The philosophical yields of Meister Eckhart’s thought in the phenomenology of the young Heidegger

Abstract

This article analyses the influence of Meister Eckhart on the development of phenomenology in the young Heidegger. Starting from the first confrontation with Eckhart in the context of his habilitation thesis, it shows how Heidegger finds in Eckhart’s doctrine throughout this period that essential impulse which he himself wanted for the development of his phenomenology: the primacy of religious experience over the created faculties, that is, an essential countermovement to the pre-eminence of the theoretical. Consequently, we will try to present how Eckhart is present both in his phenomenological approach to early Christianity and St. Augustine, and in his alternative reading of Aristotle’s neo-scholasticism.