ABSTRACT
As we have seen, the practice of detachment, in both its degrees of abgescheidenheit and durchbruch, is a multifaceted process that engages man’s being, knowing, loving, and working. Eckhart frequently speaks of the detachment of the sêle or gemüete, which contain the whole of man’s powers and spiritual activities.1 A man can be established in God only when all of his powers are detached, and the way of mystical perfection requires that each and every power of the soul obtain its own ring. Yet the fact that each of the powers of the soul in some way contributes to the process of detachment does not mean that they are all equally important in such a via purgativa. There is a power in the soul that enjoys a position of centrality in this cutting-off activity and plays a crucial role from its very beginning all the way through until the final end. That power is the intellect.2 This power is one of the fundamental motifs of Eckhart’s teaching and preaching,3 and few themes recur so frequently in his texts.4 He applies various terms in reference to this power, primarily intellectus and intelligere in his Latin writings and vernünfticheit, bekanntnisse, and verstantnisse in the German works.5 As the highest part of the soul,6 the lofty intellect is not to be seen as the faculty of discursive reasoning, moving from premises to conclusions through the use of concepts and representations. Rather, the “spark of intelligence”7 is that power of intuitive cognition that operates within itself and is separated from time and place.8 It is the temple of God wherein he shines as holy, and nowhere else does he dwell more properly than in it.9 Eckhart is so much of an “intellectualist” that, in spite of his otherwise vehement hostility towards any kind of attachment, he praises the intellect by recommending to his audience that they attach themselves to it: “Rise up then to intellect; to be attached to it is to be united to God.”10 In order to examine the role of the intellect in the process of detachment and the resulting attainment of mystical fulfillment, it is appropriate to begin at the very start of the path of mystical perfection in order to discern how the intellect functions as the foremost factor in each step of the process. At the starting point of creaturely eigenschaft, as discussed above, man’s inferior powers and senses govern the soul, and the higher intellect is unable to receive divine illumination, being hindered by the activity of the inferior powers. One of these inferior powers is the lower intellect, which fails to wear its proper ring of “divine
light”11 and attempts to gain contact with external objects via their images. According to Eckhart, no part of the soul can escape from this complex web of eigenschaft and the darkness of createdness, except that part which is essentially uncreated and is in itself a light, though its light is hidden from the soul and has been rendered dormant due to the soul’s attachment. As Sermon XXV articulates it, the soul can attain perfection and receive the divine inflowing of grace only from that uncreated aspect in which it is the image of God.12 The way of mystical perfection commences, therefore, when this aspect of the soul is reactivated and seeks to receive inner illumination. This uncreated part of the soul, which is in itself free of this and that and is the image of God, is the intellect itself, the “uncreated and uncreatable” something in the soul.13 Thus, the mystical path begins from the moment that the intellect awakens from its slumber and moves once again, when it becomes aware of its source and tastes God:
There is a power in the soul, namely, the intellect. From the moment it becomes aware of and tastes God, it has within itself five properties. The first is that it separates from here and from now. The second, that it is like nothing. The third, that it is pure and unmixed. The fourth, that it is operating or seeking within itself. The fifth, that it is an image.
