Parisian Questions and Prologues by Master Eckhart (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 619 Master Eckhart, Parisian Questions and Prologues. Trans. with an Intro~ duction and Notes by Armand A. Maurer, C. S. B. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974. Pp. 1Q8. $8.50. For the reader who is fond of riddles and paradoxes, who savors the dialectical contrarieties of a Cusa or a Hegel, these stimulating and provocative treatises by Master Eckhart which Armand Maurer has here collected together and translated are without a match. The central paradox around which the discussions in these pages turns is Eckhart's insistence, on the one hand, that Being is God and that creatures have no being of their own while, in another treatise, he argues that God is intellect alone and that in no sense is Being to be found in him. The former position im~ plies that creatures are nothing, " not even a little bit," while the latter view is defended by showing that intellect is essentially a kind of non-being or nothingness. Intrinsically paradoxical of themselves, the two theses are equally incompatible with one another. At one point in these treatises Eckhart himself is led to comment upon his love of paradox. Adverting to his (Dominican) " brethren " who had heard his original interpretations of the Scriptures and of medieval metaphysical theory and who wished to have it set forth in writing, Master Eckhart says, ' They urged me to do this particularly because novel and unusual topics are a more pleasant stimulant to the mind than ordinary ones...." Then, with an almost uncharacteristic caution, he adds: "... though the latter may be more valuable and important." (80) 1 Eckhart possesses a subtle, imaginative, and very fertile metaphysical mind. He has long been recognized as a central figure in the history of Western mysticism. His vernacular sermons and treatises on spiritual matters are classics of the German language, studied with equal fervor by Germanists, philosophers, and students of the history of religion and mystical thought. The dialectical charm of his writings was to be his undoing, however. He was called before the Inquisition for some twenty-eight propositions which Pope John XXII would condemn in 18Q8, not long after Eckhardt's death. As a result of this condemnation, Eckhart's Latin works were all but ignored by Catholic theologians, except for an edition of them by Nicholas of Cusa. It would not be until 1885 that the German Dominican scholar H. S. Denifle would bring our attention back to them again. In 1986 work began on the great critical edition of Eckhart's Latin and German writings under the auspices of the Deutsche Forschungsgemei~ schaft at Stuttgart.2 Thus it has only been in the last forty years or so that critical and reliable texts of either the German or Latin writings have 1 All references in parentheses are to Maurer's volume. • Meister Eckhart; Die d~?;Utschen und lateinischen Werke, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer , 1986 fl'.) . 620 BOOK REVIEWS been available. And while there has always been some interest among English-speaking authors in Eckhart's vernacular sermons, there are, to my knowledge, only two works of English translation of Eckhart's Latin writings: one by Clarke and Skinner in 1958,3 and the other the present selection by Armand Maurer. Though Eckhart's gifts as a mystic and spiritual writer have long been recognized, the subtlety and innovations of his work as a scholastic magister-the very name by which he is known to us today-have all but been ignored. Maurer has brought together here three separate selections: (I) the Parisian Questions, five disputed questions held at Paris in 1302-03 and 1311-14 (Latin Works, v. V), discovered independently by Ephrem Longpre and Martin Grabmann in 1927; (2) the Prologues to the Opus Tripartitum (Latin Works, v. I); (3) a selection from the Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Latin Works, v. III). The first three Parisian Questions, especially Questions I and II, are important documents in the Latin corpus. In the first two questions Eckhart argues, along with "Brother Thomas" (Aquinas) that in God esse and intelligere are identical , while in angels they are distinct. His arguments, however, are quite un-Thomistic. He holds that intellect and being...