Selected Writings

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‘A free mind can achieve all things. But what is a free mind?’
 
Composed during a critical time in the evaluation of European intellectual life, the works of Meister Eckhart are some of the most powerful medieval attempts to achieve a synthesis between ancient Greek thought and Christian faith. Writing with great rhetorical brilliance, Eckhart Combines the Neoplatonic concept of oneness—the idea that the ultimate principle of the universe is single and undivided—with his Christian belief in the Trinity, and considers the struggle to describe a perfect God through the imperfect medium of language. Fusing philosophy and religion with vivid originality and metaphysical passion, these works have intrigued and inspired philosophers and theologians from Hegel to Heidegger and beyond.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Johannes Eckart, more commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was born near Gotha in eastern Germany in around 1260. He had an illustrious career in the Dominican Order, holding senior ecclesiastical and teaching posts all over Europe including Saxony, Bohemia, Paris, Strasburg and Cologne. Eckhart is one of the great speculative mystics of Western Europe, who sought to reconcile traditional Christian belief with the transcendental metaphysics of Neoplatonism. Although accused of heretical teaching during his own liftime, Eckhart is widely regarded today not only as fundamentally orthodox but also as a foremost exponent of Christian mysticism and Christian philosophical theology. He died in the winter of 1326/7 in Avignon.GB

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