Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement

Ian Alexander Moore

Description

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 This book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji's essay "Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart," which he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.
Acknowledgments
General Introduction

Part I.

1. The Thinker and the Master: Heidegger on Eckhart

Part II.

Introduction

2. Thinking, Being, and the Problem of Ontotheology in Eckhart’s Latin Writings

3. Become Who You Are: The Oneness of Thinking and Being as Releasement in Eckhart’s German Writings

4. Eckhart’s Strategies for Cultivating Releasement

Part III.

Introduction

5. The Middle Voice of Releasement in Heidegger’s Lecture Courses, 1928–30

6. Violent Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, 1935

7. Releasement as the Essence of Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s First “Country Path Conversation,” 1945

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

4. Heidegger’s Marginalia und Underlining in His Personal Copies of Eckhart

5. Summary of Eckhart’s/Pseudo-Eckhart’s Texts Read or Cited by Heidegger

6. Reports on Heidegger’s Relation to Eckhart

7. Heidegger’s Evaluation of Kate Oltmanns’s Dissertation on Eckhart

8. Heidegger’s Notes on Kate Oltmanns’s Oral Examination

Appendix Two
“Essentiality, Existence, and Ground in Meister Eckehart,” by Kate Oltmanns

Appendix Three
“Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” by Nishitani Keiji

