Where does Evola quote that passage?
Eckhart's passage is obscure. For quick reference, I quote it here at length:
"Nolite timere eos qui corpus occidunt, animum autem occidere non possunt (Matt.
1022). 'Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.'
Spirit does not kill spirit; spirit gives life to spirit. 'Them which kill
you' are flesh and blood which die by one another. Man's most precious
possession is blood, when it is well-liking. The most mischievous thing in man
is blood when it is ill-liking. When the blood rules the flesh, the person is
humble and patient and chaste and has all the virtues. But where the flesh has
the upper hand he is supercilious, hasty, and lascivious and has all the vices."
As in all his sermons, Eckhart begins with a passage from Scripture, which the
rest of the sermon is devoted to interpreting and explaining. He first mentions
blood to associate it with the flesh as 'them which kill you'. Given the passage
from Matthew's gospel, we are to understand the 'you' here as the body only,
since 'them which kill the body' are supposedly not able to kill the soul. In
other words, the flesh and blood are able to kill the body. Strange statement,
for in suggesting that the flesh and blood are able to act on the body, there's
a hint that these are in a sense distinct from the body as such. Therefore the
flesh, as distinct from the body, could suggest here the carnal nature as such -
the passionate, appetitive disposition - in which case it makes more sense to
claim that the flesh is able to kill the body, for one could conceive that the
appetites can wear out the body, and as a consequence, while being the cause of
the body in many ways, also contain in themselves the source of the body's
death.
From this we get a better understanding of what blood means in that passage,
especially after Eckhart suggests a sort of relationship between blood and the
flesh not so different from that between rational/appetitive souls in Aristotle,
where one component can rule over the other; only here there's no question of
blood having the attributes and function of reason; yet, like reason for the
philosophers, for Eckhart, when blood rules the flesh, the person is humble and
patient and chaste and has all the virtues, and where the flesh has the upper
hand he is supercilious, hasty, and lascivious and has all the vices. Blood
therefore indicates virtue (Christianized virtues for Eckhart!)
A question raises itself here: does this mean that blood automatically makes
virtuous the person in whom it rules over the flesh? In other words, is blood a
positive element in itself, a virtuous disposition, a source of superior
character, such that in he whom it rules over the flesh virtues at once prevail?
Or can one in whom blood rules over the flesh also not show the signs of a
virtuous character? This boils down to asking: is there good blood and bad
blood, or is there only having blood and not having blood? But this distinction
might be superfluous, for as Evola has suggested, 'having blood' (like 'having
race') is often used to indicate superior qualities, whereas it is never said of
a vicious character that he has 'bad blood': we do not refer to blood in his
case because it is practically assumed it doesn't exist in him; in fact, blood
is almost always associated with something valuable, which is why, as I have
just indicated, expressions involving 'having blood' are almost invariably about
virtuous, valuable characters. Therefore, it becomes almost superfluous to speak
of 'good blood' and 'bad blood' - but just of 'having blood' and 'not having
blood', where the former is valuable and the latter base.
In fact, this dichotomy is expressed Eckhart's own discourse about blood. On the
one hand, he speaks of a blood that is 'well-liking', and one that is
'ill-liking' - which suggests that there is such a thing as 'good' and 'bad'
blood. On the other hand, as we have seen, he writes that when the blood rules
the flesh, the person has all the virtues, but where the flesh has the upper
hand he has all the vices. Here there is no question of good blood or bad blood,
but rather of blood ruling or not ruling in a person. But because blood having
the upper hand is a source of virtue, and that 'man's most precious possession
is blood, when it is well-liking', it is clear that Eckhart conceives of the
'well-liking' blood as the one which is able to rule over the flesh, and the one
which is 'ill-liking' as the one which is ruled by the flesh, and in the latter
case, we can not really speak of blood, precisely because it ruled, practically
nonexistent.
Of course, all this does not mean that Eckhart had a developed conception of
blood, but rather that some views about blood, perhaps reflective of his age,
are implicit in his text. Let it also be noted that Eckhart never uses the word
race.
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "evola_as_he_is" <evola_as_he_is@...>
wrote:
>
> This passage quoted by J. Evola can be found in the Sermons. However, he
quoted it only in part. The whole sentence is even more meaningful, as an
elaborate variant of 'Deus Diabolus inversus' :
>
> "Man's most precious possession is blood, when it is well-liking ; the most
mischievous thing in man is blood when it is ill-liking" (The Emanation and
Return)
>
>
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dwIEWKy3p6sC&pg=PA142&dq=meister+eckhart+bloo\
d#PPA142,M1
>
>
>
>
> --- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, caleb afendopoulo <afendopoulo@> wrote:
> >
> > There is a quote from Meister Eckhart on the members page,"There is no
higher value than blood" (Meister Eckhart).
> > Can you give me the place of that quote preferably in an English trans?
> > Thank you.
> > Caleb
> >
>