"What is this 'principle' (principium) in which God is said to
have created heaven and earth?" This is the first question Eckhart poses
at the very beginning of his Commentary on Genesis. In the course
of this book a space is opened up in order to speak about the
relationship between God and creation in a 'principial' way. Tracing the
concept as it is used throughout his Latin (and, on occasion, German)
works, the panoply and resonance of its use establish the necessary
place of principium within the vocabulary of Eckhart's
metaphysics of creation and generation. Ranging from the nature of being
to the question of what constitutes human personhood, the 'principle'
serves to identify Eckhart's teaching on the mutual compenetration
between God and man.
This book has been awarded the FIIT
Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize for Theological Promise by the University
of Heidelberg.