come into contact with Albert the Great (some of his later writings at least suggest that he knew Albert), and then went on to study at the University of Paris. Eckhart went on to take the same chair of theology that Thomas Aquinas had held at the University of Paris, where he lectured on a variety of philosophical and theological matters. Part of his formation - a common feature of the period - was to comment on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and to lecture and comment systematically on the books of The Bible.
By around 1303 Eckhart returned to Erfurt where he took on a more pastoral role in contrast to his academic career as Prior of Erfurt and Provincial of Thuringia. The distinction between his academic life and his pastoral duties as preacher and spiritual director are only pragmatic, since Eckhart did not see any essential difference between the two. Arguably, as a systematic thinker, Eckhart had worked out his unique and daring vision of the spiritual life from very early on, and that his preaching after his time at the University of Paris was merely an extension and explosive recapitulation in Middle High German of what he had already set out in his Latin academic works and sermons. As a systematic thinker in this regard, one could pick up any of Eckhart's texts and quickly begin to see the vast majority of his thinking: his Latin academic texts containing perhaps a very dense and scholarly portrayal, and his Middle High German sermons and treatises (often utilising daring and challenging words and examples) containing much more explicit explanations.
After some time and amidst the crisis of the Avignon Papacy, Eckhart was suspected of heresy and was called upon to account for some of the things he had been preaching and writing about. Eckhart always insisted that he was loyal to the teachings of the Church and willingly retracted anything he had said which was in error. He did not live to see the conclusion of the trial, after which the Pope issued a Bull (In agro dominico) condemning certain ideas, and expressing deep concern over others. Owing to Eckhart's cryptic language (although he always believed himself to be plain-speaking), the inquisitors were moved by a pastoral concern for his followers, given that Eckhart was easily misunderstood.
Some of the doctrines that characterise Eckhart's thoughts are: (1) A distinction between God and the Godhead (Gottheit), where the latter concerns God as One, above every category and distinction, and in whom all things are equal (that is, logically antecedent to the Trinity). (2) God as Trinity (in distinction to the Gottheit) was referred to as the bullitio - the first 'boiling over' from the Godhead. (3) Creation was itself the result of the ebullitio - the second boiling over, where God's Goodness, penetrating all parts of himself, boiled over into creation. God was moved by his Goodness and not necessity of nature to create. (4) The Son of God must be born in each person as the height of the spiritual life. (5) Creatures are in themselves nothing, but the ground of their soul is the very ground of God himself. (6) God's nature is pure detachment, and therefore each person should strive to become like God in this regard. Seeking God, or wanting to possess him, was not, for Eckhart, a true spiritual pursuit. (7) Due to God's detachment and his presence in (but not of) the soul, humanity must unite to him by returning to themselves. Hence Eckhart endorses Martha as the true model of the spiritual life, over Mary.
Eckhart had a number of followers, most notably Johannes Tauler and Henry Suso. But after the condemnation of certain ideas in his texts, Eckhart was largely forgotten. This was probably - at least in part - because of the riskiness involved in possessing Eckhart manuscripts after this time. Eckhart was to make a quiet but nonetheless very influential return later: (1) with the Theologia Deutsch (although anonymous, Eckhart is thought by some to have been its author), which made a huge impact on Martin Luther only a few years before the publication of his 95 Theses. If Eckhart was not the author he was, at least, the mind behind the ideas in the text. (2) With Martin Heidegger in the twentieth century, quoting Eckhart alongside Plotinus and Hölderlin as the three greatest thinkers of all time and (3) by extension of Heidegger, the rest of twentieth century continental philosophy.