← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · UnsleepingFlame
Thread ID: 14064 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-06-05
2004-06-05 09:58 | User Profile
I regard it as one of the foulest sins modern education has committed against me, that this world-historical teacher was never brought to my attention. History as taught today starves its victims with the skeletal philosophies of half-men like John Dewey while systematically neglecting the Occident's most representative fruits. Only lately am I asserting my birthright thru independent study. Anyhow, do we have any Eckhart scholars or adherents here? And how should one conceptualize Eckhart's role in the struggle to reawaken the spiritual being of the West?
2004-06-06 02:42 | User Profile
UnsleepingFlame,
Yes that is something to think about and study more. But I do know that much about him.
Meister Eckhart [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart[/url]
2004-06-07 17:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]Fortunatley, Eckhart hasn't been completely relegated to the dustbin of history, his sermons are readily available in various translated editions.
Eckhart is quite an interesting theologian, one whose sermons and writings were "heretical" by late 13th Century Roman Catholic standards but whose influence was far too great for him to be given the Jan Huss treatment by Inquisitors. No major theologian of his time had ever done more to de-anthropomorphize our view of God and to remove all "materialist" trappings from the notions of Heaven and Salvation. While the masses were promised a big rock candy mountain of Heaven by most men of the Church, Eckhart taught that salvation lies in not desiring big rock candy mountain to begin with. In this regard he converges with the Buddhists in teaching that salvation lies not in intensified earthly happiness (delayed until after death) but in being free of desire for earthly things.
Unfortunately, Eckhart founded no schools, and while he remained famous for centuries, there really was no movement within or outside the Church to carry on his teachings. It would have been interesting to see what direction Western Christendom would have taken had there been a large "Eckhartian" movement.[/QUOTE]
Hmm; dunno. It could have been a turn for the worse. :unsure:
Not an expert on Eckhart, but in the descriptions I know, and also in yours, his thought verges too close to Schopenhauerianism to be really healthy.
Ultimately, what reason would a Schopenhauerian or, for that matter, a quasi-Buddhist Mystic have to build a Civilization, discover new worlds or technologies or even procreate??
The logic of a pessimistic worldview doesnôt lead to the West, but rather to an India. I may be a bit biased here, but I tend to think the Catholic Church had it right again in keeping Eckhart in the closet.
2004-06-07 18:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Paleoleftist] The logic of a pessimistic worldview doesnôt lead to the West, but rather to an India. I may be a bit biased here, but I tend to think the Catholic Church had it right again in keeping Eckhart in the closet.[/QUOTE] I am also not an expert on Eckhardt, but a true Buddhist-type total rejection of the senses and of the physical world is incompatible with traditional Christianity. Christianity does not reject the material world at all. Jesus took a physical body and His sacrifice sanctified both the spiritual and physical parts of our beings. The True Presence is a mystery in which the Holy Spirit infuses material objects, namely bread and wine, to provide us with spiritual nourishment. Antipathy to the material world is not really Christian. At the same time, of course, we should not allow ourselves to be enslaved to the material world, or to set material things up as idols. The fact remains, though, that the material world is good.
2004-06-07 18:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Antipathy to the material world is not really Christian.[/QUOTE]
Yes, that strikes me as true.
Total rejection of the world would be Gnostic, even. My favourite heresy (in the sense of most repulsive).