Meister Eckhart
1260-1328 · Christian Mysticism · Prominent
Eckhart was a German Dominican mystic whose sermons pushed to the edge of what can be said about God. Let go even of God, he told ordinary congregations from the pulpit, meaning the God you picture and name; behind that stands the Godhead, past every word a person can use. He taught his listeners that the Son is born in the ground of their own souls. Rome condemned some of his propositions in 1329.
Signature
The position Eckhart is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- strongly leans Indescribable
- Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (95 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (96 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- strongly leans Indescribable (100 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (96 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (96 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Eckhart refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism / Panentheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Intuition / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command / Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Indistinct from Present
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Union with the One / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason / Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?