Negative Ontology. Eckhartian Mysticism Echoes of the esse absolute in Idealistic Egophany

Abstract

Eckhart's negative ontology will have a profound impact on post-Kantian idealism. Latent the Eriugenian distinction of Natures (naturans / naturata), the idea of Trinitarian self-revelation seems to prefigure the bases of the phenomenology of the spirit. The Abgeschiedenheit, sieve of particularities of being aimed to overcome esse absolutum (not-being determined) would leave its mark on  the parousia (παρουσία) of the pure I or I-in-itself (das Ich), not contracted to an empirical I (not an all-embracing being superior to the immanent I but its condition of possibility), and in the inception of autopoietic categories by universal interaction I / not-I (das Nicht-Ich) with which Fichte intended to conjure the shadow of the Kantian noumenon (νοούμενον). The absolute I, thinking of itself in full identity with itself (non-objectifying self-intuition, thesis supported by a principle of self-positional identity) triggers the antithesis to a non-I in demand of a further synthesis: The I opposes a divisible non-I to the divisible I (all in the I). Empirical I and nature limit each other, but the suspension of that reciprocal determination (what one is, another is not, within an identity, since "one is what another is not") would not reverse the autogenetic position of the absolute I (self-consciousness), as the suppression of characters that relieves the ontological tension of the esse proprium in the Eckhartian mystical path is oriented to the radical indeterminacy of the esse purum. Two levels of rationality differentiable in the dialectical antithesis, theoretical (as the I is determined by the not-I) and practical (as the I is determined to the not-I) dissipate, subtracting self-consciousness (ipsum intelligere?). The transcendental opening of the self to otherness, beyond immediate self-identity ("self-consciousness exists in and for itself insofar, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged", Hegel argues), is also nourished by echoes of the ledic-sein. This essay will trace tangents between Rhenish Mysticism and post-Kantian Idealism.