Negative theology, Derrida and the critique of presence: A poststructuralist reading of Meister Eckhart

Heythrop Journal - Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 150-165

  Almond, Ian ^a  

^a ERCIYES UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

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EID: 35449007489     PISSN: 00181196     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2265.00099     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Taken from Hermann Diels, Ancilla to the Presocratic Philosophers, translated by Kathleen Freeman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1948), p. 26.
2. David Tracey, 'Literary Theory and Return of the Forms for Naming and Thinking God in Theology', Journal of Religion 74 (1994), p. 313.
3. Cited in J. M. Clark, Meister Eckhart (London: Nelson & Sons, 1957), taken from the sermon, Nunc scio vere que.
4. All translations from Eckhart, unless otherwise stated, are from Clark's edition. Page references preceded by 'Largier' are to Niklaus Largier's German edition of Eckhart's works, Meister Eckhart: Werke (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Presse, 1993).
5. Arthur Hyman and James Walsh (eds.), Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Indianapolis: Bloomington University Press, 1973).
6. Writing and Difference, translated by Alan Bass (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1978), p. 70.
7. This quotation from Derrida brings to mind two fundamentally different attitudes from the works of the unlikely pair, Anselm's Proslogion (1077)
8. and Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
9. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God, we may recall, goes as follows: God is the most perfect of all beings (perfectly wise, perfectly good, etc.), a being 'than which a greater cannot be thought'. However, if we think of this all-perfect Being in our imagination, then immediately it is no longer true, for there is something greater than such an imaginary God - a God who is not only the perfection of all attributes, but one who exists in reality as well as in imagination. Therefore, there must be a God. For Anselm, to be able to think of God and name Him means that He must of necessity exist. Names and ideas must have a counterpart in reality. - In Proust, the opposite takes place: the young Marcel, hopelessly in love, awaits a reply from Gilberte, to whom he has just expressed his affections. Every evening he imagines what kind of letter she will write to him, until one evening he stops suddenly: 'I had just realized that if I was to receive a letter from Gilberte, it could not in any case be this letter, since it was I myself who had just composed it. From then on, I would strive to divert my thoughts from the words which I would have liked her to write to me, for fear that, by voicing them, I would be excluding just those words - the dearest, the most desired - from the field of possibility' (Swann's Way, translated by Scott Moncrieff, p. 442). For the young Marcel, to name something in the imagination means forever to deny it reality. Contrary to Anselm's more hopeful ontology, Proustian actuality is always the exact inverse of one's speculations about it.
10. Dissemination, translated by Barbara Johnson (London: Harvest Wheatsheaf, 1981), p. 71.
11. Clark, p. 183.
12. John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (New Jersey: Fordham University Press, 1986), p. 127.
13. Taken from Spivak's introduction to Of Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. xvi. Spivak is referring here to Heidegger's Sein.
14. 'Mit guoter wârheit und alsô waerliche, als daz got lebet! Got selber luoget dâ niemer în einen ougenblik und geluogete noch nie dar în, als verre als er sich habende ist nâch wîse und ûf eigenschaft sîner persônen. Diz ist got zer merkenne, wan diz einic ein ist sunder wîse und sunder eigenschaft. Und dar umbe: sol got iemer dar în geluogen, ez muoz in kosten alle sîne götlîche namen und sîne persônlîche eigenschaft; daz muoz er alzemâle hie vor lâzen, sol er iemer mê dar în geluogen. Sunder als er ist einvatic ein, âne alle wîse und eigenschaft: dâ enist er vater noch sun noch heiliger geist in disem sinne und ist doch ein waz, daz enist noch diz noch daz.' Reiner Schürmann, Meister Eckhart (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), p. 8;
15. Largier, p. 48: taken from the sermon Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum.
16. Schürmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 44.
17. Clark, p. 179;
18. Largier, p. 48: found in Eckhart's sermon Modicum et iam and taken from Avicenna's Metaphysicae, Lib. ix, ch. 1.
