On the Systematicity of Meister Eckhart's Works

Large portions of Eckhart's writings are dedicated to urging his readers to adopt a specific way of life aimed at achieving union with the divinity. He argues that this union is possible in this life if one recognizes that every created thing is so inferior to God that it should be considered "nothing" in itself. This leads to a path of "detachment," where one gives up everything that binds them to the created order, uniting God and the soul.

Apart from these few themes, scholarship has failed to come to consensus on Eckhart's views on even (or especially) those issues to which he most devoted himself. I claim that this scholarly disagreement stems from Eckhart's thoroughgoing inconsistency on issues foundational both to his own work and the theological traditions of which he was part. Thus, I oppose readings of Eckhart that claim a consistent philosophical system can or should be found in or abstracted from his writings and used to resolve all significant problems of interpretation. I demonstrate that even the most plausible attempts to construct a consistent Eckhartian system are flawed, because they tend to arbitrarily privilege some set of contradictory texts over others.

The dissertation argues that Eckhart's profound inconsistency is a fact that scholarship must acknowledge and explain, and that adequately doing so sheds light on many puzzling features of his writings. By drawing an analogy with a strand in contemporary philosophy of science that deals with complex systems, I argue that Eckhart's inconsistency is not detrimental to his purposes. Instead, studying the very pervasive contradictoriness which obtains within and between his writings can help us understand his what his purposes were, the philosophical virtues of his method of pursuing those purposes, and how his works can and ought to be considered 'systematic' despite their radical inconsistency.