Meister Eckhart

German Dominican theologian and mystic (c. 1260 – c. 1328), one of the cardinal voices of medieval Rhineland mysticism. Currently appears in the wiki as the proof-text anchor for love-as-ungrounded-primary-category in Simmel's love-fragment: "We should not love God because of this or that specific quality or reason, but rather exclusively because He exists." Simmel generalizes the Eckhartian structure (love-because-He-is, not love-because-of-qualities) into the wiki's articulation that love is ungrounded — it survives the unconditional collapse of the qualities that occasioned it (Oakes pp. 165–166).

Key Points

Lifespan: c. 1260 (Hochheim, Thuringia) – c. 1328 (Avignon, on trial for heresy).
Cardinal works: Predigten (German Sermons, esp. Pr. 1, 2, 6, 12, 39, 52, 86); the Latin Opus Tripartitum; Liber Benedictus (Buch der göttlichen Tröstung); Reden der Unterweisung. Many sermons are debated as to authenticity; the modern critical edition is the Lateinische und deutsche Werke (Kohlhammer).
Cardinal doctrines: the unborn Gottheit / "Godhead" beyond the personal trinitarian God; Abgeschiedenheit (detachment) as the supreme virtue; Gelassenheit (releasement) as the mode of receiving God; the soul's Seelenfunke (ground of the soul); the Geburt Gottes in der Seele (birth of God in the soul); union without distinction (einung sunder underscheid).
Trial and condemnation: Eckhart was put on trial for heresy in Cologne (1326) and Avignon (1327–28); died before formal sentencing; Pope John XXII's bull In Agro Dominico (1329) condemned 17 propositions as heretical and 11 as suspect.
The Simmel anchor: Eckhart's love-because-He-exists doctrine is the proof-text Simmel uses to articulate love-as-ungrounded-primary-category (Oakes p. 166); see love-as-formative-category.
Influence: directly on the Theologia Germanica, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Seuse (Suso); through them on Luther, Jakob Böhme, Schelling, Hegel (the Erscheinung / Seinsweise register has Eckhartian moments); cardinal for Heidegger's Gelassenheit (Was heißt Denken?, Beiträge, the late texts); for the broader negative-theological tradition.

Details

Eckhart in Simmel's Love-Fragment

The cardinal passage (Oakes p. 166):

"Eckhart explicitly proclaims that we should not love God because of this or that specific quality or reason, but rather exclusively because He exists. This claim unequivocally reveals love as an ungrounded and primary category."

Simmel cites Eckhart as proof — not illustration — that love is ungrounded. The Eckhartian doctrine that we should love God only because He is (and not because of His goodness, His mercy, His power, etc.) is generalized by Simmel to all love: love properly so called is autonomous from its occasions. Even when love is empirically occasioned by qualities of the beloved, those qualities lie "in a stratum that is quite different from the love itself" (Oakes p. 167) — they are not the ground of love but only its occasion.

The Eckhart citation is a silent key of Simmel's essay — a single citation but proof-text for the ungroundedness thesis (see simmel-1923-on-love-fragment's Silent Keys section). The exact Eckhart source Simmel has in mind is most likely the Predigt 16b / 16b ("Quasi vas auri solidum") and surrounding sermons, where the love-God-because-He-is doctrine is most directly stated.

The Negative-Theological Tradition

Eckhart is one of the cardinal voices of negative theology / via negativa — the tradition that God is best approached through what cannot be said of Him rather than what can. Key positions:

The Gottheit (Godhead) is "without modes" — not personal, not trinitarian in the ordinary sense, beyond all predicates including being itself.
Abgeschiedenheit (detachment) and Gelassenheit (releasement) are the soul's appropriate response: not the attaining of qualities but the letting go of qualities to receive God beyond qualities.
The Seelenfunke / scintilla animae (spark of the soul) is the uncreated point at which the soul touches the Godhead.
The Geburt Gottes in der Seele (birth of God in the soul) is the cardinal religious event — not external sacrament but inner transformation.
Union sunder underscheid (without distinction): the soul's union with God is so complete that subject-object distinction collapses — a doctrine the Inquisition found heretical.

