ABSTRACT
The poverty of thought means that thought, as Martin Heidegger conceives it, is less than technology and political action. To speak of the poverty of thought is also to recognize the enigmatic alliance that exists between Heidegger and the mystical and religious tradition. For according to Heidegger no merely human action can save humanity. Humanity’s fate rests on a higher destiny, the destiny of being itself. Hence, to speak of the poverty of thought is to raise the question of the relationship of thought to mysticism, and in particular, of Heidegger to Meister Eckhart. Both Heidegger and Eckhart have understood the poverty of human willing, and that there is in will-lessness a higher action, an action which prepares the way for a power which surpasses every human force. Heidegger is a worldly thinker, thinking through the worlding of the world, retrieving the historical origin of our world and thinking forth to the possibilities which lie concealed in these origins.
