If you Could Naught Yourself for an Instant: Meister Eckhart and the Mystical Unconscious
This article sets out to articulate Meister Eckhart's understanding of subjectivity as split between a possessive self and a detached ground of the soul. Because identifying with one necessarily entails relinquishing the other, Eckhart tells his listeners to abandon the possessive soul that wil...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
[2015]
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| In: |
Medieval mystical theology
Year: 2015, Volume: 24, Issue: 1, Pages: 23-44 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality KAE Church history 900-1300; high Middle Ages KDB Roman Catholic Church NBE Anthropology |
| Further subjects: | B
Meister Eckhart
B Detachment B Jacques Lacan B Subjectivity B Apophatic B Unconscious |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | This article sets out to articulate Meister Eckhart's understanding of subjectivity as split between a possessive self and a detached ground of the soul. Because identifying with one necessarily entails relinquishing the other, Eckhart tells his listeners to abandon the possessive soul that wills and knows in favour of an empty soul that is inhabited by God. But this God cannot be known, desired, or understood, since the cogito has already abandoned the site of subjectivity to make room for God. So God as well is split, between what the word God signifies to the cogito in the world of linguistic dualities, and a nameless apophatic God beyond all knowing. This article will set out to compare Eckhart's understanding of this split subject with that of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who similarly speaks of the subject as split between a thinking self and a self that is only where it is not thinking. Because Lacan explicitly adopts apophatic techniques to explain the subject's relation to an Other that he calls 'the Obscure God', his strategy will be shown to overlap in significant ways with the way Eckhart's mystical subject relates to the divine. |
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| ISSN: | 2046-5734 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Medieval mystical theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1179/2046572615Z.00000000030 |