WorkMeister Eckhart

Deutsche Predigten

The sermons a Dominican preached in plain German to nuns and townspeople — telling them God is born in the soul, and to live "without a why."

by Meister Eckhart189 passages held

German, a translation held here

Original language: Middle High German

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Overview

Most medieval theology was written in Latin for other clerics. Eckhart did that too, but he also climbed into pulpits in Strasbourg and Cologne and preached to Dominican nuns, Beguines and ordinary lay people in their own Middle High German — and it is those sermons, taken down and copied by his listeners, that make up the Deutsche Predigten, the "German Sermons." He was inventing philosophical vocabulary as he went, forcing a spoken language that had no words for these things to carry them. What it carries is startling for a pulpit. There is a ground of the soul, he says, uncreated and nameless, "neither this nor that," where the soul touches the bare Godhead behind God; there, eternally, God is being born, and a person's whole task is to become the empty place where that birth can happen. So one must live âne warumbe — without a why — doing good not for heaven or reward but for nothing at all, because attachment even to salvation is still attachment. Preached to unlearned hearers, in the vernacular, these claims travelled fast and alarmed the authorities. The year after his death, in 1329, the papal bull In agro dominico condemned twenty-eight propositions drawn from his work, seventeen as heretical — the only medieval Dominican theologian so condemned. The sermons went half-underground and were read for centuries mostly by people who did not advertise it. Then the nineteenth century found them: the Romantics first, and after them Schopenhauer, Heidegger and Fromm, who took this preacher for one of the boldest minds Europe had produced.

Key concepts

What is the ground of the soul?

The deepest point of a person, which Eckhart calls uncreated and nameless, neither this nor that. There the soul touches the bare Godhead behind the God of names, and there the two are one. It is not a faculty like reason or will but the still center underneath them. Reaching it is the aim of his whole teaching, and naming it strained the German he preached in.

What does 'without a why' mean?

Eckhart's phrase for acting from pure freedom rather than for any reason. To live without a why is to do good for nothing, not for reward and not even for heaven, since any motive ties the soul to something outside God. The rose blooms without asking why; so should the just person act. It is his most radical demand, cutting beneath ordinary religious hope.

What is the birth of God in the soul?

Eckhart's central image: in the ground of the soul, God, or the Son, is eternally being born, timelessly and now. This is not a memory of Bethlehem but an event in the person, the whole point of the spiritual life. A person's task is only to become the empty, detached place where that birth can occur, offering no resistance of self or will.

What does detachment mean for Eckhart?

Abegescheidenheit, a total emptying of the soul of every created thing and every clinging, including attachment to one's own salvation. Detachment is not indifference but the highest readiness: the perfectly detached heart, wanting nothing, is the one God cannot help but fill. He ranks it above even love and humility, because it is the condition that makes union with God possible at all.

Why were these sermons condemned?

Because Eckhart preached such claims, God born in the soul, a nameless ground, living without a why, to unlearned lay hearers in their own language, where his examiners feared they would be misunderstood. The year after his death, in 1329, the bull In agro dominico condemned twenty-eight propositions drawn from his work, seventeen as heretical. He is the only medieval Dominican theologian so condemned.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The uncreated ground of the soul

Is there something in a person deeper than personality, will and memory, untouched and uncreated? Eckhart preaches that there is, and that in it God is eternally being born.

In plain German, forging words a spoken language did not yet have, Eckhart tells his hearers of a ground of the soul that is uncreated and nameless, neither this nor that, where the soul touches the bare Godhead behind the God of names. There, he says, God is eternally born, and a person's whole task is to become the empty place where that birth can happen. This is not a rare experience for saints but the deepest structure of any soul. The claim, preached to unlearned people, alarmed his examiners, and it stands behind the propositions Rome condemned the year after he died.

mysticism
unity
divine union
essence
apophatic theology
transcendence
soul
creation
mystical union
contemplation

Enter a dialogue

Living without a why

Why do you do good, and does the reason spoil it? Eckhart's answer is startling from a pulpit: attachment even to heaven is still attachment, and the free soul acts for nothing at all.

To live without a why is to do good not for reward, not even for salvation, but for nothing, because any why binds the soul to something outside God. Detachment, for Eckhart, is emptying oneself of every created thing and every clinging, including the clinging to one's own blessedness; the utterly detached heart is the one God cannot help but enter. This is his ethic and his spiritual method at once, harder than any rule of conduct because it asks a person to release the very motives that make them feel good. Preached to lay hearers, it travelled fast and frightened the authorities.

detachment
surrender
will
equanimity
receptivity
self-transcendence
divine birth
grace

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 189
distinct concepts: 178
by passages held, corpus-wide: #140

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: mysticism with non-duality.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 426 shared passages in all. 74 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
mysticism	non-duality	36
consciousness	mysticism	33
mysticism	transcendence	31
detachment	mysticism	25
detachment	spirituality	25
consciousness	non-duality	20
consciousness	transcendence	20
consciousness	spirituality	19
non-duality	transcendence	19
metaphysics	non-duality	18
metaphysics	transcendence	18
mysticism	self-transcendence	17
detachment	non-duality	16
consciousness	detachment	15
mysticism	spirituality	15
consciousness	metaphysics	14
metaphysics	mysticism	14
non-duality	self-transcendence	12
consciousness	self-transcendence	11
detachment	transcendence	10
non-duality	spirituality	9
spirituality	transcendence	9
detachment	self-transcendence	6
metaphysics	self-transcendence	5
metaphysics	spirituality	5
detachment	metaphysics	4

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Deutsche Predigten you are here GMHDE
Fragmente und Sprüche (Fragmente Und Sprueche)
Short sayings and sermon fragments carrying Eckhart's name, of uncertain date and, in part, uncertain authenticity; the marginalia of a body of work that lived by being spoken and remembered rather than published.
GMHDE
Traktate
The prose treatises, as against the sermons — among them the early "Talks of Instruction," "On Detachment," and the "Book of Divine Consolation" whose lay-directed teaching helped trigger the 1325 proceedings at Cologne.
GMHDE

— or open another of their works