Truth as "un-forgetting": Plato's anamnesis & Meister Eckhart

Did Meister Eckhart advocate Plato's idea that we remember instead of learn? Maybe so! We'll explore how truth is connected to "unforgetting" and unlearning/unknowing
Dr. Johnson teaches philosophy at Georgia Tech. He is the author of Paradox at Play: Metaphor in Meister Eckhart's Sermons by Catholic University of America Press. It includes many sermons never before translated into English.
Meister Eckhart, Paradox at Play
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I hope you found these ideas good to think with!
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[@kfwimmer]

I could listen to you all day long. I really appreciate how you draw strands from the various sermons. This is a ten ☀ video!

[@goodtothinkwith]

Thank you so much, my friend!! 😁

[@chadkline4268]

I'm with you 😊 amazing man 👍 genius level channel. Quite uncommon on KZbin 😂

[@whistlingdavetaviner3663]

I'd be very interested to know what Eckhart thought of the spiritual significance of male and female, and how he might counsel a person who, from early childhood, had the conviction that they were born into the wrongly-sexed body.

[@goodtothinkwith]

The only talk of gender that we get in Eckhart as far as I can remember and as far as I’ve seen is that he uses metaphors of male and female roles as archetypes. For example, the male goes with head uncovered and corresponds to the higher faculties, while the woman goes to mass with head covered and corresponds to the lower faculties. It’s purely a teaching tactic that takes advantage of metaphors and rituals that everyone in his audience would have known. Beyond that, I don’t think gender mattered to Eckhart. He ministered to nuns often as part of the cura monialem and had a lot in common with the Beguines (female lay mystics) and Beghards (male lay mystics). If he was asked about social roles, I suspect that anything tied to that would necessarily be just another part of the corporeal world, just one more thing to move beyond as you progress toward a tighter orbit around God as part of the reditus (Neoplatonic return to divine unity). In other words, gender doesn’t really matter for Eckhart.

[@romasliv]

Hard to understand 😔😔😔😔

[@chrisfrey6788]

Why haven't you discussed CG Jung's writing that parallels Eckhart's?

[@goodtothinkwith]

Great question - I did mention Jung in a recent video, though you’re right that I need to do a lot more with his work. That’s another one of those topics that I’ve had in the queue, but need to research more before I make a video. The same goes for Eckhart and Zen. It’s a clear need.. I just need to read more Suzuki before doing that one

[@chrisfrey6788]

Thanks - I just found your channel and your doing great work@@goodtothinkwith

[@whistlingdavetaviner3663]

Sermon 79 puts me in mind of Blake: He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise

[@goodtothinkwith]

Beautiful 😎

[@chadkline4268]

Need to hit the rewind button a few times. Initially, my comment is that the method described by Eckhart for release seems extremely difficult. Nearly impossible. Maybe we could say that an existential despair may also give rise to relinquishing 'the All'. The entire histories of the Buddha and early monks would seem to have had a basis there. Notes: (a modern scientific view) 1️⃣ I say there are 2 forms of memory. Learned/physical + visual/spiritual. Chemically, I do not see how the brain can contain all visual memory of an entire life, and recall/recognition is instant, and there is no basis for the recall of Nibbana when no mind exists there. Yet, a visual knowledge remains. As I see it, if something requires either space or time or matter, it has a basis in the physical, else spiritual (a zero dimensional instantaneous realm, no time or space or matter). Note that you can't find or measure your presence, despite being it. 2️⃣ The nature of a cup is to hold/contain. Unsure that unity means 1 in this context. May be 0. Though the mind may use the term one-ness, unity, etc, it's not exactly accurate. 3️⃣ The purpose of unknowing, unlearning, etc, is because cognitive functions are sensual attachments, and those intents/interactions maintain the binding power. 4️⃣ Forgetting seems to be used in the sense of relinquishment, detachment. There is a complexity because there is a stage of pure meditation space, no body or mind or world is perceptible (SNPNNP, 8th jhana). But there is even a further stage that is more empty, pure emptiness, and only pure presence remains (Cessation, 9th jhana). The entire universe vanishes including space+time, and one sees clearly, directly, that nothing more can be done. You can't escape presence. That is clear, a direct truth. The main facets of presence/spirit are: a) awareness, which reads body+mind consciousness, b) a conscience/knowing that may signal, and c) a power of intent that is used to write to body+mind consciousness to initiate thought or muscular movement or other actions in a dream. It is also used to maintain attention within an area of awareness (concentration). I define consciousness as a bidirectional field of the nervous system wherein sensory input is radiated. The flesh offers consciousness, and the spirit binds due to the most subtle of sensual intents. This is known as warning signal from conscience in Cessation. 5️⃣ An essential aspect is that nobody can learn or think their way to Eckhart's God. What Eckhart describes is actual effort, work, but not of body+mind. It is work of the spirit, intent. 6️⃣ It disturbs me that nobody, despite all these types of works, can actually help us understand the eternity beyond worlds. I want to know the nature of it. Do we just exist in emptiness or what?? There must be SOME way of describing it if anyone knows it. 7️⃣This whole topic can be much better understood today because we have much better vocabulary+understandings. Atoms cannot create new properties in the universe. They can only create using building blocks they already contain: electric+magnetic fields, photons, electrons, etc. No matter what you do with atoms, you can only get properties of atoms. That's just a scientific fact. You can't get awareness or intentions. The universe is entirely deterministic, and if humans were atoms alone, they could only function according to the laws of physics, action-reaction. Like bacteria. It is the spirit that creates the only randomness in this universe.

[@MinnesotanMysticism]

I love this! Combining some worlds here! Plato realm of forms meets eckhart. Like life is an anesthetic coma we’re slowly waking up from. Always been fascinated by the real if forms, it’s much like the “infinite living mind of The All” in Hermeticism as mentioned in the kybalion to my mind.

[@frederickanderson1860]

Forgiving comes from forgetting.good or evil

[@chadkline4268]

Maybe forgiving aids in forgetting? 🤔

[@Nakfourium]

Great as usual. What courses do you teach?

[@goodtothinkwith]

Thank you so much!! I teach the history of philosophy sequence (ancient and modern), philosophy of science & tech, intro, world religions, logic…