Natural reason and revealed theology in Meister Eckhart

The question concerning the relationship between truths of natural reason and revealed truths is a problem that dates back to the very origins of Christianity. Though holding pagan philosophy and science in high esteem, Christian thinkers in late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages were convinced that all profane forms of knowledge had to be subordinated to the purpose of Scripture-based theology as the supreme form of human wisdom. From the late 12th and early 13th century onwards, the reappropriation of Aristotelian philosophy, that had been unknown to the Latin West since late Antiquity, brings about an important epistemological paradigm shift. Based on Aristotle`s idea of an irreducible pluralism of scientific object-spheres and principles of knowledge, 13th century Scholasticism replaces the vertical hierarchy between theology and profane sciences by a horizontal scheme, where revealed theology is only one science among others. Most Scholastic thinkers of the 13th and early 14th century try to avoid a conflict of disciplines by conceding that philosophy can come to know certain fundamental properties of God by means of natural reason only, whereas the knowledge about the central doctrines of Christian faith, especially the Trinity and the Incarnation, are considered as the exclusive privilege of revealed theology. Meister Eckhart, by contrast, develops in his Latin writings an epistemological scheme in which the delimitation between scientific disciplines is not defined in terms of object-spheres but in terms of form and method. In his eyes, the Ancient Testament, the New Testament, and Aristotelian philosophy have exactly the same contents and differ only by their respective way of exposition. The singular persons and events mentioned in Holy Scripture can claim to convey truth only insofar as they appear as exemplary realisations of laws and principles that enjoy universal validity in the domain of metaphysics, natural philosophy, ethics, and art. The project is based on the hypothesis that this specific interpretation of the relationship between theology and natural knowledge is the expression of a new system of epistemological categories, especially with regard to the notions of individuality and universality, contingency and necessity, which is ultimately rooted in Eckhart`s anthropological thesis of the complex unity between the singular, hyper-contingent "I" and the empirical, created person. Moreover, the project sustains the thesis that Eckhart`s idea of a perfect convertibility between revealed and natural truths implies the concept of a performative science which provides a transcendental framework for all the other disciplines. In order to highlight the originality of Eckhart`s approach, his epistemological and anthropological conception will be confronted with the respective positions of Latin Averroism and of the Franciscan school.

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