[MD] Not Really Objectivism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Laramie --

> You mentioned that Eckhart had a notion of "Absolute Beingness".
> I was hoping you would explain this.

George Drazenovich has a website called Quodlibet --  'online journal of
Christian Theology and Philosophy' -- from which I quote this section,
Eckhart's Departure from Aquinas:

"Eckhart will say that in God there is an intelligence (intellectus) which
precedes being.  In his Parisian Questions and Prologues, Meister Eckhart
clearly moves away from the strict Thomistic position.  'Third, I declare
that it is not my present opinion that God understands because he exists,
but rather he exists because he understands.  God is an intellect and his
understanding itself is the ground of his existence.  It is said in John 1,
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was
God.  'The evangelist did not say: 'In the beginning was being, and God was
being.' Our saviour also says in John 14, 'I am Truth'.  Truth has reference
to an intellect...For, 'In the beginning was the Word' which is entirely
related to the intellect.  Consequently, among perfections intelligence
comes first and then being or existence."

However, there is some ambiguity in Eckhart's statements, which may be in
the German translation.  For example, in The Defense 5. he says: "Likewise,
being is God.  This proposition is obvious, in the first place, because if
being is something different from God, God does not exist and there is no
God."

Compare that statement with what he says in The Defense 11: "Likewise, in
every created thing, being is one thing, and derived from another [while]
essence is something else and not derived from another."

In another passage, he says: "All creatures are a pure nothing.  I don't say
they are insignificant or a something: they are absolute nothing.  Whatever
hasn't essence does not exist.  No creature has essence, because the essence
of all is in the presence of God.  If God withdrew from the creatures for
just one moment, they would disappear to nothing. ...Besides, a creature
would not be created, for creation is the receiving of being from nothing."

Blakney offers no insight on these statements, but it is my opinion that
Eckhart is using "being" in the sense that God "appears" or is actualized in
existence, and "essence" as the metaphysical identity of this appearance.
Of course, I do not consider Essence (God) an existent.  In order for
Eckhart to have made such a proposition, he would have had to say God does
not exist.  And it's inconceivable that a Dominican prelate
would make such an assertion in the 14th or the 21st century.

Does this help?

Regards,
Ham