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Living Without a Why: Meister Eckhart's Mysticism
Written by Charlotte Radler
Narrated by Charlotte Radler
5/5 (6 ratings)
2 hours
Included in your membership!
at no additional cost
Description
Encounter one of the most influential figures in Christian spirituality.
"To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God." Said by Meister Eckhart, these words encapsulate the insight of a timeless philosopher, theologian, author, preacher, and mystic. Eckhart has contributed spiritual direction and knowledge to generations of Christians, yet his wisdom remains unknown to many.
Now, you can discover his fascinating and complex mystical theology. You will discover why he has enthralled believers through the centuries with his powerful mystical vision and his fruitful understanding of the human-divine relationship.
Controversial in his lifetime and beyond, Eckhart has exerted enormous influence on contemporary theology, philosophy, and spirituality. Today, his mystical theology also serves as a fruitful avenue for interreligious dialogue, particularly with Buddhism and Hinduism. In this course, you will explore Eckhart's historical and theological context as well as the central tenets of his thought.
In Living Without A Why: Meister Eckhart's Mysticism, you will gain fresh perspectives and resounding insights for your faith. Let Meister Eckhart leave his impact on your heart as he has on others for centuries past.
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Overall
5 out of 5 stars
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4 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars
I'm all ears
02-03-2018
Surprisingly good
I found this to be an expectantly fine introduction to the rich and complex thought of Meister Eckhart. The author managers in the course of nine short lectures to give an overview of the wealth and depth of this great thinker. The narration does not have the polish of a professional reader, but that is easy to overlook. For anyone interested in the subject, this is a great place to begin.
8 people found this helpful
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars
M. Sandberg
11-06-2020
Absolutely lovely.
Wonderful summary of some of Eckhart’s fundamental concepts. And to hear it from a scholar who can so carefully articulate them was delightful. Thank you.
1 person found this helpful
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
Story
5 out of 5 stars
Kindle Customer
19-06-2020
Had what I was searching for.
I look to understand Meister Eckhart and of course His lecturers would need to be insightful about the remarkable subject he was insightful about.
These were successful lectures that provide insight into the setting as well as to the revelations that informed Eckardt’s ministry.
Nicely done.
Overall
3 out of 5 stars
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2 out of 5 stars
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AZ Scholar
05-01-2020
This is a very complex subject and is presented in a confusing manner.
I personally found this book very difficult to follow and the performance very much lacking. While the subject matter is quite difficult to comprehend to begin with the flow of this book makes it even more so.
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Living Without Why: Meister Eckhart's Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will
by
John M. Connolly
3.50 · Rating details · 4 ratings · 1 review
What does it mean to live without why? This was the advice of Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328), both in his Latin treatises to philosophers and theologians and in his German sermons to nuns and ordinary lay persons. He seems to have meant that we should live and act out of justice or goodness
and not in order to gain some reward for our deeds. This message was received with indignation by the Church hierarchy and was condemned by the Pope in 1329. How did Eckhart come to formulate it? And why was it so controversial?
John M. Connolly addresses these questions by locating Eckhart's thinking about how to live within the mainstream synthesis of Christian and classical thought formulated in the High Middle Ages. He calls the classical Greek moral consensus teleological eudaimonism, according to which correct
living coincides with the attainment of happiness (eudaimonia). This involves living a life marked by the practice of the virtues, which in turn requires a consistent desire for the correct goal in life. This desire is the core notion of will. In late antiquity Augustine drew on this tradition in
formulating his views about how Christians should live. This required grafting onto classical eudaimonism a set of distinctively scriptural notions such as divine providence, original sin, redemption, and grace. In the 13th century these ideas were systematized by Thomas Aquinas in his will-centered
moral theology.
Eckhart claimed that this tradition was profoundly mistaken. Far from being a wild-eyed mystic or visionary, he argued trenchantly from classical philosophical principles and the Christian scriptures. Connolly proposes that Eckhart's views, long obscured by the papal condemnation, deserve reconsideration today.
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published August 11th 2014 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published June 25th 2014)
ISBN
0199359784 (ISBN13: 9780199359783)
Other Editions (1)
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Jan 16, 2015robin friedman rated it really liked it
Living Without Why
Meister Eckhart, a medieval German philosopher and mystic taught both students and lay people to "live without a why". Eckhart wrote scholarly works in Latin and lay sermons in a vernacular German. Here is an example of Eckhart's teachings on "living without why" from a German sermon.
