In Defence of Plain Speaking

Abstract

To my mind, plain speaking cuts to the heart of what Eckhart did and was. I do not mean by this in any way to deny that he was an intellectual: he was a Meister – a Master of Theology, a Professor of his time. This is very important – this is who he was. He enjoyed a degree of prominence in his own day as a thinker and a former of young Dominican minds – and indeed Eckhart himself argued that if he had had less status, he would never have got into trouble for promoting heretical ideas. In his written Defence of 1326, he contended that: