In these papers Duclow views the thought of Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus through the lens of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. He highlights the interplay of creativity, symbolic expression and language, interpretation and silence as they comment on the mind's work in naming God. This work itself becomes mystical theology when negation opens into a silent awareness of God's presence, from which the Word once again 'speaks' within the mind. Comparative studies with Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm and Hadewijch suggest the book's wider implications for medieval philosophy and theology.

The medieval Christian West's most radical practitioners of a Neoplatonic, negative theology with a mystical focus are John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus. All three mastered what Cusanus described as docta ignorantia: reflecting on their awareness that they could know neither God nor the human mind, they worked out endlessly varied attempts to express what cannot be known. Following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, they sought to name God with symbolic expressions whose negation leads into mystical theology. For within their Neoplatonic dialectic, negation moves beyond reason and its finite distinctions to intellect, where opposites coincide and a vision of God's infinite unity becomes possible. In these papers Duclow views these thinkers' efforts through the lens of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. He highlights the interplay of creativity, symbolic expression and language, interpretation and silence as Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus comment on the mind's work in naming God. This work itself becomes mystical theology when negation opens into a silent awareness of God's presence, from which the Word once again 'speaks' within the mind - and renews the process of creating and interpreting symbols. Comparative studies with Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm and Hadewijch suggest the book's wider implications for medieval philosophy and theology.

Fresh translations of Meister Eckhart’s sermons are made available in this volume: three for the first time in English and sixteen others for the first time since C. de B. Evans translated them in 1924 and 1931, long before the critical editions of the manuscripts were published in 2003. Other important sermons are included in the translations as well. They improve upon previous translations which were not as sensitive to Eckhart’s metaphorical repertoire and his subtle word choice and phrasing. The extended introductory essay describes Eckhart’s metaphors and how they work together to form a cohesive whole. By looking at what his metaphors tell us about what an individual person is and how the view of the individual changed in the late medieval world, his ostensibly shocking rhetoric (in places where it is actually novel) is shown to be indicative of a larger cultural tide that culminated in the modern worldview. Finally, all of his homiletic choices are shown to be in service of the greater goal: catalyzing transformative change in his audience by stubbornly insisting on his paradoxes and jarring people out of their customary way of relating to God and themselves.

Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance today has become a highly influential topic in its own right, commanding growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars have begun to explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. The field is growing fast and this handbook reflects this interdisciplinary field of study by drawing contributions from economics, sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and related fields in order to serve as a seminal guide to the political, legal and social uses of ignorance in social and political life. Chapter 33 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available here: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415718967_oachapter33.pdf

An overview of the context, thought, writings and legacy of John Scottus Eriugena, the most important philosopher and theologian in the Latin West from the death of Boethius until the thirteenth century.

Signposts to Silence provides a theoretical map of what it terms ‘metaphysical mysticism’: the search for the furthest, most inclusive horizon, the domain of silence, which underlies the religious and metaphysical urge of humankind in its finest forms. Tracing the footsteps of pioneers of this exploration, the investigation also documents a number of historical pilgrimages from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds. Such mountaineers of the spirit, who created paths trodden by groups of followers over centuries and in some cases millennia, include Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, Siddhattha and Jesus, Sankara and Fa-tsang, Plato and Plotinus, Isaac Luria and Ibn Arabi, Aquinas and Hegel. Such figures, teachings and traditions (including the religions of ‘Judaism’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’; ‘Hinduism’, ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Taoism’) are understood as, at their most sublime, not final destiny and the end of the road, but signposts to a horizon of ultimate silence. The hermeneutical method employed in tracking such pioneers involves four steps: • sound historical-critical understanding of the context of the various traditions and figures • reconstruction of the subjective intentional structure of such persons and their teachings • design, by the author, of a theoretical map of the overall terrain of ‘metaphysical mysticism’, on which all such journeys of the spirit are to be located, while providing a theoretical context for understanding them tendentionally (i.e. taking the ultimate drift of their thinking essentially to transcend their subjective intentions) • drawing out, within the space available, some political (taken in a wide sense) implications from the above, such as religio-political stances as well as ecological and gender implications. Continuing the general direction of thought within what the author endorses to be the best in metaphysical mysticism in its historical manifestations, the book aims to contribute to peace amongst religions in the contemporary global cultural situation. It relativizes all claims to exclusive, absolute truth that might be proclaimed by any religious or metaphysical, mystical position, while providing space for not only tolerating, but also affirming the unique value and dignity of each. This orientation moves beyond the stances of enmity or indifference or syncretism or homogenisation of all, as well as that of mere friendly toleration. It investigates the seemingly daunting and inhospitable yet immensely significant Antarctica of the Spirit, the ‘meta’-space of silence behind the various forms of wordy ‘inter’-relationships. It affirms pars pro toto, totum pro parte, and pars pro parte: that each religious, mystical and metaphysical orientation in its relative singularity represents or contains the whole and derives value from that, and that each represents or contains every other. This homoversal solidarity stimulating individual uniqueness is different from and in fact implies criticism of the process of globalisation. While not taking part in a scientific argument as such, Signposts to Silence aims at promoting an understanding of science and metaphysical mysticism as mutual context for each other, and it listens to a number of voices from the domain of science that understand this.