Extract

‘People today want to know about Eckhart. Many, using the language of advertising, consider him “in”’ (p. 158), as his writings seem to be a mystical invitation ‘to escape the hectic pace of the present life in an industrial society’ (ibid.); Eckhart is thus habitually used as remedy for the diseases of the present. Kurt Flasch, a distinguished scholar of medieval studies, conceives his book in opposition to this tendency by shaping the contours of a historical and philosophical Eckhart, since ‘like all arguments and texts, Eckhart’s are grounded in his life and times’ (p. xiii). To this aim, Flasch follows the events characterizing Eckhart’s life through a detailed analysis of his works, by assuming as a principle ‘to stay close to Eckhart’s texts’ (p. 155). This enables readers to glean the essential philosophical dimensions of Eckhart’s writings, to grasp the most urgent problems in the academic debates of his time, and to become familiar with his principal opponents. Not only the Opus Tripartitum or the First Parisian Question, but also the speeches and the biblical commentaries were written by Eckhart to respond to specific philosophical issues in his time. Even the German sermons, usually celebrated as typically mystical texts, without any connection with scholastic discussions, are really conceived ‘to demonstrate the Christian truth with philosophical arguments’ (p. 190).

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