19. Postscript to What is Metaphysics?, found in Existence and Being, translated by R. F. C. Hull and Alan Crick (London: Vision Press, 1959), p. 385.
20. E.g.: 'as void and free as God is in Himself' (Schürmann, Meister Eckhart p. 7);
21. Clark, p. 231;
22. Largier, p. 250: taken from the sermon Unus Deus et Pater omnium.
23. 'Waz meinet ein? Daz meinet ein, dem niht zuogelegt enist. Diu sêle nimet die gotheit, als sie in ir geliutert ist, dâ niht zuogelegt enist, dâ niht bedâht enist. Ein ist ein versagen des versagennes. Alle crêatûren hânt ein versagen an in selben; einiu versaget, daz si diu ander niht ensî. Ein engel versaget, daz er ein ander niht ensî. Aber got hat ein versagen des versagennes; er ist ein und versaget alle ander, wan niht ûzer gote enist.' Clark, p. 230;
24. Largier, p. 248: taken from the sermon Unus Deus et Pater omnium.
25. Schürmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 216.
26. 'lebet in sîn aleines bekantnisse, in im selber aleine blîbende, dâ in nie niht engeruorte, wan er aleine dâ ist in sîner stilheit.' Clark, p. 208;
27. Largier, p. 110: from the sermon Quasi Stella matutina.
28. Clark, p. 206. Eckhart here is quoting with approval a master who remains unnamed.
29. 'Ich spriche dar umber ein gotheit, dâ noch niht ûzfliezende enist und niendert enrüeret noch bedâht enwirt.' Clark, p. 230;
30. Largier, p. 248: from the sermon Unus Deus et Pater omnium.
31. Which is presumably why Eckhart was condemned in the papal bull for wanting 'to know more than he should' (Clark, p. 254).
32. J. M. Clark, Selected Writings (London: Faber and Faber, 1958), p. 226.
33. Zür Seinsfrage/Towards a Question of Being (London: Vision Press, 1956), p. 75.
34. Walter Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 34. Boehme, who was familiar with Eckhart's writings, is recognized by most scholars to have taken his Ungrund ('unground'), the unfathomable depths of the pre-divinity, from Eckhart's Abgrund (abyss).
35. '... si wil etwaz edleres, etwaz bezzers dan got, als er namen hât. Waz wil si denne? Si enweiz ...' Schürmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 57;
36. Largier, p. 298: from the sermon Mulier, venit hora et nunc est.
37. What the Taoist Chuang-Tzu called 'rambling without a destination': taken from Hongchu Fu's essay 'Deconstruction and Taoism', Comparative Literature Studies 129 (1993), p. 297. Indeed, the original title of Schürmann's book is Maître Eckhart ou la joie errant, curiously reduced to Meister Eckhart in the English version.
38. Zur Seinsfrage/Towards a Question of Being.
39. Clark, p. 179.
40. Clark, p. 230;
41. Schürmann, p. 6;
42. Largier, p. 30: from the sermon Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum.
43. '... diu enkan niemer geruowen. Si enwil niht got, als er der heilige geist ist, und als er der sun ist, und vliuhet den sun. Si enwil ouch niht got, als er got ist. War umber? Dâ hât er namen, und waeren tûsent göte, si brichet iemermê durch, si wil in dâ, dâ er niht namen hât.' Schürmann, p. 57;
44. Largier, p. 298.
45. The desire of the intellect for an anonymous space - and Eckhart's conviction that this is the only space where one can truly know God - does have its Heideggerian echo: 'If man, however, is to find himself once again in the nearness of Being, he must first learn to exist in the nameless ... Only in this way will the preciousness of its essence be returned to the word, and to man the dwelling where he can live in the truth of being': Letter on Humanism, taken from David Krell (ed.), Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 1978), p. 223.
46. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 123.
47. Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings (London: Penguin, 1994), p. 236.
48. Marges de la philosophie (Paris, 1972), p. 29.
49. Irene Harvey, Derrida and the Economy of Differance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
50. Of Grammatology, translated by G. Spivak (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 16.
51. (D. Krell [ed.], Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger, p. 246).
52. M. O. C. Walshe, Meister Eckhart: Treatises & Sermons (Exeter, 1981), vol. 2: taken from the sermon Haec dicit Dominus. This is by no means the only medieval example of infinite textual interpretation.
53. As Eco points out in The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (translated by Hugh Bredin, London: Radius Press, 1988), Jerome considered the Scriptures to hold 'an infinite forest of meaning'. Origen called them 'an unfathomable ocean', and Giles of Stanford likened them to 'a fast-flowing river, which constantly produced new meanings' (p. 146).