"One should not work for any 'why', neither for God nor one's honor nor for anything at all that is outside of oneself, but only for that which is one's own being and one's own life within oneself."
In his new study, "Living without Why: Meister Eckhart's Critique of the Medieval Concept of Will", (2014) John Connolly attempts to explain Eckhart's difficult, seemingly paradoxical (why did Eckhart teach "live without why"?) teaching. Connolly is Sophia Smith Professor of Philosophy at Smith College where he spent ten years in administration. Interestingly, Smith spent the early part of his philosophical career studying Wittgenstein and philosophy of mind. He became interested in Eckhart and in medieval philosophy in part through an interest he developed in Buddhism in the 1980s. He now specializes in the study of Eckhart. Connolly makes full use of his earlier Wittgenstinian background in the course of this study.
Connolly studies Eckhart against a background of Aristotelian and earlier medieval philosophy -- sources which Eckhart knew well -- in order to show the extent to which Eckhart agreed and disagreed with his predecessors. He largely equates the "why" in Eckhart's motto to "live without a why" with the thorny concept of "will". This is a plausible way of approaching Eckhart, but I am not sure that Eckhart's "why" and medieval "will" are fully congruent. Thus, before discussing Eckhart's own writings in his final three chapters, Connolly offers lengthy discussions of Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. As Connolly indicates, the extent to which Aristotle had a concept of will is disputed. Connolly explores Aristotle's concept of "virtue" ethics, frequently called by the term "eudaimonism"-- human life has an end or purpose. People act ethically when they act in accordance with their nature and strive to be happy.
Connolly describes how over his long life Augustine moved away from Aristotle's pagan, secular ethics and Christianized it with doctrines such as grace and original sin. Augustine's ethics was teleological and end-driven, but the end involved worshipping God and realizing one's human dependence on God. Aquinas found that the goal of life was in the beatitudes of faith, hope, and love which were revealed and not know to Aristotle. His work is an attempted synthesis of Aristotle with an Augustinian vision.
It was valuable in its own right to read Connolly's discussion of these three seminal thinkers. His treatment shows that they are of great importance in understanding Eckhart. In the final two chapters of his book and in his conclusion, Connolly tries to show how Eckhart's "Living Without Why" built on but departed from his predecessors. Eckhart retains Aristotle's eudaimonism and its focus on realizing one's nature. He heavily modifies the teachings of his two great Christian predecessors, particularly on the nature of grace and on the nature of means-end action. Aquinas had taught that human action was "for the sake of heaven" even when the action was misdirected. Eckhart rejected what he saw as a "mercantile" approach of people practicing virtue "for the sake of" something else, even when this "something else" was the beatitudes or eternal life in heaven. For Eckhart, "living without a why" meant acting for its own sake without an external end, such as eternal life. His teaching was based upon a form of neoplatonism not fully reflected in the teachings of Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas. Aquinas saw the divine nature as separate from the human. When one said "God is good", God's "goodness" only applied analogically to human "goodness". Eckhart rejects an analogical theory of predicating terms and more fundamentally rejects a subject-object dualism between man and God. When a person acts with goodness or justly, that person empties his mind of partial concerns and returns to the goodness or justice which is identical in the person and in God. When one "lives without why", one acts in accordance with one's nature and not from externals. Connolly explores this teaching at length through Eckhart's writings with references to neoplatonic sources as well as to contemporary philosophical writing on the nature of intentionality. He sees substantial similarity between Eckhart's teachings and Kant's ethical doctrine.
Connolly's book helped me think about a philosopher and a teaching I have long admired and increased my understanding. I was not convinced that Connolly had covered the full impact of Meister Eckhart's teaching. Connolly's discussion of Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas was valuable, but Connolly notes late in his study that there were immediate predecessors to Eckhart's teaching of "living without why" in the works of Bernard of Clairvaux and in the mystics Hadewijch and Marguerite Porete, among others. Perhaps these sources merited exploration in greater detail. Connolly's book is commendably analytical in that it draws distinctions between, say, "motivation" and "intention" in an attempt to reduce the apparent paradox of Eckhart's teaching. He may also make Eckhart more prosaic than he needs to be. Connolly sees the study of Eckhart as part of a revival of spiritually-based philosophy which serves as a counter to the analytic, naturalistic philosophy still dominant in universities. In this, I think he is deeply and broadly right.
Connolly has written a scholarly, difficult and challenging book about Eckhart. It will be of interest to readers interested in this philosopher/mystic, to readers interested in medieval philosophy, to readers with a broadly religious bent, and to those interested in Neoplatonism.
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