Notes
Bibliography
Published Primary Sources
Unpublished Sources
Secondary Sources
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie médiévale, scolastique
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie générale
• Scolastique
• Philosophie médiévale
• Philosophie antique
• Philosophie médiévale
• Philosophie médiévale
• Medieval philosophy
• History of philosophy
• Theology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438476537
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement
Ian Alexander Moore
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moore, Ian Alexander, author.
Title: Eckhart, Heidegger, and the imperative of releasement / Ian Alexander Moore.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018054672 | ISBN 9781438476513 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438476537 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. | Eckhart, Meister, –1327— Influence. | Ontology. | Metaphysics.
Classification: LCC B3279.H49 M586 2019 | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054672
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Meinen Meistern gewidmet.
Contents
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
G ENERAL I NTRODUCTION
Part One
C HAPTER 1 The Thinker and the Master: Heidegger on Eckhart
Part Two
I NTRODUCTION
C HAPTER 2 Thinking, Being, and the Problem of Ontotheology in Eckhart’s Latin Writings
C HAPTER 3 Become Who You Are: The Oneness of Thinking and Being as Releasement in Eckhart’s German Writings
C HAPTER 4 Eckhart’s Strategies for Cultivating Releasement
Part Three
I NTRODUCTION
C HAPTER 5 The Middle Voice of Releasement in Heidegger’s Lecture Courses, 1928–30
C HAPTER 6 Violent Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics , 1935
C HAPTER 7 Releasement as the Essence of Thinking and Being in Heidegger’s First “Country Path Conversation,” 1945
C ONCLUSION
A PPENDIX O NE 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
§4. Heidegger’s Marginalia und Underlining in His Personal Copies of Eckhart
§5. Summary of Eckhart’s/Pseudo-Eckhart’s Texts Read or Cited by Heidegger
§6. Reports on Heidegger’s Relation to Eckhart
§7. Heidegger’s Evaluation of Käte Oltmanns’s Dissertation on Eckhart
§8. Heidegger’s Notes on Käte Oltmanns’s Oral Examination
A PPENDIX T WO “Essentiality, Existence, and Ground in Meister Eckehart,” by Käte Oltmanns
A PPENDIX T HREE “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart,” by Nishitani Keiji
N OTES
B IBLIOGRAPHY
P UBLISHED P RIMARY S OURCES
U NPUBLISHED S OURCES
S ECONDARY S OURCES
I NDEX
Acknowledgments
Many institutions and individuals have provided vital support for this project. I thank the Fulbright Commission for awarding me a 2015–16 German Research Fellowship. I am grateful to the American Friends of Marbach for a 2016 Max Kade Summer Research Grant to conduct archival research at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Among the many archivists who helped me locate and decipher Heidegger’s manuscripts, I am especially indebted to Gudrun Bernhardt, Heidrun Fink, and Ulrich von Bülow. Ted Kisiel and Peter Trawny also provided helpful guidance. I thank Alfred Denker and Holger Zaborowski for the Martin-Heidegger-Fellowship, which allowed me to live in the Meßkirch castle while conducting research at the Martin-Heidegger-Archiv der Stadt Meßkirch. The Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust and DePaul University also provided crucial financial support.
I would like to thank especially Heidegger’s grandson and literary executor, Arnulf Heidegger, for permitting me to consult unpublished manuscripts and correspondence of his grandfather, and for allowing me to publish transcriptions and translations of his grandfather’s reports and notes on Käte Oltmanns’s dissertation and oral examination. I am also deeply grateful to Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, who generously allowed me to examine Heidegger’s personal copies of Eckhart and to incorporate Heidegger’s underlining and marginalia into the book.
This book would not have been possible without the conversation and critique that are essential to all philosophy. Although there are too many to name here, I would nevertheless like to single out, in addition to those mentioned above, Peg Birmingham, Tobias Keiling, Sean Kirkland, Rick Lee, Josh McBee, Will McNeill, Lisa Moore, Mary Moore, and Denny Schmidt.
Chapter 2 first appeared under the title “The Problem of Ontotheology in Eckhart’s Latin Writings,” in Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 22, no. 2 (Spring 2018): 317–44. Portions of chapters 5 and 7 were published in “ Gelassenheit , the Middle Voice, and the Unity of Heidegger’s Thought,” in Perspektiven mit Heidegger: Zugänge—Pfade—Anknüpfungen , ed. Gerhard Thonhauser (Freiburg: Karl Alber, 2017), 25–39. A shorter version of Appendix One appeared as “… ‘Seit 1910 begleitet mich der Lese- und Lebemeister Eckehardt’: Materials on Heidegger’s Relation to Meister Eckhart,” in Bulletin heideggérien 6 (2016): 186–218. I thank the publishers of these texts for permission to reprint this material.
I am also grateful for the permission to publish, in Appendix Two, my translation of Käte Oltmanns, “Wesenheit, Dasein und Grund bei Meister Eckehart,” in Heideggers Schelling-Seminar (1927/28). Die Protokolle von Martin Heideggers Seminar zu Schellings ‘Freiheitsschrift’ (1927/28) und die Akten des Internationalen Schelling-Tags 2006. Lektüren F. W. J. Schellings I , ed. Lore Hühn and Jörg Jantzen in cooperation with Philipp Schwab and Sebastian Schwenzfeuer, Schellingiana 22 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2010), 356–62, 437–38. I thank S. P. K. Cerda and Hiroshi Abé for their translation of Nishitani’s text, and Nishitani’s daughter Toshiko Yada and Masaaki Kuboi of Sōbunsha publishing house for the permission to publish it in Appendix Three. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Karl von der Luft for preparing the index.
General Introduction
We begin with a precondition, perhaps the greatest precondition ever set on seekers of wisdom. You wish to know the truth? Then you must do but one thing: you must be the truth you wish to know.
Thus runs the general imperative of Meister Eckhart’s teaching and preaching. As he puts it in a German homily: “[I]f you are unlike this truth of which we want to speak, you cannot understand me” (DW 2: 487,6–7/ES 199 Pr. 52 [“Beati pauperes spiritu”]). The primary task of this book is twofold: to explore how this imperative functions in Eckhart’s philosophy, and to show how Martin Heidegger creatively appropriated it at several stages of his career.
Eckhart specifies his imperative with the language of releasement or letting-be ( gelâzenheit in Middle High German). If what being truly is is releasement, then to know this most fundamental of truths, it is imperative that I release myself. “No one,” preaches Eckhart, “can hear my word or my teaching unless he has released himself” (DW 1: 170,1–2/TP 264 Pr. 10 [“In diebus suis”]; trans. mod.). But this is not all. I must also come to see that, fundamentally, releasement comprises my essence too. In this respect Eckhart is a successor of Parmenides. Thinking and being, or, for Eckhart, the essence of the soul and the Godhead, are the same.
Yet how can Eckhart even speak of such matters? If I cannot understand him unless I release myself, of what avail is his language? It will be necessary to show that Eckhart does not just describe releasement. Nor does he simply argue for it. Through various deconstructive and extradiscursive linguistic strategies, Eckhart also puts his language in service of releasement. He tries to provoke letting-be.
In these respects, Heidegger is indebted to Eckhart above all else. For Heidegger, as for the “master of letters and life” (as Heidegger would occasionally refer to him), ontology is dependent on what I would like to call, following Reiner Schürmann, a “practical apriori.” By this, I mean that, in order properly to understand being, one must first engage in the proper activity of thinking. This activity will, in turn, reveal being to be the same as that very activity. We will see that Heidegger follows Eckhart here not only in terms of form, but also, at times, in terms of content. Especially (though not exclusively) in Heidegger’s later thought, it is only in letting be that I may come to understand that being, too, prevails as letting be. And, as with Eckhart, many of Heidegger’s notoriously peculiar linguistic devices will become more comprehensible when we view them as facilitating releasement.
It may seem strange to characterize Heidegger’s later thought in terms of a search for essences, whether of being or of the human being. However, our inquiry into Heidegger’s relation to Eckhart will reveal that, even when Heidegger turns to the “history of being,” he never entirely abandons his early project of a “hermeneutics of facticity.” That is, he never entirely gives up on the attempt to explicate an infra-historical sense of being that is always already at work, albeit implicitly, in our everyday life. If, as Heidegger writes in Being and Time , phenomenological hermeneutics involves “the discovery of the meaning of being and the basic structures of Dasein” (SZ, 37/35), then on a certain level Heidegger always remained a hermeneut. He also remained true to two masters h