CHAPTER EIGHT

THE GERMAN DOMINICAN SCHOOL: DIETRICH OF FREIBERG AND

In the historiography of the last decades, a new collective, the “German Dominican School”, was introduced in connection with an ambitious edition project, referred to as the Corpus philosophorum teutonicorum Medii Aevi. The collective labels a group of thinkers who were related in one way or another to the studium generale of the Dominicans in Cologne, founded by the “Teutonicus” in 1248. The new designation is a recognition of the emergence of a German - sophical culture in the period between 1250 and 1350 and thus the expression of the growing importance of Germany as an intellectual centre beside Paris and Oxford. The key figure is Dietrich of Freiberg (d. ca. 1310); other names are Meister Eckhart (d. 1328), who pub- lished not only treatises in Latin but also in German, and Berthold of Moosburg (d. post 1361).1 The idea of a “German Dominican School” has found acceptance, but the concept is not unproblematic. The notion of “school”, as, for instance, the “Thomist School”, generally suggests a common way of thinking or orientation. There are certainly agreements between the views of the German Dominicans; they share, for example, an inter- est in Neoplatonic positions. The doctrinal divergences between them are, however, considerable and weighty. The theory of the transcen- dentals is a pertinent illustration of this. According to Berthold of Moosburg it is not simply a doctrine among other doctrines, but it stands for a fundamental philosophical option, which he completely rejects. Berthold is one of the sharpest critics of the doctrine of the transcendentals in the late Middle Ages, and it is plausible that he had the version expounded by Dietrich of Freiberg in mind. Meister

1 Cf. L. Sturlese, “Albert der Grosse und die Deutsche philosophische Kultur des Mittelalters”, in: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 28 (1981), pp. 133–147 [reprinted in: id., Homo divinus, Philosophische projekte in Deutschland zwischen Meister Eckhart und Heinrich Seuse, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 1–13]. R. Imbach / C. Flüeler (eds.), Albert der Große und die deutsche Dominikaner Schule. Philosophische Perspektiven, in: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 32 (1985). 316 chapter eight

Eckhart’s concept of transcendentality again is quite different from Dietrich’s; he presents a new model that was influenced by ’s onto-theological transformation. In view of this heterogene- ity, one should not see “German Dominican School” as a designation for a “school of thought”, but rather, like it has been suggested, as a “heuristic concept” that enables us to discern a common awareness of problems and some doctrinal relations.2 Moreover, the importance of the “German” ambience for this group of thinkers should not be exaggerated: the writings of Dietrich of Freiberg are certainly not, as it has been claimed, a “key” to Eckhart’s work;3 their views should be considered in a European context. In the present chapter we pay attention to Dietrich of Freiberg (8.1) and Meister Eckhart (8.2); Berthold of Moosburg will be dealt with in ch. XII (“Critiques of Transcendental Metaphysics”). Dietrich and Eckhart both held high administrative functions within the German province of the Dominicans and both became a master of theology in Paris: Dietrich in 1296, where he continued to teach until 1300, and Eckhart in the academic years 1302/3 and 1311/2.

8.1 Dietrich of Freiberg

8.1.1 A “Copernican revolution” in the Middle Ages?

1. A strong impulse to the modern interest in Dietrich’s philoso- phy has been given by an essay of Kurt Flasch (published in 1972) with the intriguing title “Does medieval philosophy know the con- stitutive function of human thought?”.4 It was not a coincidence that this study appeared in the journal Kantstudien, for the recognition of the constructive role of the intellect in knowing reality has gen- erally been taken as the achievement of Kant’s “transcendental” phi- losophy. Flasch pursues the question whether medieval philosophy

2 N. Largier, “Die ‘deutsche Dominikanerschule’. Zur Problematik eines historio- graphischen Konzepts”, in: J. A. Aertsen / A. Speer (eds.), Geistesleben im 13. Jahrhun- dert, Berlin – New York 2000 (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 27), pp. 202–213. 3 So K. Flasch in his “Introduction” to Dietrich von Freiberg, Schriften zur Intellekt- theorie, in: Opera omnia, Vol. I (ed. B. Mojsisch), Hamburh 1977, p. XIX. 4 K. Flasch, “Kennt die mittelalterliche Philosophie die konstitutive Funktion des menschlichen Denkens? Eine Untersuchung zu Dietrich von Freiberg”, in: Kantstu- dien 63 (1972), pp. 182–206.