Reception

Direct heirs: Johannes Tauler (c. 1300–1361), Heinrich Seuse / Suso (c. 1295–1366); the Theologia Germanica (anonymous, c. 1350); the Frankfurter.
Luther: read the Theologia Germanica, which transmitted Eckhart-derived themes; the Lutheran doctrine of the Wort in the fides has Eckhartian-mystical elements.
Böhme (1575–1624): the Ungrund (unground) of God in Böhme is a developed Eckhartian-mystical figure.
Hegel: the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion engage Eckhart; Hegel acknowledged the depth of Eckhart's einung sunder underscheid doctrine.
Schelling (Philosophie der Offenbarung): the Ungrund / Daß / pre-rational ground of being in Schelling has Böhme-Eckhart lineage.
Heidegger: Gelassenheit is one of the cardinal late-Heidegger concepts; the seminar "Zur Erörterung der Gelassenheit" (1944–45) explicitly engages Eckhart. The wiki's late-heidegger / Ereignis engagement has Eckhartian moments.
Twentieth-century revival: Karl Rahner's transcendental Thomism engages Eckhart; the Suzuki-Eckhart-Zen dialogue tradition (D.T. Suzuki); Reiner Schürmann's Maître Eckhart ou la joie errante (1972); contemporary Eckhart-Buddhism comparative work.

Position in the Wiki

Eckhart is currently engaged only via simmel-1923-on-love-fragment. Future ingests likely to expand the engagement:

Heidegger on Gelassenheit (already partially engaged in the wiki via ereignis, brauch) — Heidegger explicitly works with Eckhartian Gelassenheit.
Schelling / Böhme genealogy for Ungrund / Daß-philosophy — Eckhart is a deep source.
Indirect-ontology / negative-theological tradition — see indirect-ontology and related; Eckhart is a structural cousin to MP's late ontology via the via negativa lineage.
Mystical-tradition cross-tradition work on love — the causa sui limit-form Simmel articulates in christian-love is structurally close to Eckhart's love-without-why.

Connections

primarily engaged in the wiki via simmel-1923-on-love-fragment — the love-because-He-exists proof-text for love-as-formative-category.
anchors the ungroundedness thesis in love-as-formative-category and christian-love.
cross-tradition cousin to Heidegger's Gelassenheit — direct genealogical influence.
cross-tradition cousin to Schelling's Ungrund — through Böhme.
cross-tradition cousin to indirect-ontology / negative-theological lineage in the wiki.
contrasts with Scholastic-Thomistic love-of-God doctrine (where God is loved because of His infinite goodness, perfection, etc.).
historically condemned by the Inquisition (Bull In Agro Dominico, 1329) — a documentary-philosophical fact relevant to the late-medieval theological context.

Open Questions

The precise Eckhart source Simmel has in mind for the love-because-He-exists citation. Predigt 16b is the most likely candidate but the source-attribution is open. A philological cross-check would strengthen Phase-8 candidate simmel-love-as-fourth-categorial-axis-beside-knowledge-faith-valuation (extraction-note Pass 3 Part D, deferred to audit Phase 8).
The relation to Heidegger's Gelassenheit. Heidegger's late texts engage Eckhart explicitly; the wiki's late-heidegger entries can be cross-referenced with Eckhartian source-material for fuller articulation.
The relation to Suso / Tauler / Theologia Germanica. Eckhart's direct heirs preserved much of his teaching but moderated some of the more radical claims; the precise philosophical-mystical lineage is open.
The relation to negative-theological tradition more broadly (Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, John of the Cross). Cross-tradition cousins to Eckhart's via negativa.
Whether Eckhart's einung sunder underscheid doctrine (union without distinction) is compatible with Simmel's anti-fusion account of love (where love presupposes the being-for-itself of I and Thou). The Eckhartian union and the Simmelian no-fusion may seem opposed, but Simmel may be appropriating Eckhart selectively (the ungroundedness dimension) without endorsing the union-without-distinction dimension.

Sources

simmel-1923-on-love-fragment — current wiki source; cardinal passage: the Eckhart citation (Oakes p. 166) as proof-text for love-as-ungrounded-primary-category.
Future ingest priorities: Eckhart's Predigten (esp. Pr. 1, 2, 6, 12, 16b, 39, 52, 86); the Latin Works (esp. Expositio Sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem); Heidegger's Gelassenheit / Was heißt Denken? / Beiträge for the Heideggerian-Eckhartian lineage; Reiner Schürmann's Maître Eckhart ou la joie errante (1972).