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The Thomist 67 (2003): 409-38 REASON AND REVELATION IN THE THOUGHT OF MEISTER ECKHART ROBERT J. DOBIE La Salle University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania WHAT IS THE RELATION of reason to revelation in the thought of Meister Eckhart? How central is this relation to his thought? This article will argue that this relation constitutes the center of Eckhart's thought and that it is his distinct understanding of the relation of reason to revelation that defines and distinguishes his theologico-philosophical project as a whole.1 1 This article will not address the thorny issue of whether Eckhart's thought can be called a species of "mysticism" or not, since this always involves the still thornier issue of what "mysticism" is in the first place. For the current status of the debate concerning the "mysticism" of Meister Eckhart see Bernard McGinn's The Mystical Thought of Meister &khart (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 20-34. Here, McGinn gives a good overview of the current scholarship on Eckhart and in what sense we can or cannot term him a "mystic." Heribert Fischer, for example, has argued that Eckhart lacked the "charismatic gifts" of the mystic and has preferred to label him a theologian; for C. F. Kelly, Eckhart's thought represents a "pure metaphysics" that is rooted in the experience of the individual self and therefore we would better call Eckhart a philosopher of the purest type rather than a mystic. Kurt Flasch and Burkhardt Mojsisch have taken up and furthered this position, arguing that Eckhart is a philosopher and not a mystic. (See Heribert Fischer, "Grundgedanken der deutschenPredigten" inMeister&khartderPrediger:Festschriftzum&khart-Gedenkjahr, eds. Udo Nix and Rapheal Ochslin [Freiburg: Herder, 1960], 55-59; idem, "Zur Frage nach der Mystik in den Werken Meister Eckharts" in La mystiquerhenane [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963], 109-32; C. F. Kelly, Meister &khart on Divine Knowledge [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977]; Kurt Flasch, "Die Intention Meister Eckharts" in Sprache und Begriff: Festschrift {Ur Bruno Lierbrucks, ed. Heinz Rottges [Meisenheim am Gian: Hain, 1974], 292-318; idem, "Meister Eckhart: Versuch, ihn aus dem mystischen Strom zu retten" in Gnosis und Mystik in der Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. Peter Koslowski [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988], 94-110; Burkhardt Mojsisch, Meister &khart: 409 410 ROBERT J. DOBIE Eckhart's project is thoroughly theological insofar as his thought is almost entirely taken up in the exegesis of sacred Scripture. AH of his work, including his famous vernacular sermons, is a commentary of some type or other on the text of Scripture. For Eckhart, genuine thought cannot be otherwise, seeing that all real human thought is nothing but a response to the primal Word or Logos that speaks to us (in all creation, to be sure, but) most directly in the revealed text of Scripture. According to Eckhart, therefore, in Scripture we find the ultimate truths not of God but of all the sciences. It follows that, for Eckhart, all sciences are dearly subordinate to theology and their ultimate truth comes to light only in the interpretation of Scripture. Nevertheless, Eckhart's project is also genuinely philosophical. This is not only because he argues, as we shall see below, that it is necessary to apply philosophical categories to the "images and parables" of Scripture in order to uncover their inner, and hence universal, sense. Eckhart also wants to show how, in being applied to Scripture, the lived inner sense or truth of these otherwise static, objective categories ofphilosophical thought is revealed. In other words, Eckhart attempts to show that philosophical categories of thought as found in the writings of, say, Aristotle attain the fullness of their truth-content only when understood in relation to the soul's ascent to and union with God, because it is only in this ascent and union that the soul is able to come to know these categories in their ideal origin (who is, of course, Eckhart's thought, therefore, presents us with a sophisticated critique of philosophic reason in an attempt to show that the Analogie, Univozitiit und Einheit [Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983], 11-12, 111, and 146.) On the other hand, Kurt Ruh and Alois Haas, along with McGinn, argue that, if we are guided by a pmper...

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