Ground of the Soul
Ancient Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophers were convinced that there was a guiding authority in the human soul that was analogous or of the same nature as the divine power that governed the universe.
However, more recent historians of philosophy emphasise that Eckhart in no way devalued reason; rather, he sought to convince with a philosophical argument and understood the ground of the soul as intellect.
According to Stoic doctrine, this nucleus of the soul initiates and coordinates the various faculties, including imagination, thought, and will, following a uniform plan and directing them towards a unified goal: the preservation of the whole.
The term hegemonikon was translated or paraphrased in various ways: principale cordis ("main instance of the heart") in Seneca, Jerome, Rufinus; principatus ("guiding principle", "basic power") in Cicero; regalis pars animi ("the royal part of the spirit") in Apuleius.
[5] The renowned Roman Stoic Seneca (d. 65) believed that the soul of the wise man, who could not be shaken by anything, possessed superhuman strength; a divine power had descended into him.
[13] With the assumption that there is something divine in the soul, he created the theoretical basis for his thesis that a union of the individual with the absolutely transcendent highest principle, the One, was possible and worth striving for.
For the Neoplatonists of late antiquity, Plotinus' optimistic assessment of the relationship between the incarnate soul (living in the physical world) and higher levels seemed unrealistic and presumptuous.
Origen thus introduced a distinction between normal, rational cognition employing the faculty of thought and knowledge of God based on a special ability of the soul that is only intended for this purpose.
The terminology originally introduced by Aristotle and later translated into Latin was used, in which the individual activities of the soul such as perception, thinking and movement were assigned to specific dispositions, the "faculties".
In her writings, Hadewijch depicted the unity of God with the soul in a manner that suggests a profound merging of the two entities (enecheit), to the extent that they become indistinguishable, at least on one level.
The ancient church father had employed the term "hiding place" to signify the location of unconscious ideas (notitiae), which pertain to specific contents of thought and emerge into the field of consciousness (conspectus mentis) during the act of thinking.
[39] By persistently rejecting all positive statements about the Godhead, Eckhart adhered to the tenets of "negative theology", particularly those espoused by the ancient thinker Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
Eckhart's description of the self-emptying of man, who realises seclusion, suggests that this process "forces" God to seek out the secluded soul and pour himself into it, to prevent the formation of a "vacuum" within it.
[93] As a preacher, Eckhart placed great emphasis on the importance of conveying to his audience that the status of the righteous or master of life was not a privilege of a particularly qualified elite, but was attainable for everyone.
In the bull In agro dominico [de; la] of 27 March 1329, seventeen theses originating from Eckhart or attributed to him were classified as erroneous or heretical, while eleven others were designated as suspect.
[96] The Franciscan William of Ockham (d. 1347), a vehement opponent of the Pope, accused John XXII of failing to condemn Eckhart's absurd and fantastical theses as heresies.
[111] By emphasising the creatureliness of the ground of the soul, Tauler carefully distanced himself from possible interpretations of his statements that could have placed his spirituality in the vicinity of Eckhart's theses, which were condemned by the Church as heretical.
In 1440, the philosopher and theologian Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) set forth his views in his work De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), which met with vehement opposition from the Heidelberg theology professor Johannes Wenck.
In addition, Wenck cited Eckhart's thesis, which he was only aware of from a Latin translation, that there is "a certain castle" in the soul, which is also called "Fünklein" and is so simple that even God can only contemplate this simplicity if he renounces his names and attributes.
On occasion, such terminology was employed with explicit reference to Tauler, as evidenced by the works of the Benedictine Louis de Blois (1506–1566) and the Jesuit Maximilian van der Sandt (Sandaeus, 1578–1656).
In certain instances, the term "ground" was employed in a manner analogous to its usage in medieval times, signifying the "place" of a person's union with God, as evidenced in Gerhard Tersteegen's work.
[131] In 1739, the Enlightenment philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten introduced the Latin term fundus animae ("ground of the soul") to describe the mental realm in which "dark perceptions" were located.
Every higher degree of ability, of attention and detachment, of wilfulness and freedom can be found "in this dark ground of the most intimate attraction and awareness of itself, its power, its inner life".
Furthermore, the doctrine of the absolute undifferentiated nature of the deity and its equation with the innermost part of the human soul was considered "mystical" in the sense of a contrast to the rational way of thinking and argumentation of the scholastic scholars of the late Middle Ages.
[141] Notable intellectuals such as Julius Hart (1859–1930), Arthur Drews (1865–1935) and Leopold Ziegler [de; fi; la; pl] (1881–1958) concurred with Büttner's perspective or espoused similar ideas.
[146] The role of the intellect or reason is a topic that is frequently discussed in studies and debates on the grounds of the soul and one that is strongly emphasised in much of the recent research literature.
In particular, Flasch criticised the view of the renowned Germanist Josef Quint [de] (1898–1976), who undertook the critical editing of Eckhart's sermons and their translation into modern German.
Other researchers (Alois Haas, Otto Langer, Niklaus Largier) are unequivocally opposed to the subject-theoretical interpretation and consider it to be entirely misguided.
Wendel posits that Eckhart's demand for reflexive self-knowledge as a gathering within and sinking into the ground of the soul presupposes what modern philosophy considers to be the subject.
Eckhart's espousal of the doctrine of the absolute equality of man and God and his exposition of it from a variety of perspectives renders him a figure of great normative significance in the domain of spiritual life.
