Eckhart on Contemplation

Abstract

Eckhart of Hochheim should be viewed, I believe, as a practical mystic, if not rather than, certainly more thana theoretical one. To categorize Eckhart as a speculative mystic diminishes or even dismisses him as a spiritual guide, except in the sense that the word "theory" reflects the Greek theoria, which is usually taken to mean contemplation. Yet it is as a spiritual guide that Eckhart has found his greatest following today, and, it seems evident, in his own day as well. 1 Eckhart was, of course, a profound thinker and, indeed, in the tradition of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, a metaphysician as well as a saint. So it should not be surprising that there are at .least three levels of meaning in Eckhart's teaching-first, the practical or pastoral instruction, which is all too easily overlooked in our eagerness to delve into the deeper layers, the theological, second, and, third, the philosophical, which encompasses at least epistemological and ontological dimensions. Among these levels also run rich strata of psychology and linguistics. Today, I want to excavate from the top down, not only because I was asked to, but because I think it is important to understand Eckhart first of all·as a spiritual master rather than a theologian or philosopher. He was, after all, a preacher, a Dominican who~ like his master Dominic, willingly if not wholly subordinated his speculative and even contemplative interests to·the demands of ministry. And here he also follows Thomas Aquinas. , Insofar as Eckhart proposed a way of life that can be described as contemplative, what did he mean by that? Or, more to the point, how did he exhort us to be contemplative? Seeing God is, of course, what the ancient Greek term theoria, which we translate contemplation, means: it is based on the verb "to see" in the sense of looking at something or someone. Ultimately, our question must be couched in terms of what it meant for Eckhart to usee" God.