Very rarely is one given the opportunity to have a long desired wish made real. The wishful spirit often must settle for a series of disappointing misses and may even give up hope in the quest altogether. But that would be wrong, and the delightfully satisfying work edited by Jeremiah M. Hackett proves the point. Perhaps few other volumes in Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition series will be met with so felt a need in the English-reading world as this volume. Yes, indeed all the volumes to date have been outstanding contributions in the goal of the series to engage the intellectual and religious life of Europe from 500 to the 1800s. However, for many students of Eckhart who lack the languages so necessary to do justice to Eckhart's thought, this volume is a gold mine of scholarship at a high standard. It offers the reader an opportunity to engage the German Dominican beyond the wash of popular bargain book interpretations from self-help gurus to amateur dabblers in mysticism.
The editor has well ordered the contributions, allowing the reader to engage Eckhart's context, his works and the works of his day in Part I. Here one will find a solid background of the events surrounding Eckhart's life which is essential to any student or interested reader of Eckhart. The intellectual climate of ideas that his own thought encountered in the schools and in the Dominican Order presented in this section, is a valuable overview for any serious scholar. Next the work presents Eckhart as a preacher and theologian in Part II. Eckhart's unique integration that is found in his theological project and his sense of biblical exegesis helps to explain his doctrine of God and the kind of mysticism proper to this thinking mystic. Particularly beneficial are the chapters by Markus Enders treating Eckhart's understanding of God and Lydia Wegener's critical examination of Eckhart and women's spirituality. But it is Part III that will prove the most revealing to the casual reader of Eckhart or to the scholar in need of updating. Here they will discover the variety of receptions, interpretations and appropriations of Eckhart's thought over time. These chapters expose the oft wrongly repeated pseudo-works and popular legends that can confuse and even alter Eckhart, contorting his thought to a particular period's interests and biases. Current English Eckhart studies has long been in need of the kind of critical examination that is found in these chapters. Especially noteworthy are the consequences of the long standing tension between the popular German works and the more formal Latin works. Eckhart clearly is a master of both, and it is essential for contemporary readers to appreciate the genius of mind that could broker these realities.
In a volume of this size, close to 800 pages in length, there are bound to be contributions that outshine the rest, but apart from only a few chapters that seem to have less merited inclusion, the volume is a constellation of brilliance and well worth its cost. While the average reader may not find the ‘spare change’ to purchase it, it is a valuable investment for any devoted Eckhart scholar. However, it is an absolutely necessary acquisition for any serious university library and dedicated academic programme on Eckhart. This collection of essays and the quality of its scholarship easily incline one to describe it as the ‘bible’ for Eckhart studies today. Its lasting value, for the English reader, is found in its engagement of Eckhart from the panorama of over a century of critical reflection by the finest European and North American scholars. Since the German philosophers first appropriated and misappropriated his works, Eckhart has been a challenging thinker to read. In today's bedlam of interpretations, one will find in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, an almost surgical treatment of the many approaches that have sought to define Eckhart's thought.
