Resumen de Josef Sudbrack’s Review
One of the most difficult, but also most fruitful, tasks of modern theology is the study of phenomenology in the field of religion, which does not end with the superficial juxtaposition of forms of appearance, but attempts to penetrate into religious ways of life. The present study must be included [as part of] such investigations. It arose during a 3-year stay of Ueda’s in Germany under the “personal support and encouragement” of professors Fr. Heiler and E. Benz. Its main section consists of the presentation of Meister Eckhart’s teachings. In purely philological terms, the author agrees with the opinion of modern Eckhart research. In the following, what we try to argue is [that there is] a misinterpretation belonging to a deeper level of Eckhart interpretation. The incorrect but rare use of writings where Eckhart’s authorship is uncertain is to be forgiven by the fact that Ueda’s essay] was about the “phenomenon” of his [thought] system, and less about the master himself. What is more difficult to forgive and more momentous is the almost total absence of engagement with modern Eckhart interpretations. The presentation of the master [in this volume] is organized according to two schemes of representation [Vorstellungsschemata] in which Eckhart expresses his “basic religious experience”: the motif of the “birth of God in the soul” and “the breakthrough to the godhead,” i.e. the two ancient interpretations of Christian Life, which Rousselot found in the carnal on the one hand and on the other hand in the ecstatic conceptions of love, which Reypens described as “mystique d’introversion” and “mystique d’extroversion.” Each time Ueda guides the reader from the concept of God via his image of man (Menschenbild) to the encounter with God. The second part [of Ueda’s study] regarding the “breakthrough” constitutes the climax, in which it seems to me that the ecstatic moment is somewhat over-exaggerated. Only the final part (Ueda 1965: 145–168) is about “Meister Eckhart in comparison with Zen Buddhism.”
