Temporalia, maxime respectu aeternorum, nihil sunt: Über den angeblichen Thomismus des jungen Meister Eckhart

Master Eckhart’s metaphysics is an idealistic one: Being is not what there is, but only and exclusively what is truthful, i. e. the normativity which reason (God Himself) sets. Further: What is truthful comes about by negation of what there is, because this is itself nothing, pure negation as such. What is truthful is therefore the negation of negation. This is an idealistic thesis which cannot be described as being thomistic, but rather which corresponds to the metaphysics of German Idealism, especially of Fichte. This essay shows that the thesis that Eckhart was thomistic until his Parisian idealistic turn at the beginning of the 14th century is not correct. It argues that Eckhart’s metaphysics is unambiguously idealistic, i. e. non-thomistic, and that this is also the case in works which he certainly wrote before the Parisian Questions. This applies especially to the Rede der underscheidunge und the Tractatus super oratione dominica.