Abstract

In this paper, I offer an analysis of a passage from Eckhart’s commentary on the verse of the Genesis In principio creavit caelum et terram that has not received, in my opinion, sufficient attention so far. In this passage, Eckhart points out that the principium through which God created the world is the ideal model, i.e. the ratio essendi of a thing as well as its ratio cognoscendi. It is also the cause of the essence of the thing and, as Aristotle says, of its definition and its scientific proof. Eckhart also quotes Averroes, according to whom philosophers have always searched for the quiddity of a sensible thing because it could lead to knowledge of the first cause of being. By this, Eckhart warns, Averroes does not mean God, as some erroneously think, but the ratio idealis of sensible things, which is expressed by their definition. Joseph Koch’s critical edition does not identify who the plerique erra...