Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement

Description

Provides the first systematic interpretation of Heidegger’s relation to Eckhart, centering on the idea that we must release ourselves in order to know the truth. In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart’s answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement and become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart’s Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Heidegger had a lifelong fascination with Eckhart, referring to him as “the old master of letters and life.” Drawing on archival material and Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart’s writings, Moore argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger’s philosophy. This book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji’s essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger’s classes in 1938. Ian Alexander Moore is a faculty member at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is the coeditor (with Alan D. Schrift) of Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings by Jean Wahl. Contents Acknowledgments General Introduction Part One Chapter 1 The Thinker and the Master: Heidegger on Eckhart 1. Heidegger’s Early Eckhartianism 2. God and Godhead in the 1920s and Beyond 3. Käte Oltmanns 4. Nishitani Keiji 5. Eckhart, Thinker of (the Analogy of ) Being 6. Gelassenheit and the Will 7. Poverty 8. Practical Apriori 9. Eckhart in Heidegger’s Late Thought Part Two Introduction Chapter 2 Thinking, Being, and the Problem of Ontotheology in Eckhart’s Latin Writings 1. Eckhart the Scholastic, and His 1302–03 Parisian Questions 2. Deus Est Intelligere 3. Esse Est Deus Chapter 3 Become Who You Are: The Oneness of Thinking and Being as Releasement in Eckhart’s German Writings 1. Gelâzenheit versus Abegescheidenheit 2. The Soul’s Way of Releasement 3. The Godhead’s Generative Releasement Chapter 4 Eckhart’s Strategies for Cultivating Releasement 1. Dialectical Logic 2. Paradox 3. Translation Part Three Introduction Chapter 5 The Middle Voice of Releasement in Heidegger’s Lecture Courses, 1928–30 1. The Middle Voice 2. The Middle Voice of Gelassenheit in Einleitung in die Philosophie 3. To Act or To Let Be? The Status of Philosophy in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics Chapter 6 Violent Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, 1935 Chapter 7 Releasement as the Essence of Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s First “Country Path Conversation,” 1945 1. From Calculative to Meditative Thinking 2. The Problem of the Will 3. Horizonal-Transcendental Thinking 4. The Open-Region 5. Gelassenheit 6. Implications Conclusion Appendix One: Materials on Heidegger’s Relation to Eckhart 1. Editions of Eckhart Consulted, Owned, or Referenced by Heidegger 2. Locations of Heidegger’s References to Eckhart and Pseudo-Eckhart 3. Heidegger’s Citations of Eckhart and Pseudo-Eckhart 1916 Summer Semester 1927 Summer Semester 1930 Late 1930s–1940s August 1940 or after Between 1944 and April 7, 1945 1949 May 1949–1950 June 27, 1950 Around 1955–1956 In or after 1956 Also in or after 1956 February 29, 1968 4. Heidegger’s Marginalia and Underlining in His Personal Copies of Eckhart Bernhart Büttner, 1938 reprint of the one-volume edition of 1934 Diederichs 5. Summary of Eckhart’s/Pseudo-Eckhart’s Texts Read or Cited by Heidegger German Works Latin Works 6. Reports on Heidegger’s Relation to Eckhart Hans-Georg Gadamer Jean Guitton Heinrich Heidegger Elisabeth Feist Hirsch Ōhashi Ryōsuke Käte Oltmanns Reiner Schürmann Barbara von Wulffen Bernhard Welte 7. Heidegger’s Evaluation of Käte Oltmanns’s Dissertation on Eckhart Käte Oltmanns “Die Philosophie des Meisters Ekkehart” Käte Oltmanns “The Philosophy of Meister Ekkehart” 8. Heidegger’s Notes on Käte Oltmanns’s Oral Examination Appendix Two: “Essentiality, Existence, and Ground in Meister Eckehart,” by Käte Oltmanns Appendix Three: “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” by Nishitani Keiji 1. Nietzsche and the Elemental Nature of Living 2. Eckhart and the Elemental Nature of Living 3. Religious Living and the Positivist Spirit Notes Bibliography Index