ABSTRACT
Terence Cave tells the history of the aspects of modern selfhood with which he evidently identifies himself. But as Cave's work suggests, there are in any epoch other aspects that don't necessarily make an impact on the developing self-understanding of the society in question. Reconstructing pre-history is potentially a more powerful tool than Cave, with his characteristic modesty, lets on. In the closing years of the thirteenth century Meister Eckhart was prior of the Dominican friary in Erfurt, a flourishing town in Thuringia in eastern Germany. The vocabulary of selfhood from the early fourteenth century is subtly different from the language of today, suggesting different practices of the self. Meister Eckhart's attitude to the nascent practices of capitalist rationality flourishing amongst his lay congregation is similar to his treatment of regulated life in Dominican convents.
