the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

and others, were frequently at pains to emphasize Eckhart’s profundity, his originality, as
well as his role as founder of German philosophy (with alternating emphasis on his ideas
and his Germanness). 242 While many scholars have made more measured assessments of
Eckhart, the temptation to hyperbolic praise has certainly not disappeared. 243 For Oliver
Davies, the editor and translator of the English Penguin Classics edition (published in
1994), Eckhart not only “stands out as one of the most exciting and radical thinkers of his
own, or indeed of any age” and is “the father of a distinguished German philosophical
and theological tradition which extends to the present day,” but also inspired
242 To cite only a few: Blakney, in the introduction to his 1941 translation of Eckhart’s writings, writes: “It
was in his doctrines of God that he went beyond the tolerance of his time and perhaps beyond the capacity
of ours….Certainly he lifted Christianity above any parochial conception and revealed its inner relation to
the great, universal spiritual movements which have found expression in many forms. He lived on that high
level, on the same highlands of the spirit that were disclosed in the Upanishads and Sufi classics. To go
where Eckhart went is to come close to Lao Tzu and Buddha, and certainly to Jesus Christ” (Blakney, xiv).
Franz Pfeiffer calls Eckhart “eines der tiefsten denker aller zeiten” Franz Pfeiffer, ed., Deutsche Mystiker
des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: G.J. Göschen, 1857), vii. Kurt Ruh’s assessment of Eckhart in his
thorough and authoritative Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik acknowledges that modern scholarship
grows and changes in its assessment of Eckhart, but emphasizes Eckhart’s persistent relevance and
timeliness: “seit ihn neuzeitliche Wissenschaft zurückgewonnen und den Lesern bereitgestellt hat, von
ununterbrochener, wenn auch immer wieder anders ausgerichteter Aktualität”. Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der
abendländischen Mystik, Band 3 (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1990), 220. Recently, see also Lisa Cerami,
“Ineffable Histories: German Mysticism at the Jahrhundertwende,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton
University, 2010.
243 Heinrich Denifle emphasized that Eckhart did not create his ideas ex nihilo but rather was firmly a part
of the tradition of Scholasticism (Kindlers, “Meister Eckhart”). Otto Karrer agrees, writing that Meister
Eckhart was a great thinker (“a true king”) but that he was also “the typical child of his time”: “In reality
there is literally nothing in his philosophy of theology which he could call his own; everything is rooted in
the tradition of the old teachers. In this respect he is the true scholastic.” Otto Karrer, “Introduction,” in
Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckehart Speaks: a collection of the teachings of the famous German mystic, trans.
Elizabeth Strakosch, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 9. See also Meister Eckhart, Deutsche
Predigten und Traktate, ed., trans. Josef Quint, (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1955). More recent
scholarship has emphasized the continuity of Eckhart’s “scholastic theology” and his “popular piety,”
arguing that distinguishing between so-called high and low religion does not actually reflect the reality of
religious life in the Middle Ages. Amy Hollywood, for instance, has argued that Eckhart should not be seen
as the one who corrected and theologized (so to speak) the ideas of female mystics. Instead, Hollywood
“attempt[s] to show how Eckhart situated himself in relation to his two predecessors [Mechthild of
Magdeburg and Marguerite Porete], how his thought was significantly shaped by the mystical concerns and
theologies of the women’s movement, and how he might have come to his distinctive resolution of their
tensions.” Amy Hollywood, The Soul As Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and
Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2001). Bernard McGinn has likewise been
interested in showing not what Eckhart “may have learned from the Beguine authors” but rather “what
Eckhart shared with them,” investigating “the community of discourse and joint concerns in which his
thought and theirs developed and enriched each other.” Bernard McGinn, The Harvest of Mysticism in
Medieval Germany (1300-1500), Vol. IV (New York: The Crossroads Publishing Company, 2005), 4.
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