It seems that it’s a philosopher’s job to say every word three times, its opposite twice and then the original word again, italicised. This is all down to Meister Eckhart. The German theologian’s project of negation has held an irresistible allure for him, Critchley explains, ever since he was mock-excommunicated as a second-year undergraduate during a discussion of Eckhart’s sermons. There, ‘sitting across from me and addressing me angrily in a loud voice, Father Michael Butler, chaplain of the university – and a lovely man – slowly read the words of the Bull in Latin ... This is the kind of experience that stays with you, especially when you’re not even a proper Catholic.’ After such an experience you must turn to more serious questions. In Eckhart’s own words:

A man had a dream, a daydream: it seemed to him that he was big with nothingness as a woman with a child. In this nothingness God was born. He was the fruit of nothingness. God was born in nothingness. This is why he says: ‘He rose from the ground and with open eyes he saw nothing. He saw God where all creatures are nothing. He saw all creatures as a nothingness, for God has all creatures in himself. He is a being that has in itself all being.’

Or, as a friend recently asked of her fat cat with no mind: ‘Is it possible for Nothing to be surrounded by Everything?’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n01/patricia-lockwood/that-shape-am-i

**munching on popcorn 🍿