Joel Harrington’s Book on Meister Eckhart Translated into German
Congratulations to Joel Harrington! His 2018 book Dangerous Mystic: Meister Eckhart’s Path to the God Within (Penguin Press) recently appeared in German translation, as Meister Eckhart: Der Mönch, der die Kirche herausforderte und seinen eigenen Weg zu Gott fand (Siedler Verlag).
Here’s a description of the translated book in German:
Er ist der Ahnherr der Selbsthilfephilosophie, der Guru der New Age-Bewegung, die Millionen von Anhängern hat: Meister Eckhart, Dominikaner, Mystiker und Philosoph. Doch wer war der Mann hinter den Lehren, die nach sieben Jahrhunderten noch Menschen begeistern? Wie sind seine Ideen entstanden? Der Mönch aus Thüringen zeigte damals, dass nur der persönliche Weg zu Gott zum Seelenheil führt und predigte, dass diese spirituelle Erfahrung allen möglich war, die die innere Haltung des Loslassens („Gelâzenheit“) einnahmen. Dieses verblüffend moderne Denken brachte den Mönch Eckhart in Konflikt mit der Kirche, die sich von der Sprengkraft seiner Ideen herausgefordert fühlte. Der Historiker Joel F. Harrington hat sich auf die Spuren des bedeutenden Mystikers begeben und lässt in seiner Biographie eine der faszinierendsten Figuren des Mittelalters auferstehen.
And here’s the description of the original edition:
Life and times of the 14th century German spiritual leader Meister Eckhart, whose theory of a personal path to the divine inspired thinkers from Jean Paul Sartre to Thomas Merton, and most recently, Eckhart Tolle.
Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In the modern era, Eckhart’s writings have struck a chord with thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and the current Dalai Lama. He is the inspiration for the bestselling New Age author Eckhart Tolle’s pen name, and his fourteenth-century quotes have become an online sensation. Today a variety of Christians, as well as many Zen Buddhists, Sufi Muslims, Jewish Cabbalists, and various spiritual seekers, all claim Eckhart as their own. Meister Eckhart preached a personal, internal path to God at a time when the Church could not have been more hierarchical and ritualistic. Then and now, Eckhart’s revolutionary method of direct access to ultimate reality offers a profoundly subjective approach that is at once intuitive and pragmatic, philosophical yet non-rational, and, above all, universally accessible. This “dangerous mystic’s” teachings challenge the very nature of religion, yet the man himself never directly challenged the Church.
Eckhart was one of the most learned theologians of his day, but he was also a man of the world who had worked as an administrator for his religious order and taught for years at the University of Paris. His personal path from conventional friar to professor to lay preacher culminated in a spiritual philosophy that combined the teachings of an array of pagan and Christian writers, as well as Muslim and Jewish philosophers. His revolutionary decision to take his approach to the common people garnered him many enthusiastic followers as well as powerful enemies. After Eckhart’s death and papal censure, many religious women and clerical supporters, known as the Friends of God, kept his legacy alive through the centuries, albeit underground until the master’s dramatic rediscovery by modern Protestants and Catholics.
Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien. In the midst of this medieval society, a few decades before the Black Death, Eckhart boldly preached to captivated crowds a timeless method, a “wayless way,” of directly experiencing the divine.