[MD] Not Really Objectivism and the MOQ

[LARAMIE LOEWEN]

Thanks, Ham.  Eckhart had quite a realization of Emptiness.  
Possibly best in the West.  

Cheers.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ham Priday<mailto:hampday1 at verizon.net> 
  To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org<mailto:moq_discuss at moqtalk.org> 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 11:57 AM
  Subject: Re: [MD] Not Really Objectivism and the MOQ



  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

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