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Meister Eckhart

Scholastic · Europe · 1260 to 1328

German friar and preacher who taught that the soul can meet God within, by letting go of self and things.

What it is

Meister Eckhart (about 1260 to about 1328) was a German friar of the Dominican order, a university theologian and a preacher. He is known for sermons and treatises, in German and in Latin, that describe how a person can become free of self and things and so come to God. The word Meister means master, a title given to a teacher with a master's rank, not a guru.

Eckhart entered the Dominican order as a teenager and studied at Cologne. He taught theology in Paris and earned the master's rank there. He later led the Dominicans in Saxony, served as vicar of Bohemia, and lived in Strasbourg. A good part of his work was preaching to nuns in the Rhine region, and he did it in German as well as Latin.

The main ideas

  • Letting go. The way to God runs through detachment: from one's own self, from possessions, from the wish to get something out of faith. The aim is a person who is free of all this.
  • Without why. Eckhart asked people to live without a why, meaning that one does not seek anything, not even God, as a reward for one's effort.
  • God within. In his preaching the Word of God, the Son in Christian teaching, is born in the depths of the soul. The meeting with God happens within a person, not far off.
  • A mix of sources. His thinking draws on Neoplatonism, on the Scholastic learning of the medieval universities, and on Arabic writers.
  • German as a language of thought. He used his native German in distinctive, inventive ways, so that ideas usually kept in Latin could be preached to people who did not read it.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine someone who prays each evening in order to get something, such as calm, success or a sign. Eckhart would invite her to notice that she is still holding on to a goal and a self that wants it, and to let that go, so that she asks for nothing at all. This is an illustration of the kind of practice he taught, not a passage from his sermons.

Books and moments

  • German sermons and treatises. These include the Book of Divine Consolation and many sermons.
  • Latin works. Commentaries on the Bible and Latin sermons show the scholar behind the preacher.
  • The trial. In the 1320s Eckhart was accused of heresy before the Archbishop of Cologne. He answered that an error belongs to the mind and heresy to the will, so that he might be wrong but was not a heretic, and he appealed to the pope at Avignon.
  • The bull of 1329. A papal bull of 1329 condemned 28 propositions taken from his writings.

Questions and criticism

  • Mystic or philosopher. He is often called a mystic, and he has been called the greatest German speculative mystic. Others argue that the label hides how much of his work is careful scholarship and philosophy. It is fair to ask which description fits.
  • Quoted out of context. The condemned propositions were lifted from longer works. It is fair to ask how safely a single line of a sermon can be understood apart from the rest.
  • Why the condemnation. Some feared that his teaching implied the soul becomes identical with God. It is fair to ask whether his words were meant as bold ways of speaking or as claims about what the soul is.

Close neighbours

The pages on Aquinas and Augustine cover two other medieval thinkers, for comparison.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Nicholas of Cusa · He read the German mystics, and took up the thought that God is beyond all our concepts. (scholars disagree about this link)

Influenced by

  • Thomas Aquinas · He held the same teaching post in Paris that Aquinas had held, and built on his thought.

Other Scholastic thinkers

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