Download Isabelle Raviolo CRFJ. Eté 2013

The relation of negative theology
to the mystical experience in Maimonides and Eckhart's writings.
The development of the mystical subjectivity on its way to the cancellation of its self.
The aim of this conference consists in thinking, through the relationships between
God and creatures, the notions of union and unity in an absolute truth which can be
realized existentially, namely, the pure being of the Godhead. And we can get to this life
of union with God by the dynamic of negativity i.e. by successive intellectual openings
which are experiences of detachment. Thus, Eckhart’s teachings can be understood since
a mutual birth, or a reciprocal generating on which the unity has grounds. The genuine
spiritual man has to go beyond God, to the Absolute, and to find the divine part within
his soul by openings to live the union, to the original Principle. This mystical experience
has its foundation in negative theology and especially in the way that Maimonides and
Eckhart understand it.
We know that Eckhart has read a Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed whose title
is Dux neutrorum. Several commentators have brought up the influence of Rabby Moses
(1138-1204) in Meister Eckhart’s works1: Kurt Flasch, Emilie Zum-Brunn, Alois Maria
Haas: at first, the program of philosophical explanation of the Bible, and secondly,
Eckhart’s strict conception of negative theology2. But if they have seen the influence of
Maimonides in Eckhart’s negative theology and in his philosophical teachings, they did
not go deeper into the link between this Jewish source and the conception of the intellect
in Meister Eckhart’s German sermons which were written during his stay in Strasbourg
(1313-1323)3, particularly if we think that this particular point makes problems during
Eckhart’s proceedings (Avignon and Cologne 1326-1327). And this is this point that will
be interest us because of its importance into the mystical experience of the subject in
Eckhart’s thought. Eckhart held that union with God takes place in the soul insofar as it is
intellective, a position he shared with Maimonides – “In the essence of the soul, as
intellective, it is joined to what is higher than it, God, as Rabbi Moses has it: And thus it
is ‘offspring of God’4
Eckhart refers to Maimonides seventy times in his sermons.
Eckhart, In Exod., n. 45-61 (LW II, 50-66). Trad. Pierre Gire, p. 38 sqq.
3 And this is during this stay that Meister Eckhart has relationships with Jewish community from Strasbourg.
4 OS XI, n. 115
1
2
The human reason is helpless to know God apart from revelation. This does not mean
that Eckhart’s thought is a species of irrational enthusiasm: quite to the contrary, Eckhart
leaves human reason an essential role in coming to any knowledge of God. However, for
Eckhart reason can operate effectively and according to its inner nature only under the
tutelage of Scripture. The goal of any talk about God is not to describe God or to give us
speculative knowledge about God, for all such talk is ultimately futile. It is rather to lead
the believer to a new mode of existing in God, one that is, paradoxically, possible only
when the human intellect has been stripped of any and all preconceptions about the
nature of God, so that there is a new basis for knowing God not as this or that object of
reason but as the very basis of all of its knowledge.
For Eckhart, the ultimate goal of interpreting Scripture is to find Christ, both within the
text and within the soul: Christ is born in the soul when that soul encounters Christ in the
deepest meaning of Scripture.
God is both the objective or transcendent being or existence on whom our existence
absolutely depends and the inner or immanent principle of our existence. God as the
transcendent cause of creation also corresponds to the immanent ground of the soul. As
Eckhart argues in the Commentary on Wisdom, God’s transcendence is defined by his very
immanence in all things, most of all in the soul5. It is in the soul that God comes to
understanding and hence is received in his essential nature, which is transcendent to all
created being. Or, as Eckhart puts it in Sermon 30: “God is in all things. The more he is
in things, the more he is outside things; the more within, the more outside; the more
outside, the more within.” In other words, God is the inner principle of our existence
precisely because he is the absolute existence on which our own existence and knowledge
of him depend. The more we turn our attention inward the more we come to know God
in both his immanence and his transcendence. This again means that we cannot know God
except by revelation, precisely because our existence depends absolutely on God and we
therefore know him not as an object but as the ground of our existence.
Isabelle Raviolo
CRFJ. Eté 2013
5
In Sap., n. 144-57.