Living without Why: Meister Eckhart’s Critique of the Medieval Concept of the Will by John M. Connolly (review)

The past sixty-five years have witnessed renewed scholarship on Meister Eckhart. The near completion of the great Stuttgart Edition of the German and Latin works has brought about very reputable interpretations of the sermons and treatises such as are found in the Lectura Eckhardi volumes.

The publication of John M. Connolly’s new book on Meister Eckhart’s concept of the will must be seen against this background, one must note: caveat lector! Two thirds of the book does not deal with Eckhart on the will. It is a very helpful introduction to this concept in Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. Still, it has one great virtue: it prepares the reader for an appreciation of the account of the will in Eckhart. Further, Eckhart was a creative reader of the texts of these three authorities.

For most readers, Eckhart has been seen as the defender of the Albertinian Neo-Platonist teaching on the primacy of Intellect. By an examination of will, a neglected topic in Eckhart’s work, Connolly is able to introduce other central Eckhartian ideas: Creation, Analogy, Image. It was specifically the doctrine of the image—the Son as the Image of the Father, the graced human being as united in—distinction with God that caused theological difficulties for Eckhart.

To situate Eckhart in terms of his sources, Connolly begins in chapter 1 with an account of the will as “Rational Appetite” in Thomas Aquinas. He presents a brief but comprehensive treatment of this topic together with a good example. This serves as a foil for Eckhart’s teaching on Living without Why or Will. Chapter 2 deals with Aristotle’s teleological eudaimonism. This is a rich chapter, and it is closely connected with the Aristotelianism in Eckhart. It is vital for the treatment of a life of virtue in both Aristotle and in Eckhart that in both “the connection of action (praxis) to happiness is internal and constitutive” (41). Chapter 3 deals with Augustine’s Christian Conception of the Will. Particularly important here is Augustine’s distinction between liberum arbitrium (free Choice) and libera voluntas (free Will). The crux of the matter, however, is that “[t]o this very end, the will is the person for Augustine. For him, unlike Eckhart, ‘to live without will’ is a flatly self-contradictory notion” (84). Chapter 4 deals with Aquinas on Happiness and Will. This chapter deals with final perfection in the vision of God.

Chapters 5 and 6 deal explicitly with Eckhart’s anti-eudaimonism. Eckhart is interested in metaphysics as a guide to the moral life. Or one might call it an ontologization of ethics. Connolly explains carefully that Eckhart’s approach differs considerably from Aquinas’s “teleological practical philosophy.” For Eckhart, God is the primary analogate. It is God’s Word that is creative. Taken in itself, the human being apart from God is a mere Nothing. Here, Eckhart’s doctrine of the image and his doctrine of univocal analogy take center stage. Connolly provides a deft account of two kinds of virtue and two kinds of graced existence in Eckhart. Chapter 6 deals with the issue of Eckhart’s antipathy to the teleological.

The matter can be put simply: Eckhart is opposed to what one may call “spiritual mercantilism” in the human relation with the Divine. The creature as creature is naked and a nothing; graced by God, detached from creaturely things, including ideas, the creature is united directly with the Godhead. This leads to an account of Eckhart’s doctrine of detachment and his opposition to a kind of self-ownership. There is a role for the virtues in Eckhart, but it is a preparatory one. The neat natural-supernatural distinction among the virtues as one finds in Aquinas is absent in Eckhart. Virtuous activity is no replacement for detachment. The doctrine of the Transcendentals is fundamental in Eckhart. For Eckhart the ground and...