Identity and non-Identity of the Human Soul with God in Meister Eckhart’s Metaphysical Mysticism
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F25%3A73632294" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/25:73632294 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-010" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-010</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-010" target="_blank" >10.1515/9783111369983-010</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Identity and non-Identity of the Human Soul with God in Meister Eckhart’s Metaphysical Mysticism
Original language description
Practically all of Meister Eckhart’s sermons and discourses derive from or lead up to his one great topic and concern: the mystical union of the individual human soul with God. Union implies both identity and diversity. In his extremely dialectical enterprise that ends in stating both the identity and non-identity of the human soul with God, Eckhart is involved in all logical contradictions common to mystics across denominations, plus some specifically Christian ones. First, the problem of temporality versus a-temporality: the mystical ascent is a progress in time, while its goal is omnipresent. For Eckhart, God’s eternity is the denial of temporal succession, but not – for the Creator God – the denial of processuality. This is expressed in the recurrent metaphor of the perpetual birth of the Son by the Father in the human soul. The mystic’s ascetic ethos and proceeding is, in itself, paradoxical: to renounce none less than everything except the absolute One, which is itself none less than everything. The renouncement concerns more than worldly and external values, it is self-denial for the sake of self-fulfillment. The soul’s very instruments for approaching God must ultimately be left behind: the infinitely desiring will, and the endlessly distinguishing ratio. Not just the subject of the enterprise (the soul) is deprived, but even the divine object. The Holy Trinity, more than a mere set of metaphors, and essential to the ascent, must also be transcended in the effort to reach the Divine essence, where all distinction comes to an end. Last, but not least, the question whether God is totally independent from, or intrinsically dependent on His creation is answered by endorsing both alternatives.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/GA21-17059S" target="_blank" >GA21-17059S: Pantheism and Panpsychism in the Renaissance and the Emergence of Secularism</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Contradiction and the Absolute: Theories Engaging Contradiction in Five Main World Religions
ISBN
978-3-11-136498-8
Number of pages of the result
26
Pages from-to
185-210
Number of pages of the book
400
Publisher name
Walter de Gruyter
Place of publication
Berlin
UT code for WoS chapter
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